I constantly read Barnsley fans saying things like ‘Brown on the wing, Woodrow up front’, ‘play 4-4-2’, ‘why’s Williams at centre back?’, am I the only one that thinks the systems Struber’s introduced & the way he’s made players comfortable in different positions is the main reason we’ve nearly stayed up? I remember us playing with Brown on the wing & Woodrow & Chaplin up front. We were ****. We had no presence up top, no one could win a header & our two strikers both wanted to be number 10’s. We tried to play with width back then but we were constantly exposed. Our full backs weren’t good enough for us to play with wingers. I believe Woodrow going to the number 10 role & Brown & Chaplin going up top gave us a fighting chance. If we didn’t pull them results out the bag in December then we’d have been dead & buried weeks ago. I think there needs to be a bit of perspective on how inexperienced our team is & a lot of credit should go to the coaching staff on how quickly the young players have improved. Simoes didn’t get a look in last season when we were in league one yet he’s looked one of our best players post lockdown & I’m pretty sure we’d all be happy for him to start games next season. Styles wasn’t a regular starter for Bury on loan last season & look how much he’s come on. Oduor never played a professional game before this season, Brown barely played any professional football before January 19, Anderson never played in England before, the two Williams looked average at best in league one & have come on loads. Walton as well. I don’t understand what many of you are seeing, I can’t understand why you think playing simple systems that everyone we come up against know inside out will work when they have better & more experienced players than us. Overloading the midfield & pressing well as a team along with been tactically flexible has almost kept us up. Maybe it’s just me but I believe if we’d played 4-4-2 with Woodrow & Chaplin up top or played a lone striker we’d have been gone weeks ago.
I loved watching us play 4-4-2, in League One, against teams we could physically and tactically dominate. Play 4-4-2, and try to play a bit of football in this league, and our midfield would be walked through. Football has changed.
It’s fine against Leeds who want to play football, against the Orc first 11 of the likes of Stoke and Preston and we get bent over.
We always have struggled in those circumstances, to be fair. I can't remember ever thinking that we'd beat the opposition based on our physical presence. You know we're going to shine against a team that tries to play football, and struggle against Cardiff. etc. We're set up to be a pass and move type side, and I'm glad we are. I agree with the O/P that the improvement has been noticeable throughout the season and credit goes to the players and coaching staff. The form table shows how much we've improved but we've just run out of games. Decisions made at the start of the season at a board level and tactically have cost us. We've had to experiment too much with a hastily assembled team and formation instead of having a settled side from day 1. Too many players have had to learn too much too quickly. We seem to have evolved to be a 16th in the division-type team, but we are probably going to go down bottom based on those earlier mistakes.
I think FWF has summed it up but if you’ve got a team of kids I don’t think there’s any system that will help you against that type of football. I think they’ll only get better at it by playing them types of sides & getting used to it
