Reids Coaching/Management thread

Pre-season is well underway, on Sunday we played a team that finished 5th out of 11 in the division we're moving into and trounced them 9-1, which means we've played 2 teams in that league now in pre-season, won both convincingly.

Main news though is i've now got a job scouting (12-16 year olds) at Barnet, it's a volunteer role but it's a foot on the ladder and will look good on the CV and the UEFA B application!

 

Good work. Definitely will look good having a league club on the CV.

 

Nicely done Reids!

 

Biggest loss of my managerial career to date so far tonight. Bit gutted but was definitely expecting worse. Played a team 1 league below semi-pro level and got tanked 6-1. To be fair I was expecting more considering the circumstances (2 subs, 4 debutants, a player who hasn't played for us in over 2 months and 2 players who have only played 3 games for us...), but still annoying.

 

Some teams massively overdo preseason only to quickly run out of steam so you really can't judge and this is probably a good result under the circumstances. Give it four or five games and look again.

A team I once played for lost the first four and then won every game after including the local cup.

 

Reids, are there any websites/blogs/whatever that do good articles about tactics or aspects of management etc? Looking to expand my sources for tactical talk.

 

http://spielverlagerung.com/ and http://www.zonalmarking.net/ are probably the best out there.

 

Forgot another one: https://thetacticalanalyst.wordpress.com/

 

Nothing to do with tactics but saw a free online course exploring the role of football in society, including trends in finances and data analysis. Thought it might be of interest to some of the people on this thread:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/football

The website it's on is quite good, it collates free online courses from universities around the world. I've done a couple of them in the past to boost the CV and improve language skills. No idea if this one is any good, but it doesn't cost you anything.

 

Ta will take a look, did one on statistics before which was quite interesting.

 

Cheers. Have a shortage of talent in my squad currently due to 9 seniors graduating and it's looking like we're going to have no choice but to rely on organization and tactical discipline to be successful. Anything that might give us a bit of an advantage is going to be hoovered up between now and Christmas.

 

Got quite a crisis in mine as well, nobody paying their fees (had around 10 so far). I've been advertising all summer for new players with no luck.

 

First game of the new season today, fell to a 2-1 defeat. Bit gutted as I definitely thought we'd nick a point if there was another 10 minutes left as the opponents had physically gone and we were all over them. We hit the post twice, our holding mid skyed a 1 on 1 with the keeper over the bar, our CAM (my MOTM) was 1 on 1 with the keeper and was (wrongly) ruled offside. One of those games! Overall not too fussed though, they're a good team and we had some key players missing today.

On another note, just got a job (paid!) writing for http://thesefootballtimes.co/ doing match analysis on a weekly basis. So much football now. Football training Thursdays, scouting for Barnet on Friday/Saturdays, 1 detailed match report (around 1500 words), then a match on Sunday. Adding as many strings to my bow as possible!

 

Decent start to the season so far!

 

Haha Roxeth, an old hunting ground.

 

We played them yesterday, scraped to a 4-3 win (with the winner being a free kick in the last 20 seconds of the match to pinch it!). A good side, their 2 CBs were beasts - would kill to have them in my team. Proper rollercoaster of a match. 0-0 at HT, we score just after the break. They score. We score, we score again to take it to 3-1. They score, then score again with 10 minutes left to take it to 3-3. Then the free-kick with 20 seconds on the clock (classic Sunday league stuff, keeper picking up a back-pass for an indirect free kick thats touched then banged top corner), definitely got a few more grey hairs after that!

 

And there was I thinking they were Swedish!

 

4 weeks from the start of pre-season proper for me and the days of being able to practice after school. So far we've only been able to have the squad for an hour each day during the soccer class period, and most of that has been spent running. Started the year with 65 kids in the program, hoping to have enough for 3 teams of 20. Now our numbers are about 45, 6 or 7 of whom are going to get cut so we'll squeeze a development squad out of the scrubs that don't make varsity. Most quit due to the conditioning work being too hard (it's still 100 degrees in the afternoon, so the prospect of knocking out 15-20 miles in running per week was too much for some) others quit because of poor grades, a couple kids went back to Mexico and one ended up going to play pro baseball in Mexico.

