If we continue winning, that means that PGMOL have tried and failed.
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Or they have something bigger to worry about.
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Cootes rant about Klopp/Liverpool was a massive issue for PGMOL as it puts them under the microscope more. Thats why the PGMOL likely had a hand in the coote coke videoâŚget something out that isolates Coote as the problem, sack him, carry on.
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Possible, but would be risky as by cutting him loose, they give up any chance of controlling him, so he could now be free to air any dirty laudry he has on the rest of the cunts
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Hereâs hoping. Whatever is rotten at PGMOL needs to come out into the light. If Coote is the convenient (and foolish) fall guy, and nothing else happens, it wont seem right.
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Interesting piece on Juveâs struggles this season - 6th in Serie A, fighting to stay in the CL, and the beginnings of murmurs that they were wrong to replace Allegri with Motta
Putting it here to give more context of Cityâs shambolic showing yesterday
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Brendan Crossan: The âPepificationâ of football is a scourge on the game at all levels
WHEN a football match begins on TV my eyes glaze over. You try and fight it. You even put your mobile phone in a different room to concentrate on tactical formations and how the game might unfold.
But the mind wanders soon after kick-off. It wanders not because you no longer love the Beautiful Game â it wanders because you think of what has happened to it
Thereâs a reason why Match of the Day has stood the test of time and still occupies a special place in the collective imagination of football supporters, mainly because the value in watching match highlights of the Premier League has never been more attractive.
It cuts out endless hours of nothingness and teamsâ flawed attempts to play out from the back.
Your mind wanders because every game looks and feels the same: patterns of play, central defenders standing on top of their goalkeeper for nervy restarts, the repeated runs and familiar movements of the full-backs, and midfielders and strikers alike.
Change the colour of the jerseys and itâs like watching a re-run. Itâs what some observers call the âPepificationâ of the modern game.
âMagnolia footballâ was how Sunday Times Jonathan Northcroft aptly referred to it in a brilliantly constructed piece on the standardisation of the game.
Manchester City are one of the most successful teams in the modern game but try wading through one of their games. Every move must have Pep Guardiolaâs consent.
The team must play out from the back. The team must create overloads on either flank, no matter how long it takes.
Pass, pass, pass â back and forward but mostly side-wards.
For long enough, it has been a coaching masterclass in narcissism â until central striker Erling Haaland was signed and rendered a lot of Man Cityâs laborious passing moves redundant.
Jurgen Kloppâs Liverpool side couldnât have been any more different. They played fast, direct and effective football. If they could get the ball into their strikers in two passes, back to front, they would do it.
Kloppâs Liverpool were the most exciting and entertaining team in the English game for the last decade; Man City, the most successful
And with successful teams, people want to copy them. Coaches at all levels want to copy Pep.
Iâm involved in youth football, and you often see young players trying to play out from the back.
At some grassroots levels, the first pass from the goalkeeper is free. Only then can the opposition engage and press the ball. At least in adult football players have the space and luxury of the 18-yard box where the first pass by the defending team is effectively free.
Locally, underage teams arenât even afforded the same luxury of the space of an 18-yard box and are expected to accept a short pass, get their feet sorted out, look up and pass to a team-mate who will more than likely be under pressure too.
And so, what manifests is a bunch of kids hemmed in their own half of the field because the coaches believe they must play the âright wayâ - even though they havenât remotely developed the skill set to play that way.
This is the trickle-down effect of the âPepificationâ of football. There are endless examples of top teams trying to play out from the back.
The keeper gives a five-yard pass to the central defender, it is shifted back and forth and when they canât see any way out of beating the high press, they launch the ball out of play or, worse, they simply cough up possession.
Thereâs a madness to asking players to play in a way that they are not capable of playing â but these are the trendy coaching norms of the day.
What you also find in the coaching fraternity is intense peer pressure.
If you donât play out from the back and try and beat the high press, youâre out of touch.
So, rather than try a different way of playing that actually suits the skill sets of players, they persist with doing what everyone else is doing - and not with any great success.
But at least youâre deemed a modern coach. In truth, youâre a dead fish going with the flow, accepting the flawed, conventional wisdom of the day.
So, everything continues to look and feel the same
In Northcroftâs piece, there were some fascinating insights of mass trends occurring in the game.
Shooting from distance on average has steadily declined from 17.9 metres in 2013/14 to 15.9 metres. The game is more data driven than ever as analysts talk about being in the âgolden zoneâ to score.
While teams strive for efficiency in everything they do, maverick footballers are a dying breed. Teams are more risk-averse and systems find it difficult to incorporate the spontaneous footballer who interprets the game differently.
The street footballer is being beaten out of the system. World Cups and European Championships used to leave an indelible mark on football fans but over the last decade memories become blurred, big games instantly forgotten and individual performances few and far between.
And yet, we still remember greats of earlier eras and how there were more leaders because they werenât strait-jacketed by coaches and systems and had licence to problem-solve.
