John Carver

[TK-421]

So, the Chronic's resident window licker is now proclaiming that Carver did not offer to quit yesterday, despite the National Press claiming so.

 

Shame, I was beginning to think that maybe Carver had a shred of dignity and/or self respect left.

[John P]

Simple things like players making themselves available is practically non-existent in our games. We play a kind of pinball/potluck football most of the time with little hoofs or chips into general areas.

 

And in the rare occasions they make themselves available they are static or moving towards our goal when receiving the ball. Never in a positive movement towards the opposition.

 

Yup there are certain situations that happen during a game over and over again and a good coach normally models or formats positional awareness to deal with these.

From the practice ground players should know where their team mates will be in different areas or phases of the game and also have alternatives this smooths the possession play and rids the need for panic or bad passes. This kind of thinking is light years away for us.

 

Look how solid Chelsea are, how drilled and the huge amount of discipline...Man Utd have some of that but are often negative on the ball and don't transition dangerously as say Arsenal do. Spurs are normally all over the place but somehow magic goalscoring chances just by players over and over again making the same runs. The key is continuity - the teams struggling at the bottom don't have it.

 

Exactly. In my eyes we're and have been completely dependant on the individual skill of the players to transform a negative position into a positive when receiving the ball. It's been like this for ages but now the skill level of the players on the pitch makes the lack of system jump out even more. They are unable to make that flashy turn or dribble to advance the play. Under Pardew when we were doing well and finishing 5th there was no system either. We just had skillful players high on confidence. Now that we have neither the team has nothing to fall back to. No basic way to play the game. It's an utter mess.

 

I would argue that Ayoze is positive when receiving the ball, his first touch when he has his back to goal is quite often a turn that gets him moving towards the opposition goal. However, he then has absolutely no-one supporting him so has to either pass sideways or take someone on and loses it. Obviously, any coach worth his salt would encourage him to keep doing this and work out a way of getting players in positions to support him, but I imagine Carver frowns on these positive first-touch turns and would prefer him to just play the ball back into midfield.

[TRon]

Simple things like players making themselves available is practically non-existent in our games. We play a kind of pinball/potluck football most of the time with little hoofs or chips into general areas.

 

And in the rare occasions they make themselves available they are static or moving towards our goal when receiving the ball. Never in a positive movement towards the opposition.

 

Yup there are certain situations that happen during a game over and over again and a good coach normally models or formats positional awareness to deal with these.

From the practice ground players should know where their team mates will be in different areas or phases of the game and also have alternatives this smooths the possession play and rids the need for panic or bad passes. This kind of thinking is light years away for us.

 

Look how solid Chelsea are, how drilled and the huge amount of discipline...Man Utd have some of that but are often negative on the ball and don't transition dangerously as say Arsenal do. Spurs are normally all over the place but somehow magic goalscoring chances just by players over and over again making the same runs. The key is continuity - the teams struggling at the bottom don't have it.

 

It is about systems and they have a major impact along with player quality...Every time Pulis imposes his system on a side they start winning and mostly that takes a couple of months.

 

While I'm not a fan of Pulis I do recognise he at least has a defined method of coaching and sets his teams up to reflect it. You could say that to a lesser extent about Allardyce too. The brand of football might be limited and not what I want for Newcastle, at least it's A METHOD and they buy players which help them implement it. The problem with Carver and his mentor Pardew is that they really don't have any idea how to play from one game  to the next. It's just pick 11 players and hope for the best.

[Kasper]

Simple things like players making themselves available is practically non-existent in our games. We play a kind of pinball/potluck football most of the time with little hoofs or chips into general areas.

 

And in the rare occasions they make themselves available they are static or moving towards our goal when receiving the ball. Never in a positive movement towards the opposition.

 

Yup there are certain situations that happen during a game over and over again and a good coach normally models or formats positional awareness to deal with these.

From the practice ground players should know where their team mates will be in different areas or phases of the game and also have alternatives this smooths the possession play and rids the need for panic or bad passes. This kind of thinking is light years away for us.

