Clifford Nelson

I think you have got it round about right. NC's shortcoming, which he is well aware of, is that he lacks footballing expertise. I'd be surprised if he's not kicking himself for not addressing the Sporting Director position. The right SD would by now be clear about what the club needs in the managerial seat, which has got to do with the type of football this club should be playing. As it is it seems to be more the glint in the applicants eye which becomes a determining factor. A very dodgy way of selecting managers which in many ways explains the managerial merry-go-rounds over the years. But let's be sensible. The club is not in crisis. The Tranmere and Swindon results are not catastrophies, and there is still time for NC to decide what to do next, and to discuss widely with the wisest minds in european football, and make some decisions about direction before he even considers names. We also need to remember that AP in no worse that the overwhelming majority of british managers, and better than many.

The plan that I see is to play 4-4-2 in an offensive manner, with the added attraction of having the wide midfielder swapping over every once in awhile. I can also imagine CBs being instructed to mark somebody, and I have also noticed Schneiderlin playing a little bit more defensively than Hammond, and he is rather good at it. But those kind of things are not really any different from what every other team is doing, so it's not very likely to upset the opposition. And, of course, there is nothing to fall back upon if it doesn't work. All of the great sides, around the world, which have had success over many seasons have relied on a strategy for being successful. Sometimes it hasn't been pretty, other times it has, and in most cases progress have seen them off eventually and it has been necessary to employ new strategies to gain success. The modern world seem to rely mostly on varieties of 4-5-1, also in the PL. 4-4-2 is going into history as did 2-3-5, WM, 4-2-4 and 4-3-3 in it's pure form. But within these various systems the successful teams did something different which the opposition couldn't cope with, and something they could rely on when everything else fails. I'm not looking for perfection, but I am trying to see something taking shape which will eventually take us to the PL and still being competitive, even though we never will compete in spending with the big guns. So far I haven't seen anything emerging, and it felt like the stuff about "consistency" from AP was confirming my fears.

You missed out the most important word which was "entirely". There is nothing wrong with commitment and motivation and there is nothing wrong with a playing strategy either. What is wrong is to think that one excludes the other. A good strategy but with players who aren't committed and motivated would be rather daft. But equally we should agree that to play without a strategy is like a lottery. 'Total football' was the term for a specific strategy thought out by the Dutch team in the Johann Cruyff era. I am not specifically bothered what kind of strategy the manager employs, as long as it undermines the opposition and gives our team a certainty in it's way of playing, maybe especially on the days when for whatever reason the ball doesn't seem to roll our way. If you're against the whole idea, and you rather dispense with any plans, then tell me what your reasons are and you might convince me.

Plan A, or the only plan I've seen, is an offensive 4-4-2 formation. All our players have played that for years, so the only thing they have had to do is to play with different players. I'm trying to be charitable in considering this as acceptable as a Plan A. What I really want is to do something entirely different, which works equally on good and bad days. But when our current Plan A fails, and it will, because it is built entirely on commitment and motivation, which whill never appear at a maximum on every occasion, then we need a Plan B. Something that the players can adher to and persevere with against all the 4-4-2 we're up against, knowing that it is superior. We're currently a one trick pony, and the trick works when the sun shines and fails when it rains (don't take me literally). That, in my opinion, is a bit of a lottery which we should abandon for something which is more reliable even when it rains.

I'm all behind you on the head tennis. Why are we afraid to take control of the ball? With regards to strategy and motivation I do wonder: What strategy? (unless you count something simple like: 'an offensive 4-4-2') Unless it really is as simple as all that, what exactly is our strategy? With top motivation we often do well, but no manager in the world can achieve maximum motivation at all times. Check out Man U, for instance. Not always playing the most inspired football, but always sticking to a perceivable game plan, and in 2008-09 won 23 and lost none of the games against the bottom 13. Against the top 6 it's another story, because they are nearly as good. A good position in the league comes from making sure you beat the bottom 2/3 of the league. Exeter, Brentford and Tranmere tells us that we're not doing it.

Huddersfield and Leeds were days when the team was on top of their form and when the individual efforts collectively makes our average playing of the 4-4-2 formation work. Exeter, Tranmere and Swindon were days when the top form failed to arrive. That happens to all of us and to all teams, but you must have a plan for how to deal with those days, and we haven't. Instead we keep on doing what works on good days, time and time again, which makes us look a bit like nanas. Not an edifying spectacle at all. This is the simple result of the pragmatism in the english game. Full of ideas of commitment, hard work, graft, playing for the shirt, but no application towards the strategic planning of how to play the game. It doesn't make us worse than anybody else, but it doesn't make us better either.

