Ryan Bertrand

He's not even a proper dinosaur like Fat Sam - he's been appointed England Manager but his CV is shocking - a short unsuccessful spell at Boro and a bit of time with the England u21s - where the better players are never available. The FA are a disgrace - there are 100s of people in the UK better qualified than Southgate whos only attributes seem to be he's cheap and a 'yes' man.

Sam isn't actually a dinosaur - a common misconception. He's a utilitarian like Jose Mourinho. Allardyce has been on the frontline for almost every major scientific or technological development in Premier League football, including new introducing dietitians and food science into the pro game, he was the first in England to use opticians and attempt to improve situational awareness through computer modelling, he introduced moneyball/sabermetrics approaches ten years before everybody else and even had Bill James come in to help form his first performance analysis/statistics team.

Allardyce plays the style of football that best suits the goals of each club he is at. Most of the time that's very direct in an attempt to compensate for lack of budget but not ALL the time. He's played some good football when he's had the chance to start building things past that point, but in the modern game he's the man who goes in and stabilises then gets turfed out when the real project begins.

Him as England manager was a great appointment. It was his dream job which he'd been talking about for 30 years - England finally had a manager who had been preparing for the role. In addition his belief in scientific methods and how they can help shape football would help move the FA into the 21st century. He's produced numerous other coaches who have worked under him to have great careers in the game which would be important when looking at coaching development frameworks. In addition to this, he'd finally have a stock of good players where he could replicate a penetration based style of football that would give England a new identity - his style would be more Alex Ferguson than Pep Guardiola but it would at least lay some sort of foundation to be building upon. Ferguson's teams, and Allardyce's when he got going, where possession based but also much more penetrative than a Guardiola team. They want to play through the lines and cause defensive confusion rather than playing in front of the lines and hoping to create space. He's always used a decent pressing system, which is one of the reasons his teams are so defensively secure with little talent - they're organised.

The England manager role isn't just a first team coach as many presume. He's part of a wider ranging team that looks at the state of the English game and attempts to improve it. Having Allardyce work in St Georges Park would have created a atmosphere of innovation and one of the most experienced football men in the country at the head of it. He really was the perfect choice in so many regards. But the media being the media set him up and he was out.

Then we got Gareth Southgate who played 4 CBs in the same team, no ball playing midfielders and was shocked that we couldn't keep possession. He wanted to build a team that was a brick wall with pace on the flanks in order to cross but he had hundreds of mistakes in his thinking. The biggest and most alarming one is that he thought that any defenders who can pass can therefore play in midfield which is a MASSIVE misconception about what the job of a midfielder in the modern game actually is and how little it has to do with just keeping the ball. He didn't play Stones there thank God but it's still stupid logic. There's a reason Dier plays CB for Spurs and Wanyama now plays in midfield and it's to do with a bunch of reasons regarding spatial reasoning, forming shapes and escaping pressing traps rather than because he can pass a ball well.

Southgate isn't even a dinosaur because dinosaurs were once alive and good at things. He's a failed dinosaur. A man who wanted to be a 300 million year old creature and tries to copy them but still fails at this. The sooner he's gone the better for all concerned. He's going to waste yet another generation because he has no plan, he's tactically inept and he doesn't seem to understand the foundations of modern football. Even more than this, before he became England manager and was just a coach in the national organisation who used to do training of other coaches, grassroot amateurs would walk away from his lessons shaking their head and trying to work out why this man was heavily favoured by the FA. He was teaching kids kick and rush football and trying to impart on coaches the importance of winning and individuality which again is 19th century thinking about player development. It was all 1v1, beat your man, win your battles, etc. There was almost no age appropriate training on spatial frameworks, systemic movements or pressing techniques. He wasn't even teaching kids "scanning" (i.e. literally turning their head around to survey the pitch constantly).

If Southgate has his best possible season in football ever as England manager he will one day perhaps reach the heady heights of being a fraud. Now he's not even a fraud. He's a man who has to achieve things to become a fraud.
 
Sam isn't actually a dinosaur - a common misconception. He's a utilitarian like Jose Mourinho. Allardyce has been on the frontline for almost every major scientific or technological development in Premier League football, including new introducing dietitians and food science into the pro game, he was the first in England to use opticians and attempt to improve situational awareness through computer modelling, he introduced moneyball/sabermetrics approaches ten years before everybody else and even had Bill James come in to help form his first performance analysis/statistics team.

Allardyce plays the style of football that best suits the goals of each club he is at. Most of the time that's very direct in an attempt to compensate for lack of budget but not ALL the time. He's played some good football when he's had the chance to start building things past that point, but in the modern game he's the man who goes in and stabilises then gets turfed out when the real project begins.

Him as England manager was a great appointment. It was his dream job which he'd been talking about for 30 years - England finally had a manager who had been preparing for the role. In addition his belief in scientific methods and how they can help shape football would help move the FA into the 21st century. He's produced numerous other coaches who have worked under him to have great careers in the game which would be important when looking at coaching development frameworks. In addition to this, he'd finally have a stock of good players where he could replicate a penetration based style of football that would give England a new identity - his style would be more Alex Ferguson than Pep Guardiola but it would at least lay some sort of foundation to be building upon. Ferguson's teams, and Allardyce's when he got going, where possession based but also much more penetrative than a Guardiola team. They want to play through the lines and cause defensive confusion rather than playing in front of the lines and hoping to create space. He's always used a decent pressing system, which is one of the reasons his teams are so defensively secure with little talent - they're organised.

