last year, at the end of September
Stuart McCall and Plan Nine from Outer Space
I have become so tired of hearing the phrases “tactically naive” and “No Plan B” and if life were QI then the siren would be going off around almost every football discussion heard.
These two phrases are banded about by the media with one being used to apply to Kevin Keegan and Sven Goran Eriksson but within months of their uptake they became part of the lexicon of every football supporter.
Any team that has not won are lacking a “Plan B”. Every team that get beaten are managed by someone tactically naive. It is no more sophisticated analysis than saying that a match was a game of two halves but it sounds more analytical and there is is the key to its asinine overuse.
Stuart McCall and his management team was accused of having “No Plan B” this week not a fortnight since we saw a City team struggling to breakdown Exeter and until McCall pulled Paul McLaren further back on the field creating spaces and holes for midfielders to probe and twenty minutes later we had four goals. He either got very lucky, understood the tactics involved in the game or found a “Plan B”. That or he made a change, put some rockets up backsides and reminded the players that they had no little quality.
The whole assumption of “Plan B” in football is flawed. It assumes that every week a manager goes into a game telling his players little more than “Go with Plan A today, boys” which is probably a product of Championship Manager/Pro-Evolution Soccer thinking and almost certainly not based on anything that happens in a real dressing room where other teams are watched, players are singled out, danger-men noted and patterns recognised in the opposition.
Don Revie famously complied dossiers on every team in the First Division and every Referee that his Leeds United team could face in a season each game presenting itself differently to the last or the next, each game requiring individual preparation.
Not “Plan A” or “Plan B”. Nothing so simple.
In truth “Plan B” is one of those football phrases that when translated means little. If a manager’s team is losing then “Plan B” is the term given to his demonstrable actions. If those actions work and his team win then he is judged as “being able to influence the game from the sidelines”, if they do not he “has no Plan B.”
Likewise a manager is “tactically naive” if he does not use uncommon formations or should I say if he does not use uncommon formations and win. Sir Alex Ferguson won the treble using a 442 formation but very few called him naive. He won the double last year using the same formation which Kevin Keegan was using during his brief spell back at Newcastle United but few suggested the two of them as having the same tactical acumen. Too often “tactically naive” means “plays the default formation in FIFA 2009″ and the people who generally believe that a Keegan or a McCall is lacking in understanding of how the game is played need a new way of saying what they think.
Tactics are painted in such broad brush strokes that such ham fisted criticism is almost inevitable. Within football tactics are about the jobs that must be performed on a field and who performs them, they are about making the most of combinations on the field, about when to attack and when other players should commit to attacking. They are nuances and subtleties that are simply not addressed in the phone number phrases that are passed off as analysis. “Four-four-two” is a starting point but it is not a tactic and when played with an Owen Hargreaves/Michael Carrick formation it is simply not the same way of playing football as when Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard occupy the middle positions.
These are phrases used as pejorative that have long since lost any meaning. One might as well say Stuart McCall is “player boot naive” that he has no Plan Nine from Outer Space. That or you could - if that is what you think - say that Stuart McCall has a troubling lack of options in his squad when his team is behind other than bringing on Barry Conlon to play a battering ram role and perhaps - as has been said before - that that sort of talk might be more appropriate than randomly firing around criticisms which have no granularity between “slight issue with” and “majorly incompetent at”.
Football management is not about applying single skills - you cannot add a dash of tactics to a team and make them win - it is a combination of mental and emotional skills and not the kind of problem that can be modelled and brought down to such simple mechanics.
It certainly cannot - in the most - be summed up by soundbite phrases. We live in a time when through official message boards and forums, fanzines and websites (such as this one which has given voice to over 125 City fans and only turned away less than half a dozen articles in ten years), blogs and letters to the T&A football fans are more listened to than ever. It is thus important that when they speak they do so with a sense of understanding of how what they say will be perceived and responsibility they have when they say it.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:09
What absolute rubbish Michael (Wood). A ‘Plan A’ is the starting formation and tactics. Should this system not be working, a ‘Plan B’ is the ability to change this.
On Saturday, McCall left his usual first half position because he was unhappy with the amount of space being offered to their midfielders. After the game he admitted we had been out-fought in the middle of the park. He stated that as they had used 5 across the middle with a second striker playing behind the main striker, we found it hard getting the ball off them. Did he take off a defender for another midfielder to prevent their extra man getting forward? No he didn’t. Instead he took Lee off and brought Conlon on. If we couldn’t get service to Thorne & Boulding, what made McCall think it would be any easier to get the ball to three strikers? The problem was getting the ball forward, not delivering when it got there.
‘Tactically naive’?? You bet he was!
September 25th, 2008 at 8:52
This article is not about the abilities of Stuart McCall it is about the way that short hand phrases like “No Plan B” are used in the place of tactical analysis although I do find it odd that you choose to outline what you think is the manager’s Plan B without agreeing that the talk that he does not have one must be wrong.
I’ve read your comment and it makes interesting points although I disagree with somethings. Why must we call a managers actions Plan B? Are we incapable of speaking in full sentences?
The phrase is used to describe actions that fail as well as those that bring about wins. As a man capable of putting together the comments you have does it not strike you as wrong that the same words are used for actions that do not work as for inaction? For having something that does not work and not having anything at all. I’ve been writing about City for ten years and I know the difference between the two and I’d like different language to do for both.
Why must we use this hamfisted language when we are capable of fuller discussion? Why must we use the language of Red Top newspapers when we could engage in a rich interchange?
You are capable of outlining the problems which you saw in McCall’s approach to the game and you are able to detail how McCall saw them and reacted yet you wrap this up in the phrase ‘naive’. Is it naive to be beaten? If someone ‘out-tactics’ a manager is that manager then ‘naive’? Using that train of thought only a single manager could ever not be considered ‘naive’.
These are not just points about the abuse of the English language they are important if we are to try properly define the success and failures of a manager in an era when whispering and perception have become as important as results. It is not semantics to ask for non-misleading terms to be used when speaking openly.
Perhaps though it is felt by some - but not by me - that the general football watching public are not smart enough to handle detailed discussion and have to have everything reduced to soundbites. I do not believe in talking down to people and I will not do it. BfB is accused of superciliousness and highhandedness but it could never be accused of making things more simple that they are, of “dumbing down”.
If you think that is ‘Absolute Rubbish’ then there I can only disagree.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:55
The plan (B?) for getting the ball to the strikers on Saturday was to go over the midfield with long balls which is why Barry came on cause once he did nothing went through the midfield it was all pumped long.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:48
I am writing about Jim Gannon . Last December , City lost at home to Hereford , and the defeat was caused solely by biassed refereeing and linesmen . You agreed with me at the time . Gannon is right and should be supported . But the malaise is deeper . Everyone knows that is the positions of Sheffield and West Ham had been reversed , Sheffield would have had a harsher punishment than West Ham got.
September 25th, 2008 at 23:51
My understanding of your article was that the general public often use para-phrases too easily, without the need. I did not read into it that you believe we use the words instead of communicating in a clearer way.
The majority of people that post on websites these days can barely write, let alone trying to make their posts sound more intellectual. Surely you can see that? Unfortunately, because of the mental aptitude of some people, ‘dumbing down’ is probably the only way they can understand the text. I know this is probably controversial, but I challenge you to prove me wrong.
Either way you choose to use our language, Stuart was shown up on Saturday for being exactly what he is… a rookie manager still learning his trade. If that is to call him ‘naive’ instead of other adjectives, then what really is the problem.