I think we've been here before. When everything goes fine and the team is fully inspired they beat most opposition put in front of them with a good margin. And then comes the days when inspiration fails, and suddenly we look rather desperate in our attempts to get back into a game which is running away from us, and we're trying increasingly frenetically to do what we already found difficult to do at a slow pace, like passing the ball, for instance. I don't buy this "consistency" thing. It seems to mean that hopefully we could play on top of our game on every occasion, but that is never going to happen, not for us and not for anybody else either. If we are to persevere with the current rather run-of-the-mill 4-4-2 then at least we need to have a plan B to revert to when things don't go well. And I don't mean for the manager to come out with sudden new instructions. I mean for the players to be fully aware of what they need to do when plan A fails. It was very clear last night that they only tried time and again to do what they had done from the start of the game, but with more and more desperation, so not very surprisingly we kept giving the ball away, whilst Swindon gave us a valuable lesson in moving, passing, and keeping the ball. Yes, it might have been different if Schneiderlin's shot had gone in rather than hit the post, but the fact of the matter is it didn't, and then we need a plan, or a strategy if you will, for how to work our way back in and grab hold of the game again. And we haven't got it. From that we should learn that Wembley won't be a cake walk; next year won't be a parade towards the title, and the CCC would be a similar story yet again. If that is good enough, than so be it, but I doubt very much that it will be good enough for Mr Cortese.

We have seen many inept and incompetent refs and we will see many more this season. This one was different in that he was so biased. I don't suggest that there was any irregularities, but he couldn't have performed better for Leeds if he had been given encouragement. I worried that he would give a penalty to Leeds as soon as they got into our box in the end, although luckily they were mainly reduced to shooting from distance. Is it happening that they are so intimidated by a full or nearly full SMS that they decide to show their bravery and independency by given umpteen unpopular decisions? This was the pits, but sadly Mr Leeds in the black kit will referee again next week.

Every time there is a "big" club in desperate straits, usually on their uppers, looking for a manager to sort out the mess created by the board room, then AP is going to be mentioned, because he is successful in L1. The thoughts must go "surely he would love to manage in the PL". This is dreamt up on sports desks by people who knows nothing about either Saints or L1. Spot how much is written about L1 in any of the nationals and it will tell you how much knowledge they've got. If AP waltzes off to Hull then he is truely so limited in his thinking so that we should be glad to see the back of him.

I am after one if at all possible. - For those not too bothered there are still tickets for sale through Carlisle United. Apparently they ask what team you are supporting and are happy to trust you if you mumble something which sounds like Carlisle. Please remember to sit down and be quiet when we score. Is that at all possible?

That's a bit of existentialism joined with a bit of zen. Obviously L1 is an inspiring place. I also think you have a point, and I keep thinking that the Prem will have one or two more disasters and be forced to change all it's ways before we get there. Fighting for survival from the first day to the last isn't terribly uplifting, and we will never compete up there with money alone.

Thanks, I'm glad to be of some service. There is, it seems, a little growing band of posters who is starting to take this debate a little bit seriously, which is great, but I'm desperate to hear a proper argument for why we're wrong. I'm still waiting. I've read your posts on quite a few occasions and thought that they were rather interesting. You obviously care very much about the club. It's the red mist which sometimes spoils it. The opposing posters are seldom that important so that they are worth all that ire. Cool dudes are often the best company.

We both know because of our impeccable source that you are right. But I just wonder whether having the club run by somebody like NC may just about give us the edge of not continuously repeating the same mistakes. I bet noone ever walked into the banks boardroom suggesting that everyone should just work harder, show more commitment and deal for the badge. So why should it work when it comes to footballers? I don't know if you spotted the bit about Man U at the weekend. They didn't win the title because they beat the top six, but because they beat the bottom thirteen, out of sight: 26 wins and no losses. Nobody could say that this was because they were especially inspired to play the bottom clubs. But they will always resort to the system which inferior clubs just can't cope with, whether the champions are massively committed or not.

I could see that dune was talking balderdash, and now it looks like you're doing the same. It's not like you, Nick, is there something catching on this thread?

No we didn't. We got the cheapest coaches we could get from Holland and gave them a bunch of boys, mostly with limited talent. And in spite of that it happened that occasionally they ran rings around the opposition. Clearly not often enough, but nevertheless. Personally I really liked Nobby Stiles in 1966, but the days of dirty bastards are history.

Jason Puncheon is left sided.