The England manager role isn't just a first team coach as many presume. He's part of a wider ranging team that looks at the state of the English game and attempts to improve it. Having Allardyce work in St Georges Park would have created a atmosphere of innovation and one of the most experienced football men in the country at the head of it. He really was the perfect choice in so many regards. But the media being the media set him up and he was out.

Then we got Gareth Southgate who played 4 CBs in the same team, no ball playing midfielders and was shocked that we couldn't keep possession. He wanted to build a team that was a brick wall with pace on the flanks in order to cross but he had hundreds of mistakes in his thinking. The biggest and most alarming one is that he thought that any defenders who can pass can therefore play in midfield which is a MASSIVE misconception about what the job of a midfielder in the modern game actually is and how little it has to do with just keeping the ball. He didn't play Stones there thank God but it's still stupid logic. There's a reason Dier plays CB for Spurs and Wanyama now plays in midfield and it's to do with a bunch of reasons regarding spatial reasoning, forming shapes and escaping pressing traps rather than because he can pass a ball well.

Southgate isn't even a dinosaur because dinosaurs were once alive and good at things. He's a failed dinosaur. A man who wanted to be a 300 million year old creature and tries to copy them but still fails at this. The sooner he's gone the better for all concerned. He's going to waste yet another generation because he has no plan, he's tactically inept and he doesn't seem to understand the foundations of modern football. Even more than this, before he became England manager and was just a coach in the national organisation who used to do training of other coaches, grassroot amateurs would walk away from his lessons shaking their head and trying to work out why this man was heavily favoured by the FA. He was teaching kids kick and rush football and trying to impart on coaches the importance of winning and individuality which again is 19th century thinking about player development. It was all 1v1, beat your man, win your battles, etc. There was almost no age appropriate training on spatial frameworks, systemic movements or pressing techniques. He wasn't even teaching kids "scanning" (i.e. literally turning their head around to survey the pitch constantly).

If Southgate has his best possible season in football ever as England manager he will one day perhaps reach the heady heights of being a fraud. Now he's not even a fraud. He's a man who has to achieve things to become a fraud.

If Fat Sam was manager, Rooney would still be playing.
 
he FA are a disgrace - there are 100s of people in the UK better qualified than Southgate .
The problem with English football is that I don't think there are one or two maybe, certainly not hundreds.
 
The problem with English football is that I don't think there are one or two maybe, certainly not hundreds.

The FA is a joke, they've made so many terrible appointments. I lost all faith when they chose Hodgson over Redknapp. Now with Southgate, they've at least stopped pretending that they want a manager with experience and success. He's just a controversy-free, budget, yes-man. We shouldn't be afraid to appoint someone who's not British; Pellegrini, for example would be a good appointment.
 
If Fat Sam was manager, Rooney would still be playing.

Absolutely this. Or Andy Carroll.

People make the naive mistake of thinking technology and statistics in football = innovative and forward thinking. It's absolute bollocks.

Alladyce has a bit of a reputation among some football hipsters as being cutting edge because he uses Pro Zone and an ear piece. The end result is him launching the ball long from the back and relying on set pieces. There's nothing innovative about it. It's the same "POMO" system that the FA has been spouting for 40 odd years, with ever declining success.

It's the exact same system that football luminaries like Howard Wilkinson have been using for decades. The only difference with Alladyce is that he's got a load of economics graduates mining the data for him and putting it on a database.

Far from being innovative, it's archaic and has been proven over decades to be a completely flawed system and has been responsible for the appalling decline in standards of our youth players in comparison to other developed football nations who develop technique and appreciation of the ball and space as opposed to physicality and aptitude at following orders.

Alladyce's style of football is the definition of being a dinosaur. He's just a dinosaur with an ipad so some are swept along in thinking that makes him innovative. There's a reason he's spent the last 20 years fighting relegation.

The POMO system he and Pulis are such ardent disciples of will help you get out of trouble with poor players low on technique and confidence. But it will only get you so far. The rest of Europe were laughing their cock off when England appoonted Alladyce, saying have we learned nothing from the last 40 years.

I like Fat Sam as a character, seems like a great bloke to go on the piss with, he probably sets fire to his farts on stag do's, but I'm absolutely delighted he's nowhere near the development of the next generation of England players.
 
Hopefully things will start to progress with this lad and all our full back targets now the Internationals are done.

Again.....Keep this on topic please.
It's the Bertrand thread, and I posted Bertrand? How is that not on topic? My comment was about those not posting on topic
 
Seems to be a good guy, helping out with the Grenfell Tower relief effort.
 
The more good guys we have the better.

He improves the first team and adds to the squad depth.

Would be a good signing. His play with Sterling earlier in the week was a joy to watch.
 

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