| Avoidable goals stat 09:08 - Sep 22 with 4302 views | 442Dale |
There isn’t one. So in the absence of that, some examples of clubs everywhere not adhering to the old mantra of “get rid” when under pressure. Feel free to add as the season goes on.
As well as Mitchell’s goal yesterday, here’s one from Huddersfield v Northampton:
Nothing will change in the short term, but there will come a day when the game will realise how much it’s impacting success.
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| Avoidable goals stat on 10:59 - Sep 22 with 2832 views | Yorkshire_Dale |
Re Hudds: Great finish for the goal, but that was in the 18th minute, so for well over an hour that young fella has that on his mind and no doubt the crowd giving him "the bird".
Will he sleep easy tonight. |  | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:07 - Sep 22 with 2802 views | BillyRudd |
Aclassic of the genre. Teams spend millions in pursuit of 20 goals a season strikers but think it logical to invite avoidable goals at the back. Quite bizarre. | | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:30 - Sep 22 with 2742 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 10:59 - Sep 22 by Yorkshire_Dale |
Re Hudds: Great finish for the goal, but that was in the 18th minute, so for well over an hour that young fella has that on his mind and no doubt the crowd giving him "the bird".
Will he sleep easy tonight. |
It's time for crowds - the people putting their time and money into being there - to make their views on this much more loudly
One or two boos could be heard in the Huddersfield example. I couldn't give a stuff for the 'feelings' of those engaged in this anti-football stupidity, least of all the managers who insist their 'defenders' put themselves in the firing line
The reaction, the disapproval, should be made known by the crowd and in their thousands
"But we're there to support the team" i can hear some cry (e.g. James)
Bollocks. We're there to support a team which takes our time and financial input into account, which shooting yourselves in the foot by instruction clearly doesn't
Can anyone think of a better or faster way to change things? Apart from not turning up at all, which wouldn't since the manager wouldn't know the reason [Post edited 22 Sep 11:34]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 11:35 - Sep 22 with 2716 views | dingdangblue |
Well there's been 3 in our last 2 games. Solihull's 1st last Saturday, our 1st today and the penalty for Eastleigh.
Stupid football played by players not good enough. |  |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 11:45 - Sep 22 with 2692 views | EllDale |
This style of playing at the back in ingrained in Academy football these days. I bet you couldn’t find an “old school” centre half anywhere unless it was a gnarled veteran defender.
The likes of Sassi have been indoctrinated and don’t know any other way of playing. | | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:47 - Sep 22 with 2684 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:35 - Sep 22 by dingdangblue |
Well there's been 3 in our last 2 games. Solihull's 1st last Saturday, our 1st today and the penalty for Eastleigh.
Stupid football played by players not good enough. |
But under the instructions of their manager
I'm pretty damn sure they wouldn't be doing it otherwise, but neither do i 'feel sorry' for them. They're not 'victims' but very well paid young men | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 11:52 - Sep 22 with 2673 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:45 - Sep 22 by EllDale |
This style of playing at the back in ingrained in Academy football these days. I bet you couldn’t find an “old school” centre half anywhere unless it was a gnarled veteran defender.
The likes of Sassi have been indoctrinated and don’t know any other way of playing. |
I'm pretty sure a new instruction of "your first duty is to prevent the opposition scoring" would be easy enough to understand
Simple, but revolutionary... | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 12:03 - Sep 22 with 2644 views | TalkingSutty |
| Avoidable goals stat on 11:30 - Sep 22 by D_Alien |
It's time for crowds - the people putting their time and money into being there - to make their views on this much more loudly
One or two boos could be heard in the Huddersfield example. I couldn't give a stuff for the 'feelings' of those engaged in this anti-football stupidity, least of all the managers who insist their 'defenders' put themselves in the firing line
The reaction, the disapproval, should be made known by the crowd and in their thousands
"But we're there to support the team" i can hear some cry (e.g. James)
Bollocks. We're there to support a team which takes our time and financial input into account, which shooting yourselves in the foot by instruction clearly doesn't
Can anyone think of a better or faster way to change things? Apart from not turning up at all, which wouldn't since the manager wouldn't know the reason [Post edited 22 Sep 11:34]
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I can think of a quicker way to change things. The Owners of the club/ Chairman/Directors call a meeting with the manager and his coaches and explain that the fans spend a lot of money to support their club, they have a expectation that the team will give themselves the best chance they can to win games. The club needs to increase crowds to generate income to keep the club afloat and pay yours and the players wages. The owners need the club to be winning games to generate income streams. If your team continue to gift our opponents goals due to playing around with the ball at the back we will look for a replacement and you can go and manage elsewhere. If we are losing potentially 1000 home fans every game because we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and cant progress up the league due to your daft tactics, that's potentially £500k of revenue you are costing us over a season, four times more than your annual salary, plus a chance of reaching the play offs and possible promotion. Please stop using our club as a platform to practice your coaching manual ideologies because we are losing games and deterring fans from attending games. Of course nobody within our club will say that to him though.