 

Look how solid Chelsea are, how drilled and the huge amount of discipline...Man Utd have some of that but are often negative on the ball and don't transition dangerously as say Arsenal do. Spurs are normally all over the place but somehow magic goalscoring chances just by players over and over again making the same runs. The key is continuity - the teams struggling at the bottom don't have it.

 

Exactly. In my eyes we're and have been completely dependant on the individual skill of the players to transform a negative position into a positive when receiving the ball. It's been like this for ages but now the skill level of the players on the pitch makes the lack of system jump out even more. They are unable to make that flashy turn or dribble to advance the play. Under Pardew when we were doing well and finishing 5th there was no system either. We just had skillful players high on confidence. Now that we have neither the team has nothing to fall back to. No basic way to play the game. It's an utter mess.

 

I would argue that Ayoze is positive when receiving the ball, his first touch when he has his back to goal is quite often a turn that gets him moving towards the opposition goal. However, he then has absolutely no-one supporting him so has to either pass sideways or take someone on and loses it. Obviously, any coach worth his salt would encourage him to keep doing this and work out a way of getting players in positions to support him, but I imagine Carver frowns on these positive first-touch turns and would prefer him to just play the ball back into midfield.

 

Absolutely true. Sissoko sometimes too but that's about it.

[Parky]

 

Yeah you can see Sissoko thinking fuck it I'm going to have to take the whole team on...

[mofo]

Carvers 20/1 to be manager next season?!!? Got to be worth a £5 ?

[Ndegwa]

People simply don't understand management at all.  It's no miracle that a club is doing terribly and then with a change of manager the same players look ten times better.  The same people blaming our players and putting it all on them will be lining up to praise Tim Sherwood at Villa.  Look how bad they were and the change of the man at the top has made them twice the side they were.  The same goes for people now praising Pardew for the job he did here and saying we shouldn't have gotten rid of him.  How can they say stuff like that and then put it all on the players?  It's total nonsense, from people so thick I wouldn't trust them to tie their own shoes.

 

We got rid of Souness and the feel good factor was so strong we won the next game 3-0.  That's the problem with Carver, he's now a dark cloud hanging over the club and it has been that way for a long time now.  If he stays we go down, if he goes and we appointed no one, we'd still have a better chance of staying up.  Even no tactical plan is better than 'boot it to Willo'.

 

Carver will be lucky to ever have a job after this one and I'm sick of this 'local lad' and 'good football man' stuff that gets trotted out.  It's the rubbish that keeps all these crap failures circling the drain of management for decades longer than they should.  It gets quoted as experience, when in reality you'd be better off trusting unproven ability than proven failure, just because of 'experience.'

 

There's just too many fools involved in Football and none of them seem to properly understand psychology, human nature, or strategy and game theory of any kind.  Sadly there seems to be more in Britain than anywhere else, where all these myths about management and 'good football men' are perpetuated on our TV's every week.  It's holding Newcastle's football back massively and it's the same thing that keeps holding England's football back too.

 

Great post. It continues to amaze me how simple the football discussion in England is. It's always so general and just scratching the surface. Seems like most people think that the managers job is to pick a formation, pick the team, "motivate" them and make subsitutions. You rarely see managers talking about anything concrete. It's always "we lacked a bit of urgency" or "we couldnt deal with this or that" or other nonsence.

 

Where's the discussion about actual models of play? And I'm not talking about "playing posession football", "parking the buss" or "lumping it forward". About models that the team has drilled over and over again in practice and that guide everything they do on the pitch. Where they move or look for a pass in a certain situation. Are the players receiving the ball in a body position that is positive and open towards the play? Or are they constantly receiving it in a negative position? (in Newcastle it's the latter)

 

Just for an example my own team (that I support I mean, not play for hah) plays in the 3rd highest division in Finland and this is basicly what the manager said in the match report after winning 1-0 today (free translation).

 

"Worst game we've played since I came here. We didnt work collectively and it was very hard to find any of the models in the game that we've been practicing and succesfully implemented in previous games. Build up was too static and slow. In the build up phase our positions we're constantly negative and impractical. The movements the forwards made were poor. Anticipation, timing and reactions to play in defence were also poor."

