If it’s entirely down to the players to adapt to everything, then what’s the point of having a manager? You might as well just send them out and let them get on with it.
The issue we’ve got is that opposition teams don’t even have to think particularly hard about how to play against us. Our marking system at corners (and all other times), is absolutely abysmal. All Spurs had to do was put the ball towards the back post. They did exactly the same thing early in the game when Henderson had to punch the ball away.
Every single club seems to have worked this out, yet apparently our coaching staff haven’t. These aren’t isolated mistakes. They’re recurring problems, and at some point the responsibility for fixing them has to lie with the manager. Frankly, even in some of the games we’ve won, we’ve been fortunate. If football were simply a case of telling players what to do and expecting them to work everything out themselves, it would ultimately come down to who has the better players. But football doesn’t always work that way.
The first thing you do when you’re conceding goals the way we are is make your team difficult to beat. Get the defensive organisation right, protect the backline and build from there. Yes, putting more bodies behind the ball and bolstering the midfield might make us a little duller going forward, but let’s be honest, the attacking statistics aren’t exactly suggesting we’re Barcelona at the moment.
We’re not a particularly fluent attacking side, and we don’t get the ball up the pitch quickly or effectively enough to make much of an impact anyway.
With the greatest respect in the world, blaming the players is a bit like turning around to Henderson and telling him to save the ball. That’s all very well, but if everyone in front of him isn’t doing their job, you’ve got a problem. Likewise, if you’re instructing defenders to play out from the back and they’re clearly not particularly good at it, surely the answer is to adapt your tactics to the players you’ve actually got?
That’s what coaching is supposed to be about. Identifying weaknesses, organising your players and finding a system that gets the best out of them.
And this brings me to Sage. I actually like the bloke. He seems amiable enough, and I’m sure he’s a decent person to have around. But the fact is he doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do when things start going against him. He’s 120-odd games into his managerial career, and the one time things really did go wrong, he ended up getting sacked. I don’t think he’s ever had to deal with a situation quite like this, particularly at Premier League level, where opposition sides, even the poorer ones, can work you out incredibly quickly.
My concern is that Sage simply doesn’t have the experience to get us out of this. He’s exhibiting all the signs of a naive manager who has a particular way of playing and doesn’t know what to do when it stops working.
I remember Peter Taylor back in 2007, after we’d conceded yet another sloppy goal, declaring, “I bet we don’t do that again.” And do you know what happened? The following week, we did exactly the same bloody thing.
I’m sure Sage would be a brilliant manager to have around if everything were going swimmingly. But managing when everything is going well is a very different proposition from managing when things are falling apart.
Glasner arrived at almost the perfect time, with a group of players who complemented one another, developed an understanding and became an incredibly effective unit. But that doesn’t happen with every squad.
For every Eze, there’s a Jordon Mutch. For every Olise, there’s a Max Meyer. You don’t always have the luxury of having exactly the players you want, and sometimes you have to cut your cloth accordingly.
That’s what good managers do. They recognise the limitations of their squad, adapt their tactics and make themselves difficult to beat.
Do you genuinely think Spurs had to spend much time in training this week working out how to beat us? I suspect the tactical briefing was fairly straightforward: put the ball towards the back post and see what happens.
And that’s ultimately my criticism of Sage. I don’t think he’s ever really had to cut his cloth before. Right now, he’s looking like a manager who doesn’t even know where the scissors are.
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