Could you do a better job than Coyle?

largehat wrote:

Moron.

So you'd have brought Davies on last night and moved to 4-4-2?

Natasha Whittam wrote:
So you'd have brought Davies on last night and moved to 4-4-2?

No, I'd have brought myself on and gone to 2-3-5.

largehat wrote:

No, I'd have brought myself on and gone to 2-3-5.

Moron.

In terms of selection and tactics yes I could do a far better job than Coyle. Yes there's far more to it than that but he's failing at the fundamentals of the job.

aaron_bwfc wrote:Anyone with half a brain would have been able to take the 0-0 at norwich and shut up shop and take a point against stoke, simple things that stare coyle point blank in the face.

Don't forget being two up against Sunderland with 15 minutes left and losing two big points. Unforgivable!

Natasha still not had that good dicking then.Really will relieve that pent up frustration.Chinese Love eggs might do.Telling me to jump of a high building and leave 2 kids behind,Very Nasty indeed,

Who is this natasha and why does she use a fake photo?

Natasha is Bolton's most famous fan (her words, not mine) and I don't really look like the letter 'P'. I suspect that her photo is real as well, but it may not actually be her.

largehat wrote:Anybody on this forum who thinks they could manage a professional football club is a moron.

Please lower yourself to our standards and join in with the spirit of the conversation. We are asking what people would do if they were the manager. Obviously there are things we would not be able to do. Come on Mr Hat. Tell us how you would handle the Bolton hot seat.

What I would do? Hmmmm.

On pitch:

Drop under performing players without question. Nobody would be too big to be dropped. Too often I see players who under achieve for weeks on end and they are given second, third and tenth chances to prove themselves.

I would give fringe players opportunities. Even to my peril. If my team is not averaging less than a point per game then something has to be done. Given a one game chance to a youngster could work in my favour - first off we might get a good performance out of him, but even if it was not amazing it would give the more experienced players the required kick up the arse.

I would adapt my team to suit the circumstances of the game. If it's 0-0 but we are getting overrun in midfield and it goes on for more than 10-15 mins then I adapt. I either make a sub or I drop a player back into the hole. Ignoring it is only going to cost goals and point in the long run. The manager needs to anticipate what is over the horizon.

I would try to use players to their fullest potential. Almost anyone can see that Mavies goes missing in a 442 game. He is best utilized as an attack minded centre mid. So that is where I would play him. And if I choose to play him I know that his game will work better by having an extra man behind him. As the manager I have to make these choices. If I don't like having an extra man behind him then I realise that as much as I want to let him play, I can't. So he gets benched.

And so on...

Born to be a wanderer wrote:Telling me to jump of a high building and leave 2 kids behind,Very Nasty indeed,

They told me to type it.

I haven't read that jayjay but would you drop kevin davies and start Andy Longergan and O Halloran per chance?

Off pitch:

Promote Sammy Lee to head coach.

Bring in world renowned coaching staff and medical team.

Coach and educate players rigorously until they hate me, almost.

Fix their diets with nutritionists...

etc, etc...

jayjay23 wrote:
Please lower yourself to our standards and join in with the spirit of the conversation. We are asking what people would do if they were the manager. Obviously there are things we would not be able to do. Come on Mr Hat. Tell us how you would handle the Bolton hot seat.

I'm not being funny jayjay, but I've been to Euxton and I've seen the level of planning and preparation that goes into each game.

For every game there is a massive dossier in the coaches room about opposition players, it shows all sorts of intricate detail you wouldn't even imagine, like a remarkably intricate version of an advanced football management game. It has details like pitch maps showing who stands where to defend corners, who is likely to be marking who, how many minutes each opponent has played, all sorts of stuff like that. That filters into the coaching sessions with the players.

There are several massive wall displays outside the players' changing room which give a detailed breakdown of their upcoming opponents, arranged in formation and so on, so come the game, the players can identify their opponents and will have learned about them during training in the week.

So when people say things like "I'd study the opposition" - it's the equivalent of saying "I'd take a pen" in a thread about preparing for an exam.

It's the same with the comments about players' diets and so on. I've eaten in the canteen and seen the level of preparation and consideration that goes on there. There is a team of people managing players' diets and nutrition. It's stating the obvious to say that, IMO.

Being a successful football manager involves a far more sophisticated and advanced level of football knowledge than I've ever seen displayed by any poster on a football forum. Any arsehole can say "I wouldn't have brought Kevin Davies on" and make isolated observations like that which are arguably correct in hindsight, and I would agree that some of the mistakes someone like Coyle makes seem glaringly obvious from the outside looking in, but there isn't a substitute for a life spent in professional football learning from other managers and players, UEFA coaching licenses and several years' management experience. There are things Coyle will know about some of those players we can't appreciate. And it's not just knowledge, it's motivating and managing people too. Unless Harry Redknapp or someone is posting on this forum, there's nobody on here who would have any credibility as BWFC manager and would never earn the respect needed to succeed in the job.