 

Jesus. How refreshing it would be to some day hear a Newcastle manager talk about football like this instead of the same old phrases. Someone who actually had an idea of how he wants his team to play football and the knowledge to coach them in a way that they could implement his ideas on the pitch.

 

Maybe the managers are just serving up what the public wants but I would seriously be intrigued to visit the training in Newcastle to see what actually happens there and what kind of things are discussed.

 

 

edit: and to be clear I'm not saying this is typical Finnish football discussion. No way. But considering the level of English football you'd think the talk around it would be a little bit more in depth.

 

Two great posts.

 

Brilliant stuff.

 

My own experience confounds these points for me. I was at Fulham and Brentford's academies as a youngster. I wasn't the greatest footballer (well obviously)but had decent technical ability and could get up and down the pitch a bit. I played in the middle of the park and all my coaches used to do is to tell me to get close to the front 2 when the ball was in the air, and when the CBs got it to again get close to the strikers when they would inevitably launch it. None of us in the centre would ever do what the modern CM would do, passing and recycling- all we did was try and get on the end of the knockdowns and if we had possession to hit an aimless ball into the channels for the quick wingers to chase...in addition to 'putting a tackle in' and winning the aerial battle from goal kicks. It wasn't until I was older that I realised how retarded this was. I played a youth tournament in Gothenburg back in 2002 and I remember being quite confused as to why teams had significantly more possession than us...and these guys were from minor academies like Halmstads, Strindheim...hell even some invitational XI from Uganda ran rings round us.

 

The thing is I remember other academies and teams from England doing exactly the same; whoever ran faster and jumped higher tended to win. I played with some very talented players but they wouldn't be able to use their natural technique so much, more their natural athleticism. This was apparently elite level youth development

[morpeth mag]

Get a double on relegation and Carver next manager and you could plan your retirement on the financial killing.

[Guest firetotheworks]

"I want you to go out there and kick the ball!!"

[Thomson Mouse]

Simple things like players making themselves available is practically non-existent in our games. We play a kind of pinball/potluck football most of the time with little hoofs or chips into general areas.

 

And in the rare occasions they make themselves available they are static or moving towards our goal when receiving the ball. Never in a positive movement towards the opposition.

 

Yup there are certain situations that happen during a game over and over again and a good coach normally models or formats positional awareness to deal with these.

From the practice ground players should know where their team mates will be in different areas or phases of the game and also have alternatives this smooths the possession play and rids the need for panic or bad passes. This kind of thinking is light years away for us.

 

Look how solid Chelsea are, how drilled and the huge amount of discipline...Man Utd have some of that but are often negative on the ball and don't transition dangerously as say Arsenal do. Spurs are normally all over the place but somehow magic goalscoring chances just by players over and over again making the same runs. The key is continuity - the teams struggling at the bottom don't have it.

 

Exactly. In my eyes we're and have been completely dependant on the individual skill of the players to transform a negative position into a positive when receiving the ball. It's been like this for ages but now the skill level of the players on the pitch makes the lack of system jump out even more. They are unable to make that flashy turn or dribble to advance the play. Under Pardew when we were doing well and finishing 5th there was no system either. We just had skillful players high on confidence. Now that we have neither the team has nothing to fall back to. No basic way to play the game. It's an utter mess.

 

I would argue that Ayoze is positive when receiving the ball, his first touch when he has his back to goal is quite often a turn that gets him moving towards the opposition goal. However, he then has absolutely no-one supporting him so has to either pass sideways or take someone on and loses it. Obviously, any coach worth his salt would encourage him to keep doing this and work out a way of getting players in positions to support him, but I imagine Carver frowns on these positive first-touch turns and would prefer him to just play the ball back into midfield.

 

It's quite similar to what SBR said to Shearer when he first came in. He was receiving the ball with his back to the oppositions goal nearly all of the time. He changed the way Shearer played by telling him to be 'on the shoulder' of the defender, then changed the way the ball was played to him. Look what happened straight away.

[Nobody]

So, the Chronic's resident window licker is now proclaiming that Carver did not offer to quit yesterday, despite the National Press claiming so.

