One of the best predictors of success is the ability to improve your performance through learning – after all it’s not how you start that’s important compared to how you end. This is an important lesson for a new manager and new owners at our club.
Looking at our rivals, they appear to be making the same mistakes as they have done the past few seasons. Chelsea, once again, have gone against the manager’s wishes by selling one of their stars to a direct rival and they have failed to bring in replacements to improve an aging team. Apart from Cech, Arsenal have done their usual of targeting attractive midfielders rather than addressing their deficiencies. City have stuck with Pellegrini and have targeted more flavour-of-the-month players including a £50 million hippy-crack smoking forward. United are again throwing vast amounts of money at the problem – last year they succeeded as our challenge fell apart with Sturridge injured but, had he been fit, they would have been in some financial difficulty.
Are we repeating our mistakes? I would argue not – we appear to be trying to address them. As I see it, the main complaints from last season were:
1.
We did not have enough attacking options in the side and consequently our challenge ran out of steam when Coutinho and Sterling did. This season we have signed players who provide more goal threat and can treat whatever Sturridge provides as a bonus.
2.
We were vulnerable to teams pressing our backline as we struggled to pass it out. This season we have got Big Ben as a decent outball and we are playing more directly rather than putting ourselves under pressure. In addition we have hired Sean O’Driscoll to improve our ball retention which – if anyone saw Doncaster play – is one of his specialities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHoj1nCIDQE3.
New players and European commitments meant we did not have as much time to coach the players between matches – this was an important advantage for us two seasons ago. Solution – we have hired coaches who can take more of the day-to-day training from Brendan.
4.
We missed out on some of our first targets in the transfer window. This season we have paid over the odds to get our targets secured early.
5.
The manager did not have anyone to discuss tactics with during the game – this season we have the experienced Gary Mac and SOD who he is in constant conversation with during the game to give him another perspective.
6.
We lacked physicality and energy to press consistently and therefore left big gaps in the middle of the pitch – Benteke, Firmino, Milner, Can no wprovide those things.
7.
We were too naïve in our play – for me this is the biggest one and one of the major things we lost when Suarez left. We need better gamesmanship, to be crafty when needed and to use the referee as other big teams do. So far we have managed to see out two scrappy 1-0 wins and that bodes well for our improved game management. Both times we have grown into the game the longer it has gone on and it’s a skill we desperately need if we are gong to be in the mix.
Obviously as the season goes on more weaknesses will come to light as they do during any campaign. The question is whether we will be able to identify and rectify those things quicker than our rivals do.
With the squad at our disposal it would be interesting to hear people’s views on the key things we need to improve.