Plenty of Club owners and Chairman in the past such as Bob Lord at Burnley would have done that. I think our ex Chairman David Kilpatrick would have done also. Losing games by conceding totally avoidable goals costs our club money through the turnstiles, it makes it impossible to get any momentum and feel good factor going in the Town. All six goals conceded this week have been avoidable, half of those have been as a result of trying to play it our of our own penalty area. Sassi's defending for the first goal yesterday still takes some fathoming out. If the players are encouraged to do it and manager and his staff are not accountable to anybody they will keep on doing it. His interview yesterday was one of deflection, he needs to start taking personal responsibility for the way we are just handing goals to our opponents on a plate. I'd also suggest that he needs to start taking notice of the league table because he'll be judged on that and nobody will care about his X stats, or whatever he calls them. [Post edited 22 Sep 12:32]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 12:33 - Sep 22 with 2552 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 12:03 - Sep 22 by TalkingSutty |
I can think of a quicker way to change things. The Owners of the club/ Chairman/Directors call a meeting with the manager and his coaches and explain that the fans spend a lot of money to support their club, they have a expectation that the team will give themselves the best chance they can to win games. The club needs to increase crowds to generate income to keep the club afloat and pay yours and the players wages. The owners need the club to be winning games to generate income streams. If your team continue to gift our opponents goals due to playing around with the ball at the back we will look for a replacement and you can go and manage elsewhere. If we are losing potentially 1000 home fans every game because we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and cant progress up the league due to your daft tactics, that's potentially £500k of revenue you are costing us over a season, four times more than your annual salary, plus a chance of reaching the play offs and possible promotion. Please stop using our club as a platform to practice your coaching manual ideologies because we are losing games and deterring fans from attending games. Of course nobody within our club will say that to him though.
Plenty of Club owners and Chairman in the past such as Bob Lord at Burnley would have done that. I think our ex Chairman David Kilpatrick would have done also. Losing games by conceding totally avoidable goals costs our club money through the turnstiles, it makes it impossible to get any momentum and feel good factor going in the Town. All six goals conceded this week have been avoidable, half of those have been as a result of trying to play it our of our own penalty area. Sassi's defending for the first goal yesterday still takes some fathoming out. If the players are encouraged to do it and manager and his staff are not accountable to anybody they will keep on doing it. His interview yesterday was one of deflection, he needs to start taking personal responsibility for the way we are just handing goals to our opponents on a plate. I'd also suggest that he needs to start taking notice of the league table because he'll be judged on that and nobody will care about his X stats, or whatever he calls them. [Post edited 22 Sep 12:32]
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That would be the way things should be done, and by preference of all concerned i expect
When the manager was awarded an extended contract giving him three years during the summer, those who're making the footballing decisions at the top of the club were clearly indicating they supported JM to the hilt. In short, that's not going to happen at Dale with at least one of the co-Chairs - the one who's being relied on by the new owners to make the right decisions, when it was precisely his inability to make the right decisions on the footballing side which saw us slide out of the EFL with barely a whimper
I very much doubt the Ogdens are going to wish to upset the financial arrangements which occurred when they invested in Dale, which could happen should they take the initiative on the football side, with which they're entirely unfamiliar
We are where we are, and yes we have a club which now seeks to become community-focused. The first people in the community they should be focused on is the regular fans, and we need to make our views known on this [Post edited 22 Sep 12:36]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 12:59 - Sep 22 with 2473 views | frenzied |
The passing around at the back stuff is seen at all levels of football..saw it last night will no doubt see it later at the Etihad..it’s coached by the best like Pep and even his players will make the odd error.
The team that makes the fewest costly errors will be most successful.
