Coaching philosophies at your club

[B1gbeard]

A thread to talk about your clubs coaching. What you know or surmise. + and - points etc.

Since the appointment of Steve Bould I've been thinking about how coaching works at Arsenal. It's impossible to know any facts of course but you can get some idea from watching and listening.

Over the last few years especially, I think the greatest achievement for Arsene is the way Arsenal seem to have a scientific, almost Borg like mentality throughout the squad. Like a bee hive maybe. Everyone knows exactly how, where and what they should be doing. It is this philosophy that has allowed us to successfully include young players in competitions like the Carling Cup and keep a very reasonable level of performance. Young players coming into the first team generally seem to gel in very well. It appears inflexible but maybe necessary due to any financial limitations. I think this has allowed the team to generally perform above it's level.

Arsenal fans often say that if a Dixon or Keown (or Bould) was on the coaching staff the repeated defensive errors wouldn't happen. I wonder if they would be allowed to attempt to bash the kinks out as it were. If Koscielny and Vermaelan make an error would Steve Bould take them aside and have a word and point out what they have done wrong? Is he allowed to? I get the feeling that reapeated errors or not, Wenger's philosophy will be to carry on coaching in the same way and not pick out particular faults by an individual and the coaches are told the same. Do they hope the players will eventually adapt themselves? The system also is inflexible, regardless of opponents or results.

Our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness. Inflexibility. Lack of spontaneity.

 

[pingwing]

We have Adkins, he's weird but great. He's spotted what Pardew didn't do the previous season (worth with what he had to improve the club as one unit) and tried to make full use of everyone around the place.

His catch phrase is "Saints fit" which over the last couple of years has seen Lambert go from the hulk up front to tall, lean and still strong. It's also gotten the pie belly off Billy Sharp.

I love it. His amazingly positive, calm and composed attitude as really improved the team, no one does silly things to wind up the fans, everyone gives for the team and it shows when someone tries to rock the boat (Puncheon being the worst). The team now can take defeat and bounce right back with a win and the team can drop/include anyone when they are needed because the ego's are managed in such a nice positive way.

I like it too much, the only real down side is we have a belief in the youth of the club, which worries me a little that we are going to do what I do on FM and just chuck a few kids in the deep end to see if it goes well. Overall though he seems to know what every player at the club can do (when they put the work in) and he knows how to get it out of every player without fail.

 

[Number_25]

We've got David Moyes, probably the best man motivator in the entire league and has a good eye for a bargain.

One thing which sometimes annoys me is his negative tactics when playing against smaller sides, often would we be greeted to a 4-5-1 when we're playing at home against a lower-league side.

But the football can be brilliant, triangles in the midfield with Pienaar, Fellaini, Gibson, Osman and Rodwell (when fit) are brilliant to watch sometimes - we don't get enough credit for some of the football we produce.

With Cahill leaving though, maybe - just maybe, Moyes may decide to go for a more attacking 4-4-2 with Naismith backing Jelavic upfront.

Exciting times at Goodison Park as we go from the Carsley, Arteta and Cahill era into a new one of Fellaini, Jelavic and Pienaar.

COYB.

 

[drunkenmaster]

A thread to talk about your clubs coaching. What you know or surmise. + and - points etc.

Since the appointment of Steve Bould I've been thinking about how coaching works at Arsenal. It's impossible to know any facts of course but you can get some idea from watching and listening.

Over the last few years especially, I think the greatest achievement for Arsene is the way Arsenal seem to have a scientific, almost Borg like mentality throughout the squad. Like a bee hive maybe. Everyone knows exactly how, where and what they should be doing. It is this philosophy that has allowed us to successfully include young players in competitions like the Carling Cup and keep a very reasonable level of performance. Young players coming into the first team generally seem to gel in very well. It appears inflexible but maybe necessary due to any financial limitations. I think this has allowed the team to generally perform above it's level.

Firstly unless you are a player/coach/waterboy who watches them train its all complete guess work.

Secondly I disagree with everything you said entirely. Borg like mentality so everyone knows what to do, really? That is anything but what we see at Arsenal, our "overlapping" play has all but disappeared(something that is done by pairs of left/right sided players who know exactly what the other can/will do), Walcott rarely does what is required, Song hasn't got a clue how to defend, Diaby doesn't ever know what he's doing, Gervinho has no awareness at all and our fullbacks for years have had no defending intelligence to speak of, constantly out of position never having the slightest clue where to be.

Our team for the Carling cup was great because our youth weren't youth, they were almost exclusively good players we bought in at 18-20 who half of them could have been in the first team.

We used to have an amazing squad of the A team which could win the league and the B team which could have likely come in a euro spot all on their own.

Bah, Arsenal's site only really lists teams(well match reports with the names of a few people in said teams) from the 2005/6 season. We beat Sunderland with Eboue, Song, RVP, Muamba and the latter was the only player making his debut. That's the first carling cup match of the season, the third game or so we won against Wigan playing RVP and Henry.

The reality is we rarely played weak teams in the Carling cup, we just had a very large squad of very good players of which almost all of them should have gotten more games in our first team. The other reality is the Carling cup was/is rarely taken seriously and we wasted a HUGE amount of talent we saw in those carling cup games. Utd would have kept Larrson, played him enough to keep him, benefited from quality cover and had a stronger team. We barely let him/Bendtner/Vela/Bentley/Pennant and a dozen others player, of whom today all should be at the club instead of the Diaby/Denilson/Walcott/Chamakh/Gervinho rubbish we have instead. We have for over a decade had these guys come through, put in quality performances and never get included in the first team properly.

We used to win because we had great players, and we used to do well with a less experienced team because our reserves were SIGNIFICANTLY better than ANYONE elses by a country mile and we usually put 2-3 stars in with them.

This absolute myth about "youth" at Arsenal does my nut in. Cole/Wilshire are about the only "youth" players that ever made it into the Arsenal first team in Wenger's years. Wilshire at 16/17, Cole was the best part of 20 when he finally became first team at Arsenal, Cesc was young but we also bought him the year he started playing.

Same goes for most younger players, mostly we buy the very almost finished article, most of them learnt how they play at other clubs and continue playing that way here.

I'm all happy to say that for a long time Wenger bought exceptionally well, but he bought players at 18-25 who had already established how they played. He bought players who liked to pass, liked to attack and had the right kind of footballing brain, I can't think of any players he's "taught" this skill to.

Cesc, Henry, Gilberto, the entire defence before he took over, Pires, Freddie, Overmars, Petit, Lauren, Clichy, RVP, that's most of our best of the best players who really made a difference in winning titles, they all arrived as almost the finished article or the completely finished article.

The absolute lack of turning 10-16year olds into first team players in the past decade suggests our training/coaching isn't working in the slightest. Wenger has the ability to spot a player who has just about learnt all they need to but is still cheap better than most, buying the almost finished article in no way points to a good coaching system.