Thanks, it's nice to know that it's a few of us who think about the game. It's not easy to get elbow room between the "Yaboos!", "gratuitous insult makers", "AP outs" or alternatively "give him lots of more time, I'm sure he knows what he's doing". I have posted varieties of this post for some time now, and not a single person has so far tried to tell me how, exactly, it is that AP is trying to get this team to play, and how that is different from everybody else, or how it is proposed to try to exploit weaknesses in the oppositions way to play. I am now seriously starting to suspect that it is because no strategy exists. And if that assumption is right it doesn't matter how long AP is given, this current performance is and remains the actual product. Worse, that means, that judging from performances it will be a bit of a lottery whether we get promoted this, next, or any year. I really don't think we are going to "walk it".

What exactly is your point? That promotion wasn't essential this year so that AP didn't have to know what to do or didn't have to apply himself to it? Or whilst he didn't know how to do it this year, you're sure he will know it next year?

If he didn't have the ambition to be a manager, and not having had spent time in a sailor suit, he would be an interesting candidate as a Sporting Director.

The gamble on modelling the club on the dutch experience foundered on not affording either the coaches or the players with the quality to do the job. It became a cheap option for the penniless, and never stood a chance of succeeding, but nevertheless occasionally our young and less than top talented lads ran rings around the opposition. The dutch experience is now getting a bit outdated as well, but we could do well at looking at the strategic thinking of the better clubs in the world and then see what we would like to take from that to engender our own footballing strategy. First of all: Get a Sporting Director with the credentials to take on that task. In the meantime we should leave AP alone.

He certainly looks to be, but I don't think he is more motivational, and certainly not more pragmatic, than AP.

I sincerely hope that he doesn't either now or in the future goes in to replace the manager with another one who merely talks tougher, has different charisma, or with a cv showing a good string of games and maybe a promotion for another team. In the case of the latter I would hope he would explore in detail how that was achieved, and if the answer was through hard work, heart on your sleave, commitment to the cause then not to consider it any further. This is a lottery basis for chosing a manager. We really need to add some strategic backbone to the playing style of the club. Hopefully NC is already working on this by thinking about a future appointment of a Sporting Director. This is the person to put a strategy in place. But until then we shouldn't even consider changing managers.

Morning derry! I heard an interesting comment from Jamie O'Hara (if one dares to mention the name of somebody from down the road) on Solent yesterday. He said that he had played under several english managers and coaches, but Grant was more interesting to listen to, and learn from, because he had an understanding for the strategies of the game, whilst the english coaches merely underlined commitment and hard work. It feels he made my case for me.

Interesting note in the sunday paper: Man U won the PL last year having won only only 4 of the games against the top 7, but they won 24 and lost none against the bottom 13! With a solid strategy of how to play the game to fall back on a top side should dispose of inferior opposition even on the days when inspiration fails. The top sides can be imagined to have more skills to be able to deal with with our strategy, which will make those games more difficult. Whilst I've seen little glimmers of thinking behind our current 4-4-2, such as Schneiderlin dropping deeper and making the plays, we are still playing the game exactly the same as our opponents, and I cannot see that we are doing anything really to upset their game plans. They have spent years playing against orthodox 4-4-2s, and we don't seem to make it more difficult for them. Relying entirely on commitment, hard work and inspiration is a lottery. No team can be relied on to have it all every time, which we have shown. On our good days we are close to unbeatable, but on our average days we struggle against less than average opposition. That shouldn't be the case, and that is what AP needs to put right. If my guess is right and AP is a typical pragmatic english manager relying on heart, hard work and commitment to the cause, plus a 4-4-2 as the "right" way to play football, then I don't think he has got the tools for the job. I will not join in with any 'AP out!' faction. Any replacement of manager cannot be another lottery based decision, but must be founded on the club knowing what kind of football should be played here, and then find a manager who fits that bill.

Fair comment. What I involved myself in is thinking along the lines of: Wide midfield is a support role for the main striking department and one could expect any wide midfielder to have supported a number of strikes with assists, but 5 so far in the season? That looks very poor. Then on the other side AL has weighed in with 14 goals, which is much more than would be expected from a support player. AL has clearly also noted this and has experimented with him playing a more central role, but without any success. He is more dangerous coming in from wide. In the middle he seems to get lost in the melee of players. The conclusion seems to be that we don't get much support in terms of measurable assists from him, but on the other hand quite a few goals. Does one outweigh the other? Would a more orthodox wide midfielder who could knock in crosses with regularity be more useful to the team than the goals AL scores. I don't think it is an easy decision, but come the summer it may be made for us regardless.