Traditional full backs and centre half’s are long gone..Stones at City was a good centre half at Everton but Pep has turned into a much better player.
I’ve no great angst against it at all | | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 13:15 - Sep 22 with 2417 views | TalkingSutty |
| Avoidable goals stat on 12:33 - Sep 22 by D_Alien |
That would be the way things should be done, and by preference of all concerned i expect
When the manager was awarded an extended contract giving him three years during the summer, those who're making the footballing decisions at the top of the club were clearly indicating they supported JM to the hilt. In short, that's not going to happen at Dale with at least one of the co-Chairs - the one who's being relied on by the new owners to make the right decisions, when it was precisely his inability to make the right decisions on the footballing side which saw us slide out of the EFL with barely a whimper
I very much doubt the Ogdens are going to wish to upset the financial arrangements which occurred when they invested in Dale, which could happen should they take the initiative on the football side, with which they're entirely unfamiliar
We are where we are, and yes we have a club which now seeks to become community-focused. The first people in the community they should be focused on is the regular fans, and we need to make our views known on this [Post edited 22 Sep 12:36]
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Agree with that. At the moment though it's still early days this season and if we're judging the manager by our position in the league we've had a decent start. I have faith in the squad that has been assembled but the failure to sign a decent centre half was highlighted in the pre-season games and it hasn't taken long to come back and bite McNulty on the backside. EEL is a old fashioned stopper, his distribution is terrible, we've all seen that. Sassi was poor when he joined us last season and he's still poor. Having seen Feguson last season and during the pre season friendlies he's not a ball playing centre half and also doesn't fit the bill. Its obvious McNulty doesnt rate him. So the manager has to accept responsibility for the problems we have in the centre of defence. I'm also not convinced with the goalkeepers.
I'm going to credit McNulty though with the make up of our midfield, wide players and forwards, i think he's done a decent job and when we decide to take the game to our opponents we look slick at times with some good passages of play.
The fans will make their views know if we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot and McNulty needs to stop trying to pull the wool over the fans eyes in his interviews, it makes him look daft. We are all too long in the tooth to be suckered into his excuses, we conceded four goals that should have been the focus of his interview not the referee, or this bloody stupid X claptrap that he keeps wittering on about ( nobody is arsed about it Jim). So bottom line...i think it's a pretty easy fix for McNulty.
1..Move heaven and earth to find a decent experienced centre half.
2..Modify how we are playing the ball out of defence, particularly the goalkeepers distribution.
3.. Ensure one of the midfield players is always available to take the ball from the defenders to bring the forward players into the game
4. The tempo that WE play at will invariably dictate the best outcome of the game for us, especially when playing at home. Quick two touch passing and movement from the start of games is required, not after 20 or 30 minutes, from the start.
I still have faith but it's down to Jim to take his blinkers off. If he really did believe what he said during his post match interview yesterday then we're knackered. The referee didn't lose us the game and that X stuff won't keep him in a job. He might have swallowed the full volume of coaching manuals and we might not be able to get him back, i hope we can. [Post edited 22 Sep 13:19]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 13:28 - Sep 22 with 2380 views | EllDale |
| Avoidable goals stat on 12:03 - Sep 22 by TalkingSutty |
I can think of a quicker way to change things. The Owners of the club/ Chairman/Directors call a meeting with the manager and his coaches and explain that the fans spend a lot of money to support their club, they have a expectation that the team will give themselves the best chance they can to win games. The club needs to increase crowds to generate income to keep the club afloat and pay yours and the players wages. The owners need the club to be winning games to generate income streams. If your team continue to gift our opponents goals due to playing around with the ball at the back we will look for a replacement and you can go and manage elsewhere. If we are losing potentially 1000 home fans every game because we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and cant progress up the league due to your daft tactics, that's potentially £500k of revenue you are costing us over a season, four times more than your annual salary, plus a chance of reaching the play offs and possible promotion. Please stop using our club as a platform to practice your coaching manual ideologies because we are losing games and deterring fans from attending games. Of course nobody within our club will say that to him though.
