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Question for all the football experts on here and the management team at Ashton Gate

southvillekiddy

By southvillekiddy
in Football Chat

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southvillekiddy

southvillekiddy

Posted
Posted

Now I know I'm not a football expert like all the expert people on here and I'm certainly not as expert as the experts on our management team but as someone who isn't an expert I'd like to ask you all a question. Hope that's alright?

This question floated into my mind when I was listening to Lee's summary of the Stoke game.

I suddenly thought, hang on!  I've heard this all before somewhere, so I scratched my head for a bit and then I realised -  it's Lee who has said this all before!!

I'm not an expert but if I paraphrase what he said it was something like "We started too slowly in the first half and let them get their game going. It was much better in the second half when we started playing more assertively, passing, pressing, creating chances and playing like Bristol City"

Like I said I'm not a football expert so I might not have chosen the right football words and so on but I think this is what he has said quite a lot of times now after we have lost a game.

So this is my question :

WHY DOESN'T LEE INSIST THAT THE TEAM START QUICKER AND GET INTO OUR GAME PROPERLY IN THE FIRST HALF?

Now I'm not a football expert as I said and I'm not an expert on psychology either but I understand that elite sportsmen work with psychologists so that got me started thinking again. So I have another question :

Why don't Lee and the Sports psychologist at Ashton Gate get the team to imagine they are already a goal down before they start the game and start like they are looking for at least an equaliser? (The thinking being that the general pattern of our games recently has been that we go in at half time a goal down?)

 

 

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milo1111

milo1111

Posted
Posted

Good questions. Personally I’ve always worried that Lee isn’t a great motivator. He has many qualities but I’m not sure he and his management team get the players fired up to start on the front foot.

just as I’m not sure he can dig a few out when they aren’t performing and get them firing again.

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southvillekiddy

southvillekiddy

Posted
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Posted
33 minutes ago, Red Grovesy said:

?? The last two games we won 1-0 ?? (Prior to yesterday)

True mate. but looking back a little more widely and not so immediately and remembering how many times we have been behind at half time????????

Looking further back mate when we were 1 or 2 goals down Lee praised the team for showing character?

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The Dolman Pragmatist

The Dolman Pragmatist

Posted
Posted

But surely:

1.  There are two sides in any football match.  The way each plays influences how the other performs.

2.  If it was simply a question of a manager telling a team how to play, then every team would win every match, wouldn’t they?

Football is far more complex than people give credit for.  Up to 28 players interacting, some who may be having a better day than others.  Then there is the referee, the assistants, the pitch, the weather, the crowd, and the fact that matches last for at least 90 minutes.  A player having one bad match doesn’t become a bad player.  Nor does a team.  The coaching staff prepare the team, but once the players are on the pitch, they make their own decisions.  I remember Sean O’Driscoll saying that he was trying to get players to understand that the secret of success was to make good decisions on the pitch, but it is the players who have to make those decisions, not the manager.

 

 

 

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BS4 on Tour...

BS4 on Tour...

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, JamesBCFC said:

I'm wondering how @southvillekiddy knows what LJ tells the players.

As he clearly know for an absolute fact that LJ hasn't done those things put in unnecessarily large and bolded font.

James, there are some serious experts on here who have access to many dressing rooms....they know what many City managers tell the players and they know for a fact that Warnock has told every team he’s ever managed to cheat in every single game...

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JamesBCFC

JamesBCFC

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Posted
2 minutes ago, BS4 on Tour... said:

James, there are some serious experts on here who have access to many dressing rooms....they know what many City managers tell the players and they know for a fact that Warnock has told every team he’s ever managed to cheat in every single game...

 :laughcont:

 

Let's not get into another to and fro about Warnock

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Rudolf Hucker

Rudolf Hucker

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, INCRED said:

What is the Bristol City way of playing?

After 45 years I still haven't quite figured it out

So many times over the year's under so many managers, I've seen City set up at home expressly to counter the opposition yet it's seldom proved to be a successful strategy; we've looked confused and uncomfortable playing in an alien formation and invariably made mistakes resulting in giving advantage to the other team.

I've always wanted City to let away teams worry about us and counter our threats rather than City showing too much respect for the opposition. We were successful in beating ManU last season because we played in our own way so why don't we do the same when we play Stoke and Leeds et al? By all means be aware of the other team's strengths and threats but not at the cost of taking advantage of our own.

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Crisis what Crisis ?

Crisis what Crisis ?