 

Shame, I was beginning to think that maybe Carver had a shred of dignity and/or self respect left.

Tbh, I could see him having said (well, shouted more likely) something along the lines of "Well, what the fuck do you want me to do!? I could just resign and you could get someone else in!?" and not really meaning it.

[Guest Gino14]

People simply don't understand management at all.  It's no miracle that a club is doing terribly and then with a change of manager the same players look ten times better.  The same people blaming our players and putting it all on them will be lining up to praise Tim Sherwood at Villa.  Look how bad they were and the change of the man at the top has made them twice the side they were.  The same goes for people now praising Pardew for the job he did here and saying we shouldn't have gotten rid of him.  How can they say stuff like that and then put it all on the players?  It's total nonsense, from people so thick I wouldn't trust them to tie their own shoes.

 

We got rid of Souness and the feel good factor was so strong we won the next game 3-0.  That's the problem with Carver, he's now a dark cloud hanging over the club and it has been that way for a long time now.  If he stays we go down, if he goes and we appointed no one, we'd still have a better chance of staying up.  Even no tactical plan is better than 'boot it to Willo'.

 

Carver will be lucky to ever have a job after this one and I'm sick of this 'local lad' and 'good football man' stuff that gets trotted out.  It's the rubbish that keeps all these crap failures circling the drain of management for decades longer than they should.  It gets quoted as experience, when in reality you'd be better off trusting unproven ability than proven failure, just because of 'experience.'

 

There's just too many fools involved in Football and none of them seem to properly understand psychology, human nature, or strategy and game theory of any kind.  Sadly there seems to be more in Britain than anywhere else, where all these myths about management and 'good football men' are perpetuated on our TV's every week.  It's holding Newcastle's football back massively and it's the same thing that keeps holding England's football back too.

 

Great post. It continues to amaze me how simple the football discussion in England is. It's always so general and just scratching the surface. Seems like most people think that the managers job is to pick a formation, pick the team, "motivate" them and make subsitutions. You rarely see managers talking about anything concrete. It's always "we lacked a bit of urgency" or "we couldnt deal with this or that" or other nonsence.

 

Where's the discussion about actual models of play? And I'm not talking about "playing posession football", "parking the buss" or "lumping it forward". About models that the team has drilled over and over again in practice and that guide everything they do on the pitch. Where they move or look for a pass in a certain situation. Are the players receiving the ball in a body position that is positive and open towards the play? Or are they constantly receiving it in a negative position? (in Newcastle it's the latter)

 

Just for an example my own team (that I support I mean, not play for hah) plays in the 3rd highest division in Finland and this is basicly what the manager said in the match report after winning 1-0 today (free translation).

 

"Worst game we've played since I came here. We didnt work collectively and it was very hard to find any of the models in the game that we've been practicing and succesfully implemented in previous games. Build up was too static and slow. In the build up phase our positions we're constantly negative and impractical. The movements the forwards made were poor. Anticipation, timing and reactions to play in defence were also poor."

 

Jesus. How refreshing it would be to some day hear a Newcastle manager talk about football like this instead of the same old phrases. Someone who actually had an idea of how he wants his team to play football and the knowledge to coach them in a way that they could implement his ideas on the pitch.

 

Maybe the managers are just serving up what the public wants but I would seriously be intrigued to visit the training in Newcastle to see what actually happens there and what kind of things are discussed.

 

 

edit: and to be clear I'm not saying this is typical Finnish football discussion. No way. But considering the level of English football you'd think the talk around it would be a little bit more in depth.

 

Two great posts.

 

Brilliant stuff.

 

My own experience confounds these points for me. I was at Fulham and Brentford's academies as a youngster. I wasn't the greatest footballer (well obviously)but had decent technical ability and could get up and down the pitch a bit. I played in the middle of the park and all my coaches used to do is to tell me to get close to the front 2 when the ball was in the air, and when the CBs got it to again get close to the strikers when they would inevitably launch it. None of us in the centre would ever do what the modern CM would do, passing and recycling- all we did was try and get on the end of the knockdowns and if we had possession to hit an aimless ball into the channels for the quick wingers to chase...in addition to 'putting a tackle in' and winning the aerial battle from goal kicks. It wasn't until I was older that I realised how retarded this was. I played a youth tournament in Gothenburg back in 2002 and I remember being quite confused as to why teams had significantly more possession than us...and these guys were from minor academies like Halmstads, Strindheim...hell even some invitational XI from Uganda ran rings round us.