Plenty of Club owners and Chairman in the past such as Bob Lord at Burnley would have done that. I think our ex Chairman David Kilpatrick would have done also. Losing games by conceding totally avoidable goals costs our club money through the turnstiles, it makes it impossible to get any momentum and feel good factor going in the Town. All six goals conceded this week have been avoidable, half of those have been as a result of trying to play it our of our own penalty area. Sassi's defending for the first goal yesterday still takes some fathoming out. If the players are encouraged to do it and manager and his staff are not accountable to anybody they will keep on doing it. His interview yesterday was one of deflection, he needs to start taking personal responsibility for the way we are just handing goals to our opponents on a plate. I'd also suggest that he needs to start taking notice of the league table because he'll be judged on that and nobody will care about his X stats, or whatever he calls them. [Post edited 22 Sep 12:32]
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The owners will probably only realise something is wrong if the gates fall off a cliff.
I doubt if they’d act on opinions on here. How many users are on this message board on average every week? Thirty perhaps, out of 2000 season ticket holders.
And when every fans forum turns into a mutual admiration society for the coach then alarm bells aren’t going to ring. | | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 13:42 - Sep 22 with 2346 views | Plattyswrinklynuts |
| Avoidable goals stat on 12:59 - Sep 22 by frenzied |
The passing around at the back stuff is seen at all levels of football..saw it last night will no doubt see it later at the Etihad..it’s coached by the best like Pep and even his players will make the odd error.
The team that makes the fewest costly errors will be most successful.
Traditional full backs and centre half’s are long gone..Stones at City was a good centre half at Everton but Pep has turned into a much better player.
I’ve no great angst against it at all |
I do when (IMO) 3 of our 4 goals conceded yesterday would have embarrassed a Sunday League team.
It’s costing us games & money & something needs saying to certain people now before we ship more points. |  | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 14:12 - Sep 22 with 2265 views | 442Dale |
| Avoidable goals stat on 13:28 - Sep 22 by EllDale |
The owners will probably only realise something is wrong if the gates fall off a cliff.
I doubt if they’d act on opinions on here. How many users are on this message board on average every week? Thirty perhaps, out of 2000 season ticket holders.
And when every fans forum turns into a mutual admiration society for the coach then alarm bells aren’t going to ring. |
It’s not just on here that people have pointed out how trying to avoid avoidable goals - it’s heard on other forms of social media, often with much more vitriol attached. It’s also forgotten how the old days of fans muttering discontent on the terraces and in the bars at the club before and after games is still a thing. It’d be naive to think the club aren’t aware of it.
This thread, whilst obviously being pertinent to Dale, was actually an attempt to illustrate how this is an issue that exists across the entire game and one that is being mystifyingly being ignored despite the substantial impact it is having on results.
We can all rightly call out McNulty and his players when we fall foul, but imagine if another manager comes in from the same school of thinking that appears to dominate football across the world at the moment.
Can fans across the country make ‘avoidable goals’ a thing? At some stage, someone has to. And when they do I’ll have already trademarked ‘aG’.
Actually, Chaff and co can have it and distribute all future revenue amongst forum users. [Post edited 22 Sep 14:16]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 14:48 - Sep 22 with 2162 views | TalkingSutty |
| Avoidable goals stat on 13:28 - Sep 22 by EllDale |
The owners will probably only realise something is wrong if the gates fall off a cliff.
I doubt if they’d act on opinions on here. How many users are on this message board on average every week? Thirty perhaps, out of 2000 season ticket holders.
And when every fans forum turns into a mutual admiration society for the coach then alarm bells aren’t going to ring. |
That's a good point, there are some good disussions on this forum but just like other clubs, the forums seem to all suffer from less and less traffic as fans choose other options to communicate with each other. The amount of people who post on here probably amounts to about 1% of our fan base, insignificant really.. Agree also about the fans forums etc [Post edited 22 Sep 15:01]
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| Avoidable goals stat on 15:50 - Sep 22 with 2066 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 13:28 - Sep 22 by EllDale |
The owners will probably only realise something is wrong if the gates fall off a cliff.
I doubt if they’d act on opinions on here. How many users are on this message board on average every week? Thirty perhaps, out of 2000 season ticket holders.
And when every fans forum turns into a mutual admiration society for the coach then alarm bells aren’t going to ring. |
They'd know something was wrong, but in order to understand what and why, it's important for those in the ground to express themselves when appropriate to do so. It's a different form of support - one that's seeking to put the club on a more sustainable trajectory
References to this forum or other media would then become irrelevant | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 16:25 - Sep 22 with 1966 views | 442Dale |
| Avoidable goals stat on 15:50 - Sep 22 by D_Alien |
They'd know something was wrong, but in order to understand what and why, it's important for those in the ground to express themselves when appropriate to do so. It's a different form of support - one that's seeking to put the club on a more sustainable trajectory
References to this forum or other media would then become irrelevant |
Looking across the whole game though, there would need to be another generational shift. One which occurred to see this start in the first place.