We spend a lot of time on these forums discussing players and tactics and so on and that's fine as we are all lay people, but when people talk about how they or anyone else would have kept us up last season, I can't take that seriously.

I appreciate your insight and comments there Large. You quite often sway my judgement and have calmed me down a bit too with your considered response.

On the other hand, however, I know that some of what I suggested (on the pitch especially) matches what a lot of other people have observed as being our weaknesses but Coyle seems to have ignored or missed. Now I may be wrong but quite often the successful managers in the game are also the ones who seem to do the sensible thing at the sensible time.

If Rooney is having a stinker the fans will notice this. And so will the manager, it's not rocket science, and he will make changes accordingly. If Arsenal are trying to keep possession but are failing for whatever reason, Wenger will change tact and normally substitute the main culprit or in some cases the main play maker and allow the new player to come on and start pulling the strings. If an Everton defender keeps getting dragged out of position then Moyes will pull him off or shuffle things around until he is satisfied. These are all moves that the fans can see need to be made as well as the manager can see them. And when the manager makes the change the supporters can identify with it and see the reasoning. Not all football fans are devoid of tactical nous or awareness of what is happening in front of them.

With Coyle he seems to continue to make the same set of changes, often the same selections of under performing players, and often reverts to a proven losing formation when we are performing capably in another formation. All these things leave fans perplexed and frustrated. Me included.

largehat wrote:I'm not being funny jayjay, but I've been to Euxton and I've seen the level of planning and preparation that goes into each game.

For every game there is a massive dossier in the coaches room about opposition players, it shows all sorts of intricate detail you wouldn't even imagine, like a remarkably intricate version of an advanced football management game. It has details like pitch maps showing who stands where to defend corners, who is likely to be marking who, how many minutes each opponent has played, all sorts of stuff like that. That filters into the coaching sessions with the players.

There are several massive wall displays outside the players' changing room which give a detailed breakdown of their upcoming opponents, arranged in formation and so on, so come the game, the players can identify their opponents and will have learned about them during training in the week.

So when people say things like "I'd study the opposition" - it's the equivalent of saying "I'd take a pen" in a thread about preparing for an exam.

And Coyle's usage, adaptation and implementation of all this acquired knowledge and intense preparation is to...



...yet again play 4-4-2, with two wingers and Kevin Davies and Zat Knight to start!!!

Absolutely fucking brilliant of him!



How we keep on losing is a complete mystery to a mere numb skull like me who only bothers to prepare for an exam by bringing my pen along!



There's none so blind that will not see you know!

JayJay -

I don't disagree with your point about Coyle seeming to repeat the same mistakes, but I do think as fans we tend to oversimplify these things. Let me put it to you another way - and this is not my opinion on this subject, it's just something to throw out there - there's an argument that Crawley were bombarding us with high balls last night and Kevin Davies is better to have on the pitch in that situation than Mark Davies.

I think a lot of the time fans latch on to something and won't let it go, like the whole 4-4-2/4-5-1 thing, people have become absolutely obsessed with it, but giving players the right instructions and the players following those instructions is a far bigger factor in conceding late goals than whether you have two up front when you have got the ball. It's not subbuteo, is it? The players don't stand in a rigid formation when they are defending.

The three managers you mention are arguably the three best managers in the country. They're certainly far and away the longest serving managers in the Premier League. Sometimes they do whistle in the face of what fans and pundits expect to happen when they make changes. How often do you hear a pundit say "It looks like X is coming on, I imagine Y will be coming off", and then it's someone different who comes off, and then the commentators express surprise? And commentators are often people who are football experts, ex players and managers and so on.

There was very little scrutiny of the minutiae of Coyle's decision making in his first year at the club, because we were getting results on the pitch. That's all people care about, and with justification. When things go wrong, and particularly when they go wrong over a long period of time, they look for reasons and it's human nature to point the finger. Coyle is certainly to blame to some extent for our relegation, and then when you break that down you can say things like "what a muppet bringing CYL on against West Brom", but if CYL had gone on and created a third goal it would have been considered a masterstroke.

There are very few decisions made in football which are completely and utterly ridiculous. Do we think 7 minutes of Chung Yong Lee for Martin Petrov, who offers very little defensively and never has done, cost us 2 points in that game, or our best centre back, in the best form of his career, going off injured at half time? If you'd logged into any internet forum you'd have read 100 posts about the CYL substitution for very 1 post about Wheater. Because when football fans are pissed off, they look to point the finger at someone, and their nominated scapegoat isn't often very rational.

As for Coyle, he's a very average manager, who took a lot of personal and professional flak to come to our club, his heart is in the right place, and people are absolutely outraged that "he took us down" as though we finished bottom on 10 points like Sunderland did a few years ago, like he's had anything like the resources at his disposal his predecessors all had, and like he didn't get bummed by tough circumstances at every turn last season. God knows why people think it's an easy job.

I am tired. I read yours and will reply tomorrow. Night all.

The sad thing for me is that playing the way that OC wants to play could work - if we had the players with enough quality to execute it or, the current players played to the top of their ability week in week out. But they don't.
OC must be a very disappointed man.