 

The thing is I remember other academies and teams from England doing exactly the same; whoever ran faster and jumped higher tended to win. I played with some very talented players but they wouldn't be able to use their natural technique so much, more their natural athleticism. This was apparently elite level youth development

 

This is scary tbh and matches my own experience of growing up with Football at even the most basic levels.  I was a striker that had (relative to the level I was at) good feet and knew how to finish.  One summer I got a lot taller and suddenly it's like the fact that I couldn't head the ball very well was totally forgotten.  All people could see was that I was 6'5 and suddenly an option to lump the ball to.  It didn't matter that I was skinny and likely to be smashed by some juggernaut defender.  The thought process was simply 'kick it long to the tall man' and so my game became worse as soon as that happened.  I wasn't good by any means, but that just totally ruined my experience of playing football.  I wanted the ball into feet and basically never got it again.  It didn't matter if I never stopped making runs, an intelligent pass through was rarely coming anymore.  If I voiced this to anyone supposedly managing the team, I'd be told to shut up and work harder.  Intelligence or actual thought just wasn't really part of the process.  As you said it was about long balls forward, gain yards up the pitch, win knockdowns and hope the wingers came up with some magic dribbling or a cross.  That's literally as far as the tactics went.  The idea ingrained in everyone growing up here, is that it's hard work and effort.  11 vs 11 just as Carver said and if you win the effort you'll win the game.  It's so detached from the reality of modern Football it's scary.  Because it starts from a young age with everyone here, it even makes it all the way to Premier League level.  You can't believe there's millions of pounds on the line and we've got someone as manager who trots out the same philosophy I've heard as a kid and at Sunday league level.

[ads]

Carvers 20/1 to be manager next season?!!? Got to be worth a £5 ?

 

Definitely, would be a fiver I'd happily see the back of if it meant he fucked off.

[KaKa]

Genuinely cannot believe how backwards the attitude to football is in this country.

 

It does seem that most of the people involved in the game, are typically not the most educated sort. Their backlash towards anyone who tries to talk about the game in a more educated manner is nothing more than their insecurities coming to the fore.

 

It is absolutely terrible.

 

[Ronaldo]

You're talking about John Carver and NUFC, Kaka. Not 'this country'.

[John P]

Danny Mills was co-commentating on the Leicester feed I watched and he wouldn't shut up about Jamie Vardy being the difference between the two sides and how we should get Armstrong on (after about 30mins) instead of Ayoze or Riviere because he cares about the club, would work his arse off and run about loads and apparently 'is in good form'. It epitomised a lot of what people are saying on here about the British mentality to football, ie work hard and you'll win. Nothing was mentioned of the fact that we had Ryan Taylor and Jonas playing centre midfield and no shape or system to speak of, just that we didn't have anyone that worked as hard as Jamie bloody Vardy. It's infuriating and almost unbelievable that someone who played at international level would think that.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Aye, I listened to that as well. Mills is obsessed with graft. It wasn't the difference between the teams at all, he was talking bollocks.

 

This is why we need to forget about making ex-players into pundits and managers, 99% of them are thick as shit.

[KaKa]

Just responding to some of the posts above e.g. Gino's experiences playing in academies.

 

I was not attacking your country man! Please take it easy 

 

I think younger more talented managers are beginning to emerge, who have grown up more inspired by your Arsenal's, Barcleona's etc. and so it's just a matter of time before the dinosaurs all die out.

[SEMTEX]

Yeah, I wasn't sure who it was talking at the time, but it did my nut in, especially when Armstrong came on. Talking about how we'll now see a local lad leading the line and working hard, how it'll make all the difference.

 

Aye riiiiiight. Did us a treat. Just like every other 5 minute target man cameo he has.