I’m not against playing the ball about in defence retaining possession rather than a hoof forward, it’s when it’s done with far too much risk attached. It would require that risk being publicised in the way xG/possession percentage etc are on MotD, Super Sunday, Monday Night Football et al.
That’s when there will be a real understanding of what is wrong and why. | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 16:43 - Sep 22 with 1926 views | D_Alien |
| Avoidable goals stat on 16:25 - Sep 22 by 442Dale |
Looking across the whole game though, there would need to be another generational shift. One which occurred to see this start in the first place.
I’m not against playing the ball about in defence retaining possession rather than a hoof forward, it’s when it’s done with far too much risk attached. It would require that risk being publicised in the way xG/possession percentage etc are on MotD, Super Sunday, Monday Night Football et al.
That’s when there will be a real understanding of what is wrong and why. |
There's two aspects to this, although they're intertwined
The coaching mindset that says you should always seek to play the ball out puts the fear into a defender that if he doesn't, even when under severe pressure, he'll lose favour with the manager. That should never be the case, just as it should never be the case that a player is criticised from the dugout for taking a shot on goal
The other aspect is the rationality of playing the ball out quickly rather than allowing the opposition to settle. That will rarely involve a long pass downfield unless a forward has made a run which would put him in the clear
A "hoof out from the back" may well be the only rational option when under severe pressure. If there's a rationale that says otherwise, it's nonsense. I'm not sure JM knows that, even after a long career as a defender. It's putting our young CBs under pressure they don't need, and it needs calling out | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 18:19 - Sep 22 with 1798 views | Yorkshire_Dale |
Just following City V Arse........a quote has just appeared on Sky
"Since the break Arsenal have conceded 0.47 of xG"......we are doomed? | | | |
| Avoidable goals stat on 18:35 - Sep 22 with 1763 views | James1980 |
How many passes from keeper to defender or across the back line don't lead to a goal being conceded?
How many hoof balls lead to a counter attack and a goal
conceded? | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 18:42 - Sep 22 with 1749 views | 442Dale |
| Avoidable goals stat on 18:35 - Sep 22 by James1980 |
How many passes from keeper to defender or across the back line don't lead to a goal being conceded?
How many hoof balls lead to a counter attack and a goal
conceded? |
Start a thread about hoof balls. The point is, as seen by the Huddersfield goal and Mitchell’s yesterday, that passing in dangerous situations leads DIRECTLY to a goal. No chance to defend it afterwards.
It’s not a case of demonising retaining the ball at the back, starting every attack from the keeper to a defender or even the age old playing it about slowly between defenders who don’t go forward. It’s doing it under so much pressure that any mistake will inevitably result in a goal.
At the moment that’s been lost in translation. Hopefully now it won’t be. | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 20:51 - Sep 22 with 1573 views | TVOS1907 |
| Avoidable goals stat on 18:19 - Sep 22 by Yorkshire_Dale |
Just following City V Arse........a quote has just appeared on Sky
"Since the break Arsenal have conceded 0.47 of xG"......we are doomed? |
Not really. It just means they were much less likely to score in the second half based on what they were doing, compared to the first half.
Given they had a man less and spent the majority of the subsequent 54 minutes defending their own penalty area, the reasoning makes perfect sense, although how they can measure it in such detail is another matter. |  |
| When I was your age, I used to enjoy the odd game of tennis. Or was it golf? |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 10:02 - Sep 23 with 1139 views | James1980 |
| Avoidable goals stat on 18:42 - Sep 22 by 442Dale |
Start a thread about hoof balls. The point is, as seen by the Huddersfield goal and Mitchell’s yesterday, that passing in dangerous situations leads DIRECTLY to a goal. No chance to defend it afterwards.
It’s not a case of demonising retaining the ball at the back, starting every attack from the keeper to a defender or even the age old playing it about slowly between defenders who don’t go forward. It’s doing it under so much pressure that any mistake will inevitably result in a goal.