Posted
Posted

Wasn't it Dave 'Harry' Bassett that pointed out that his Sheffield Utd side only seemed to perform after christmas so the fans turned up at the first game of the season wearing Santa outfits ??....maybe he was onto something....right, next home game...

BEFORE THE GAME i'll go and have my half time moan at the food kiosk staff for running out of pasties

The Dolman early leavers can start streaming out after 10 mins instead of 80

...come on there must be other things people can think of to inject a degree of urgency ? ?

 

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Bar BS3

Bar BS3

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, Crisis what Crisis ? said:

Wasn't it Dave 'Harry' Bassett that pointed out that his Sheffield Utd side only seemed to perform after christmas so the fans turned up at the first game of the season wearing Santa outfits ??....maybe he was onto something....right, next home game...

BEFORE THE GAME i'll go and have my half time moan at the food kiosk staff for running out of pasties

The Dolman early leavers can start streaming out after 10 mins instead of 80

...come on there must be other things people can think of to inject a degree of urgency ? ?

 

Dave Bassett arranged a staff and players Christmas party for the week before the season started, due to their repeated improvement after Christmas in previous seasons. 

I don’t know that actually worked out for them..?

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Dr Balls

Dr Balls

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Crisis what Crisis ? said:

Wasn't it Dave 'Harry' Bassett that pointed out that his Sheffield Utd side only seemed to perform after christmas so the fans turned up at the first game of the season wearing Santa outfits ??....maybe he was onto something....right, next home game...

BEFORE THE GAME i'll go and have my half time moan at the food kiosk staff for running out of pasties

The Dolman early leavers can start streaming out after 10 mins instead of 80

...come on there must be other things people can think of to inject a degree of urgency ? ?

 

Well after missing the first 10 minutes of the second half, despite my sense of urgency, thanks to the most inept organisation I have ever come across at any place serving food & drink (upper tier in the Lansdown stand) while trying to get a hot drink for my 81 year old disabled dad, who was really feeling the cold on Saturday, I would happily do that before the match and not miss any of it!

Of course if Lee started the right players in the right formation, we wouldn't need half time to change things, or use up 2 substitutions.

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Red-Robbo

Red-Robbo

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Bar BS3 said:

We’ve only been losing at half time in 3? League games all season, so far! 

 

A very good point.

Even on Saturday, we started quite brightly then sort of switched off after 10 minutes and went to sleep for the rest of the first half.

Rare indeed is a game when we see City on top form throughout the 90, but that can be said of most teams in most football matches. Football ebbs and flows, sometimes turning on a single incident. It's why we love the game! 

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Bar BS3

Bar BS3

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Red-Robbo said:

A very good point.

Even on Saturday, we started quite brightly then sort of switched off after 10 minutes and went to sleep for the rest of the first half.

Rare indeed is a game when we see City on top form throughout the 90, but that can be said of most teams in most football matches. Football ebbs and flows, sometimes turning on a single incident. It's why we love the game! 

I do find it bizarre when people start threads about solving a problem, that’s not really been a problem..! 

 

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downendcity

downendcity

Posted
Posted

I had a round of golf last week an hour after having a golf lesson.

For the first few holes I played like an idiot, because I was thinking  so much about the information the pro had given during the lesson. It was only after 5/6 holes that I relaxed, stopped thinking about my swing and  started to hit the ball "normally".

LJ seems to be a very "studious" coach, and can imagine he does a lot of research into and analysis of the opposition. Is it perhaps the case that with all the information and briefings they have received prior to the game,  the players, like me and my golf,  suffer from information overload, and at kick off are thinking so much about what they have been briefed to do that they don't actually play? It's only once they have settled into the game that they start to play their more "normal" game. 

I agree with another poster earlier in the thread, as for a long time I have thought that LJ can overthink things and concentrates too much on countering the opposition's strengths and not enough on maximising and playing to our own. 

 

 

 

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Xiled

Xiled

Posted
Posted

The usual pattern for this season's games:

  • We start brightly, create chances but fail to score
  • The opposition team settles but we continue to press forward
  • Gaps in our defence give the other team chance(s) to score
  • Our heads drop because we haven't got a goal and are becoming less effective compared to the first 15 minutes
  • We fade out as an attacking threat
  • Half-time
  • LJ identifies weaknesses in our formation and overturns it with one or two subs
  • We grow back into the game with sustained pressure
  • Too many of our defensive players are committed forwards and leave glaring gaps at the back
  • We finish strongly, determined to get something from the game whether home or away

Where the opposition get their goal (or goals) has little effect on the above pattern but obviously will affect the result. Our late goal might be enough for a win or we lose courageously like the match at West Brom.

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