Minority Report v Coventry City

I'm always happy just to stay in this league.

But also to be able to call each and every thing as I see it.

 

Not fussed what league we are in. Same game at the end of the day. I rather enjoyed the different sights, sounds and expectations in League One the other year.

Best way to be. Saying as you see. I'm not 39 either. I'm 35.

 

And there he is…

 

To my eye, today we came up against a side which was perfectly set up to counter our shape and style. We won the game still.

Passing it around prettily at the back got us to the brink of relegation. Glorified kick and chase (sorry, Val’s vertical football) got us to the brink of promotion, but we’d got found out a bit by the end of the season so it needed to evolve.

On early viewings, Schopp’s side looks to minimise pissing about with the ball at the back to eradicate too much risk - but doesn’t insist the ball be lumped forward at the first opportunity every time either.

Romal Palmer for example looks a real player in this side - under Ismael he was invariably bypassed and had no massive influence. There is more play in to feet in the middle and final third, or at least attempted.

I think though it is far too early to start drawing any kind of conclusion - especially when the forward line was as weak as it was for an hour today. Oduor isn’t a centre forward, Cauley has looked pretty poor most of this calendar year, and Frieser scored his first ever Oakwell goal today, which sort of sums things up for him.

Morris would have made a bigger impact second half had he not gone off IMO - and we’ve the two new lads to come in, one of which, Oulare, being 6’4 or 6’5 I believe and the other, Iseka, is a bit of an unknown quantity. Even Devante Cole will contribute something.

The manager talks of bringing in a bit of an older head in midfield - hurray, we’ve four good players for in there (well, three plus Herbie Kane who could come good yet), but they’re all kids really, and we lost a lot of experience and leadership with Solly. There’s also talk of another left back / lwb, which will offer balance.

So there’s plenty more to come, and we’ve as many points after two games as we had after seven last season.

I sincerely hope we don’t go to playing out from the back and sideways passing.

The back three and then midfield would have to start too deep, the way we play with a higher line and Collins further out works. It won’t mean we’ll win every week, but it will mean everyone knows their role and we won’t be attracting the opposition onto us while sitting so deep. We can add better football in front of it - for example a nice accurate pinged ball from Benson or somebody will be a step up from a lump up to a space in a channel a la last season. There needs to be a balance.

I’m hopeful of a decent season.

 

Agreed, seems a bit early to be judging the team after 3 games like some are, new coach new ideas; going to take time to get it right but the pattern is there and as I said we’re not faffing around at the back but neither are we giving it the big Val boyt.

 

That's probably because it was Struber's team that played Coventry at Home last season

 

The 0-0 draw was under Struber though, so not really relevant. We lost 2-0 at the back end of last season and were quite poor, but as we were already pretty much guaranteed top six by then, there's not much to read into it.

 

All those who have told me that last season, we played Coventry under Struber are right. Clearly, the aging memory does not work as well as it did, but I knew that anyway.

This morning, I have gone back and re-read Minority Report of the game last season. It tells me that Struber started with a 3-4-1-2 system with Callum Styles playing in centre mid-field along side Alex Mowatt. Minority Report was less than happy with the way that Styles played, and looked at where else on the pitch he might be more effective. Struber changed the formation to 4-3-3 at half-time, bringing off Helik and replacing him with Frieser. He changed again with 11 minutes remaining, this time to 4-4-2.

I conclude that the Coventry system has been a problem for all our last 3 coaches (Ismael lost the game at Coventry). In Struber's game, we had more bookings than they did (3v2), and less possession (48% v 52%) although Coventry did not manage a single shot on target whilst we had just 2, so we can see where Coventry struggle. They are a typical Mark Robins team, good at the negative side of the game, but less good at the rest.