So many modern-day players are too conditioned, are slaves to systems. Leadership simply cannot flourish.
Weâre enduring a bleak period of the cult of the manager, where it must be about them and their systems of play rather than the players who could be something else if they were trusted.
Although Fabio Capello didnât cover himself in glory during his managerial spell with England, itâs difficult to refute his analysis on, say, Guardiola for example.
âGuardiola is a great coach,â the Italian said, âbut⌠at times he has even lost trophies because he wanted to prove that he as the one winning and not the players, so he dropped key figures in big games⌠in an attempt to take the spotlight and the credit away from this squad.â
The âPepificationâ of football is a scourge on the game at all levels.
How can there be lateral thinking in a sport where everyone thinks the same?
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In regards to passing out from the back itâs a coaching issue. Playing out through the CBs from a goal kick is actually far easier than trying to get control of a lumped ball downfield. Instead of kicking it into a predictably crowded area and hoping your team win the fight, the idea is to create 2v1 or 3v1s all across the pitch.
Drawing the other team further forward expands the space available to play in to, making possession easier not more complicated.
The issue is that a lot of coaches donât know how to coach it and that players do it without much thought because they see it in every PL game.
When done properly passing out from the back is easier for players than the more traditional kick-and-run style - especially at lower levels.
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I am not sure how he expects young players to develop the necessary skills except by trying and failing. Years ago there was a team in my over35s league that was also a coaching program - all of the players were also coaches teaching kids to play that possession style, and the point of the team was to have them experience it first-hand, including the frustrations and difficulties. We almost always beat the hell out of them with a high press, but every year they would improve noticeably over the season and certainly improved them as coaches.
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Itâs not exactly a new thing. We played that way in the 1980s. It probably helps when you had Hansen and Lawrenson at the back.
In terms of the long goal kicks, you will see Alisson do this if he sees one of our forwards in space. In fact, Salah will often start a run if he sees Ali is about to collect the ball.
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This is what we tell ourselves, and relative to what everyone else was doing it was true, but if you go back and watch footage from those times it looks industrial compared to even what Championship clubs are doing now. It was mostly a couple of passes among the CBs and GK while under no pressure, before they gave it to a FB who fucking lumped it up the line.
The relevant issue for me when it comes to kids is what are they playing for. Asking them to play out from back is dumb without good coaching, and the fundamentals you should be teaching kids are what is needed to play this way. But most kids wont care, and I donât think they should be made to. The majority play because its fun, and what is fun for most is playing a proper game with real goals and scoring, not a structured 5 vs 5 keep away drill that when applied to a game situation gives them to tools to play out from the back.
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Yes indeed, thatâs where the coaching comes in (and often fails). Rondos can be a good warmup activity but they shouldnât be the core of the session.
A simple example of learning how to play from the back can be a 3v1 (including a GK who start play) with three mini-goals set up maybe 30 yards out from the big goal. The 3 have to play their way past the 1 and score in the mini-goals. If the lone player wins the ball they should counter-attack and score on the big goal. Then add a second defender who is locked to a certain area of the field, which ensures a second level of pressure but gives enough time to experiment.
Keep adding possession players and counter-attacking players, keep changing the shape and size of the field they are playing on. Change the mini-goals to a big goal with a GK. Eventually you get to something like a 6v4/7v4 which is probably about as far as I would go with that session. This advancement probably will take several weeks and multiple training sessions.
Iâve seen coaches work on particular patterns of play (GK to CB, CB dribbles until engaged plays to FB, FB advances until engaged, plays to DM, DM plays first time pass to CF) etc. but I personally donât like that and I do agree with the article that sessions like that negate creativity, leadership and enjoyment. The aim is to create training environments where you giving them the space to work on the game the way they want to. Often times theyâll come up with better solutions than you as a coach can do.
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City are reporting a PL record in revenue in their latest account.
However, I slightly take issue with the reporting here.
âCity have now recorded a profit every season since 2014-15, with the exception of the Covid-impacted 2019-20 campaign.â
When a club is accused of 115 financial crimes then maybe it would be wiser to not make hard statements about this. Perhaps hedge it a little bit.
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For all we know , there are so many underhand dealings with city that they can as well hand money over in some other form for them to inflate transfer fees.
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To be fair, ârecordedâ is right, the issue there is the veracity of the records.
Iâm sorryâŚ
Wut?
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Guardiola said his state of mind was âuglyâ, that his sleep was âworseâ and he was eating lighter as his digestion had suffered.
âI havenât done a solid shit for days,â the City manager moaned to the assembled press. âMy bunghole hurts from all the wiping, but Iâm so happy and proud for my team. A sore arse is worth it for how happy and proud they make me. With no Rodri, it is not possible to win everything, but we will keep fighting and maybe by the end of the season I will shit normally again.â
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So the Fraud is now talking *shit?
*both literally and figuratively
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