http://www.football-news-views.co.uk/football-news-583-could-liverpool-have-got-the-right-man-at-the-right-time.phpSean O'Driscoll's appointment as Liverpool manager has not met with universal approval from the fans, with his lack of experience in Europe and the top flight being used as a stick to beat him with. Personally I am not of the opinion that an assistant manager needs to have that experience, what he needs is to be good at coaching, most of all he needs to be a buffer between players and managers.
The assistant needs to be a man they can go to with their issues, someone they can trust and that they can talk to that will understand what they are talking about. Being a well respected manager in the past will help in that regard, as he can see issues from both sides, and know when the player just needs to be soothed and when it is a genuine issue.
Added to that, O'Driscoll is a man who genuinely gets on well with players, he is not someone who talks down to them, he does not boss them around using fear to get them to do what he wants. That is not the O'Driscoll way at all.
What you get with O'Driscoll is a man who will not try to preach or teach, he will try to enlighten them, so that they see it for themselves, rather than just hearing him tell them. He will set up the training sessions to allow them to learn to communicate better with each other, to see for themselves what to do, rather than being told what to do.
One of the most common tales you will hear from his former players is how he likes to work on communication between players, to bring them closer as a unit, by tweaking rules on small sided games but only telling one player from each team what the rules are. Those players then only have a few seconds to tell the rest of the team what the new rules are.
Players are constantly being pushed to be able to learn how to communicate important information quickly, so that when things need to be changed on the pitch, the players are able to make the changes quickly. The clear problem of complete lack of communication from Martin Skrtel to his team mates would be worked on, rather than just left to fester, like has happened in previous years.
At the end of last season there were a number of games when Liverpool's players were clearly bewildered by the tactical changes Brendan Rodgers was trying to make. Every time the ball went out of play there would be a number of players immediately looking to the sidelines for instructions and there faces would just cloud with confusion.
One thing O'Driscoll is known for is his ability to make it clear what he wants from his team, with his instructions not needing to be too in depth, as he teaches the players to show initiative and make decisions on the pitch. Not for him is the possession for possession's sake or just lumping it long every time a defender gets it, he likes players to do what is needed, sometimes that might mean putting it in row Z when you are a defender, rather than looking to play out from the back.
As he said himself: "The whole possession/passing thing is a bit of a misnomer. I've never coached passing, we aim to give players options on the ball, then coach decision-making. You can't be predictable. Sometimes passing it out from the back might be the right thing to do but why would you persist with doing that if your centre-halves or sitting midfield player then kept getting caught in possession in dangerous areas?"
"If players are comfortable in possession and don't lose the ball, like Xavi and Busquets, it's an easy option to give it to them. But sometimes your keeper or centre-half spotting a striker has peeled off his man into a dangerous position in the channel, and playing the ball up to him, is completely the right thing. If you keep getting joy that way and you play 15-20 'long' balls into that space, does that make you a long ball team or an intelligent one?"
It reminds me of the way Liverpool were torn apart last season by Louis van Gaal's usage of Fellaini pulling wide to put pressure on Emre Can and it completely unhinged Liverpool's defence. Liverpool ended up overloading down their right side to try and help Can out, only to leave acres of space down the left for the goals to come.
What impresses me about O'Driscoll is his insistence on teaching players to show initiative, rather than just be robots like so many British coaches seem to want their players to be. As a student of military history, I have often read how the German soldiers in WW2 were able to hold their own against much larger forces because they would use their initiative, while their opponents were having to wait for the orders to come through before they knew where and when to attack.
That initiative can be the difference, having players taught to look for weaknesses and how to exploit them for themselves gives them a major advantage. They can attack that weak spot until the opposing manager has time to organise tactical tweaks, they do not need to wait for their own manager to spot them first and pass over instructions.
It was what brought Arsene Wenger such success in his early days in English football, he was not sending them out to play rigid formations until he gave them instructions on what to change. He was sending out a team with basic instructions that would adapt to the changing demands as the game went on.
"It sounds so simple but from the youngest ages players in this country have never been challenged to think and make decisions like that themselves, they've always waited for a coach to tell them what to do.
"What we try to say is 'Here are your options, what do you think is the right thing to do and why?' If they pick the right option and it doesn't come off we will still applaud the decision making, but if they continually pick the wrong option then you've got a problem. I want to develop players and a team who understand what is being asked of them, and therefore can make their own decisions on the field of play, players who are prepared to take responsibility for the decisions they make.
"As I said before, we will never have a go at a player for trying something and it not coming off if it was the right thing to do at that time. If it was stupid, irresponsible and careless they won't be afforded the same grace!" These are not the quotes of a man spouting meaningless rhetoric in an attempt to sound clever, this is a man with a clear idea of what he wants, from his players as individuals and as a team.
As an assistant manager, I doubt Liverpool could have made a better choice from within the English game, one of the best coaches in recent years, and his ideas are a good fit with the ones Pepjin Linders works with. They do not overlap, Linders is more of a skill coach, who will make the players more skilful, more adept at control, more able to work the ball around the pitch.
What O'Driscoll will do is make the players better at using their skills, knowing which pass to make when or if it is time to run at the defence. He will improve those aspects of the game that can be the difference between a good player and a great player. O'Driscoll will produce a team from the skilled individuals he has available to him.
Written by Tris Burke