After thanksgiving we get the kids for an hour during the school day, and 2-3 hours after school, along with 3 hours on Saturday. That'll be when the tactical work starts taking place. As I said before, we lack natural talent, but I'm not expecting too many teams will be able to run with us. Tough conditioning has helped separate the leaders and those with heart. We'll be scrappy and horrible to play against. Won't be repeating the run to state semi- finals this year, but we will bloody some noses. Had the chance to play home games on the artificial turf in the football stadium (only holds a paltry 16,000 people) but we felt the less than pristine home field grass following a brutal summer would make trips to play us a bit less inviting for opposition players.

 

A last minute winner yesterday gave us a huge 3-2 victory and takes us into 2nd place, beginning to think back to back promotions is a possibility now...

 

Looks like you beat Club Assyria from the for/against columns. Nice.

 

Yup, they'd only conceded 2 goals all season so was happy to score 3 past em!

 

Forgot to add, a fine piece of man management in yesterdays game that made me proud. Last season our top scorer was our CDM with 13 goals in 18 games. Due to players leaving/injuries over the summer it left us without a striker, he was a great candidate and kept asking me to play him further forward. Stuck him up top in pre-season and he was great, recently though he hasn't been on top form, so I dropped him back to CDM for Sundays game. At 2-0 down I put him back up front hoping it'd spur him on now being given a chance to show he deserves to be playing up there. Then he goes and scores 2 goals in 20 minutes to draw us level. In the pub after he said me dropping him to CM again got him so fired up that it gave him that extra burst of pace for his 2nd goal. Love that feeling when a plan comes together!

 

Came up against them in the cup today, as previously mentioned their 2 CBs were beasts in the last game, defensively and physically. With my star striker/captain out injured (who's about 5 ft 7) I took a gamble and stuck my defensive midfielder up top (a beast himself a 6ft3) with the job of holding the ball up and feeding the wingers who'd make diagonal runs. Worked a treat with the new striker bagging 2 and the key creator in another 2 goals as we ran rampant in a 6-1 victory taking us to a semi final. One of my most proud victories as the game plan was so spot on.

 

5 wins in our last 5 games moves us into 2nd! With our next 3 games against Royal Park, Roxeth and King William it's time for us to switch to a 3-5-2 and practice that as our new formation, with the players we now have in the team I think it suits us much better.

 

Good show!

Against lowly opposition I'd be tempted to make that a 3-4-3 to try and overwhelm and rack a few goals up ... they key question is just how good and how fit are the best pair of your central mids?

 

I did think about that as i've got 2 class strikers and an international winger (!) joining our team for a month next week, so that would manage to fit everyone in with little difficulty. My centre-mids are both young (21) and really fit/good (one plays for a semi-pro teams reserve sides) so should be able to cope, especially with the defensive work-rate of one of our strikers who'd track back as well.

 

Our game last week against Royal Park got called off (due to the opposition manager refusing to play as the showers were out of order, despite having all his players, and all our players already at the ground ready to play). A 3-1 win against Roxeth yesterday (with Club Assyria dropping points) puts us firmly in the driving seat now. Our next 2 games are against King William IV and Reality, so there's definitely the potential for 6 points there.

 

Games still to play:

Club Assyria
Willow Park
Heathrow Club Reserves
King William IV (x2)
Reality
Royal Park (x2)

The game against Club Assyria is gonna be huge!

 

Are Reality the team who show film and show all their matches on Youtube?

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/realityfcchannel/videos

Apparently so! Although no videos from this season, so sadly I won't be able to post up the goals we stick past em

 

A 3-1 win moves us into joint top! Bit gutted as I thought we'd be able to nick top spot (we were 3-0 up after 20 mins and I thought it was gonna be a smashing), but sadly it wasn't to be. Happy we've got the best defensive record in the league though, hopefully that continues.

 

It seems your English is an advantage.

 

Forgot about this thread, we played our last game of the season on Sunday.





We absolutely bottled this season. 9 wins on the bounce then 3 losses in a row that has cost us a cup and potentially promotion. Completely out our hands now. On the plus side Ivy Leaf have got to play Willow Park and Club Assyria so results could still go our way to ensure back to back promotions.

 

Ivy Leaf got battered by Willow Park, meaning as long as Willow Park drop 3 points in their last 3 games we finish 2nd and gain promotion. Annoyingly they don't play again until April 30th when they play Club Assyria, who they lost 5-3 to earlier on in the season...