What The Hell Are We Coaching Them?

[Olé]

I've not been on any particular bandwagon this past couple of months or so (whether those blaming Johnson or players or anything else) but after reflecting on today with previous matches in mind, it seems to me these players are simply not being properly coached.

Regularly you play or see teams who are described as "well organised" or "well drilled". I have a lot of respect for any club in this bracket as it is the mark of a disciplined team. This season for whatever reason, City have time and again been the total opposite of this.

Surely by now we should have started running drills 'til we were blue in the face on defending an all out attack with every player knowing their assignment, which players they should be marking, what their objective should be so that it was all second nature in games.

Today, as with every other last minute capitulation in this unthinkable run of collapses, the last thing I could say was that our team looked drilled for this scenario, far more so they looked nervous, unsure of their roles and hanging on for dear life without any organisation.

Case in point Ivan Sproule who hesitated in not seeming to know if he should close down the full back with the ball or drop back to cover the winger in the passage of play resulting in the goal, or the crowd of players in the middle who didn't seem to know who should do what.

If (as you'd think after all the previous capitulations) we were identifying all possible attacking scenarios and working the players through all their positioning, assignments and objectives during an opposition siege, the players might actually look comfortable and prepared.

This has simply not been the case. Everyone piles back around the box with no concept of who should be winning the ball and who they should be passing it to. With 10 or 11 players we should be so well drilled that EVERYTHING we deal with has been done before in training.

On the basis of today, and some of the previous embarrassments, that is simply not happening. I don't know if that is Johnson or Millen or any other coach or the players not following orders but what is obvious is we are NOT drilled or organised for what KEEPS happening.

Sorry, but we can go on and on pinning this on manager and players and anyone else but on paper we have good staff in both functions of the club, what DOESN'T appear to be happening is the practical coaching to ensure we are prepared and organised for these periods.

What I will accept is that someone in a management or coaching capacity has to seriously explain why this isn't drilled into the players by now so that they don't appear like a crowd of headless chicken at the death - OR the players need to explain why coaching isn't sinking in.

As loyal as I am to our current manager, I struggle to see how the players could be responding so abjectly to coaching of this type so I have to assume they're simply not coaching these drills sufficiently in the first place to take the recurring problem seriously enough. Why?

We can keep pinning this on whoever we want but the running theme is our players don't seem to be drilled in responsibilities when faced with these attacks and you may as well have the Chelsea back four, you'll still concede if players aren't comfortable with who does what.

End of story...

Couple of small points - make Hartley captain tomorrow, let Carey concentrate solely on recovering his form as a defender, 9 out of 10 times Hartley can see where we're going wrong on the pitch and is the only one letting people know about it. Sign a left back in January to give McAllister long overdue competition. And have a long hard look at whether Clarkson is seriously a player of any worth in this division.