View from guardians secret footballer

[fah-q]

It's clearly Marlon Harewood

[Rich]

Barton

[Fosterbloke]

Francis Benali

[Neil Young]

It's obviously Gazza.

[Neil Young]

This article made me wonder about whether this is true of all sides managers or just some. If we assume all then does/should this alter the criticism we gave Roy for his rigidly planned approach? Or is it that the case that the higher up the league you have to have more flexibility and players who are better judging situations prefer freedom making it harder to impose rigid tactics upon them?

Did people criticise him for his rigid planning? I think the criticism of Hodgson was more about having **** tactics than rigid ones - certainly that was my view. To be honest, anyone who criticised him for being too rigid must have hated Benitez at least as much.

My guess is that all top teams play with a lot of rigidity, like the original article claims. There's too much money and too much pressure to allow mavericks much scope - the odd genius perhaps but look at how very creative players who are not geniuses are treated for their lack of discipline. Joe Cole under Mourinho and Ancelotti for instance... Among other things, what makes a top player is discipline and tactical awareness - the ability to create is important too, although not throughout the side obviously, but players who can create and act on the manager's instructions are the requirement.

I think there's a lot of romantic crap talked about freedom of expression - teams like Barcelona and Arsenal play like they do not because they're allowed to do what they want but because the manager gets the coaching staff to train them to play that way and gets his scouts to identify players who will fit into that way of playing. OK, they may have a little more freedom to try the unexpected than a team managed by Benitez or Mourinho or Allardyce or Hodgson or Pulis but I'd guess it's marginal. It would be interesting to know how much rigidity there is in Blackpool's set-up, given Holloway's claims to be a great entertainer.

Of course what Benitez definitely wanted from his players was tactical flexibility, i.e. being able to be disciplined within a number of tactical schemes. I think that's what may set him apart from many others, including Hodgson, who seems to know only one way to play, at least away from home. Remember that story about whoever took over from him at Valencia (was it Ranieri?) when he told the defence to set up as they had under Benitez: "Which way? We had six different schemes".

I suppose defence lends itself more easily to organisation but I'm not sure being attacking and being tactically disciplined are necessarily mutually exclusive, despite what we might like to believe.