[KaKa]

Danny Mills was co-commentating on the Leicester feed I watched and he wouldn't shut up about Jamie Vardy being the difference between the two sides and how we should get Armstrong on (after about 30mins) instead of Ayoze or Riviere because he cares about the club, would work his arse off and run about loads and apparently 'is in good form'. It epitomised a lot of what people are saying on here about the British mentality to football, ie work hard and you'll win. Nothing was mentioned of the fact that we had Ryan Taylor and Jonas playing centre midfield and no shape or system to speak of, just that we didn't have anyone that worked as hard as Jamie bloody Vardy. It's infuriating and almost unbelievable that someone who played at international level would think that.

 

no way! So sick of this type of rhetoric man.

[Parky]

85% of English football is a complete waste of time. Might as well just arm wrestle the result.

[Guest firetotheworks]

Danny Mills was co-commentating on the Leicester feed I watched and he wouldn't shut up about Jamie Vardy being the difference between the two sides and how we should get Armstrong on (after about 30mins) instead of Ayoze or Riviere because he cares about the club, would work his arse off and run about loads and apparently 'is in good form'. It epitomised a lot of what people are saying on here about the British mentality to football, ie work hard and you'll win. Nothing was mentioned of the fact that we had Ryan Taylor and Jonas playing centre midfield and no shape or system to speak of, just that we didn't have anyone that worked as hard as Jamie bloody Vardy. It's infuriating and almost unbelievable that someone who played at international level would think that.

 

Danny Mills is saying that because he was exactly that sort of player. It's pretty rare that you get a pundit of any worth that had any degree of real talent. You think of someone like Mills or Neville or Dixon and you think about where they played, not how they played. Hard work obviously does go a long way like, but the thing that seems to elude everyone, even retired pros, is the illusion of graft. Players like Smith were experts at it, honest lads, exactly what you want when you're in trouble - completing ignoring the fact that they're the ones that got you there and it's talent that gets you out of it.

[TaylorJ_01]

When I got tall I got put as a centre forward and balls fucked at me, then when they realised I was fast they put me at right-back. Football growing up was absolutely crap.

[Guest Gino14]

Just responding to some of the posts above e.g. Gino's experiences playing in academies.

 

I was not attacking your country man! Please take it easy 

 

I think younger more talented managers are beginning to emerge, who have grown up more inspired by your Arsenal's, Barcleona's etc. and so it's just a matter of time before the dinosaurs all die out.

 

Degs played in an academy, I was far too rubbish for that.  My experience only comes from School and Sunday league level.  It was just an interesting insight from Degs, that the same way of thinking goes from that bottom level I and a lot of others have played, right through to academies of Premier League Football clubs.  It's ridiculous really.

 

I know we're talking about Carver and not the whole country, but it is a more general UK problem.  We have a lot of 'good football men' of very low IQ that have a big say in the opinions of the average person here.  They get TV time and Newspaper articles to air their views and have influence as to what the average armchair fan thinks.  This permeates right through our Football.  I just don't imagine Merson for instance getting much air time to influence anybody's views in any country but the UK.  There are some very intelligent Football people in the UK, but they're often marginalised and their simply aren't enough well qualified coaches here to get the modern game ideas across to young players.  Isn't it the case that we only have about 10% of the Uefa qualified coaches Germany has?  So we have a lot of people not even qualified to that level (that even Carver can manage) coaching our kids?  It's no wonder that all they learn is to kick it forward as fast as possible.

[John P]

Yeah, I wasn't sure who it was talking at the time, but it did my nut in, especially when Armstrong came on. Talking about how we'll now see a local lad leading the line and working hard, how it'll make all the difference.

 

Aye riiiiiight. Did us a treat. Just like every other 5 minute target man cameo he has.

 

He was raging that De Jong came on first instead of Armstrong too. He had a few touches of the ball but 5 minutes later Mills was saying 'what has De Jong done since he came on, has he even touched the ball? I don't think he's the right person to bring on in this situation at all, he's not going to graft and work.' Armstrong then came on, predictably touched the ball about twice and did nothing and only then did Mills shut the fuck up about it, which was after about 85 minutes. It was fucking torture man.