At the moment that’s been lost in translation. Hopefully now it won’t be. |
It would be good if at least one manager was asked about the risk Vs reward of passing it out/about at the back, especially when under pressure. | |
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| Avoidable goals stat on 10:38 - Sep 23 with 1079 views | fitzochris |
A topical interview with our former manager Brian Barry-Murphy with The Athletic:
Saturday lunchtime, Blackburn: in a bar across the road from Ewood Park, Brian Barry-Murphy is sipping mineral water and watching Southampton versus Manchester United on a big screen. The Southampton manager Russell Martin is a friend of Barry-Murphy, who sees the Saints get an early penalty Cameron Archer does not convert. Two minutes later Matthijs de Ligt gives United the lead.
Three hours on, Barry-Murphy is inside Ewood observing Blackburn Rovers versus Bristol City. It is 2-0 midway in the second half and City substitute Sinclair Armstrong rushes to the Rovers byline and squares the ball for what seems to be a certain goal. At 2-1, City will be back in it.
But a Rovers boot gets there first, the ball is cleared and seconds later Yuki Ohashi curls in a magnificent shot at the other end.
Instead of Southampton leading 1-0, Manchester United were leading 0-1; instead of Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Bristol City, it was Blackburn Rovers 3-0 Bristol City.
“Unpredictable,” says Barry-Murphy wryly. It is a word he uses three times — negatively, positively and empathetically — in the course of a conversation about football, how he sees it and where he sees himself. At 46, Barry-Murphy has just taken the unusual, unpredicted step of leaving Manchester City after three years of being head coach of the under-23s. He enjoyed daily contact with Pep Guardiola.
Barry-Murphy had been manager of Rochdale before City and he wants to be a manager or head coach again. The Irishman succeeded Enzo Maresca with the under-23s and there is a post-City Maresca trajectory to consider.
Judging by the match-day enthusiasm of Barry-Murphy, the uncertainties of the game, as he had just witnessed afresh, will not deter him.
“I’ve been pretty clear for a while that I wanted to move on,” he says. “It might sound unusual, as I would sum up my period at Manchester City as the most insightful of my life in football, because of who I was working with.
“But also, I have this real want to go and test myself on my terms. You tell yourself: ‘Go on, then,’ rather than stay there and be in awe of Pep, watch what he does and never use it for anything.
“I had a real instinctive feeling when I went to Man City that it was the right place at the right time; I have had the same feeling for over a year now. It sounds selfish but I have got what I wanted from that experience.”
Selfishness is actually ambition. Barry-Murphy, son of decorated Irish sportsman Jimmy, has been part of football since he was 16, playing for his hometown club Cork City in the League of Ireland. He was signed by David Moyes (whom he praises) when at Preston North End, then played for Sheffield Wednesday among other clubs. Barry-Murphy’s career as a defender ended at Rochdale, where he was player-coach before becoming manager in 2019 and developing a reputation for a style of play that may not have brought a small club three points every week, but which caught the eye of much larger neighbours.
So three years ago, recruited by Jason Wilcox, Barry-Murphy began coaching the likes of Cole Palmer, Oscar Bobb and Romeo Lavia — three of those he mentions — and learning from Guardiola. Barry-Murphy left in the summer and accepted an invitation from The Athletic to spend a Saturday watching a match, discussing where he has been, what he has seen and what might come next.
At Ewood Park, Barry-Murphy is immediately impressed by the intensity of Blackburn’s start to their Championship game. Tyrhys Dolan, 22, a former Manchester City academy player, sets a standard — fast, aggressive, skilful. Rovers press Bristol City into errors and, from one of these mistakes, take the lead.
A determination to play out from the back has cost Bristol City, but they do not change and, as it continues not to work, an earlier reference from Barry-Murphy regarding Guardiola’s adaptability grows in relevance. He does not think Guardiola gets enough credit for this.
“Pep is so appreciative of opponents’ strengths and what they’ll try to do,” Barry-Murphy says. “He’s thinking of how to overcome that; he doesn’t just focus on City because they’re so good. When they played Real Madrid, Madrid clearly had thought about that deep run Kevin (De Bruyne) does a lot and planned for that.
“Pep’ll say to the players, ‘When the opponents do something, we’ll do this’. He’d give them solutions. So if the opponents are going to man-mark Rodri, for example, he’ll say, ‘Well, we’ll go here before going there’. And he will pay as much attention to a Carabao Cup game as a Champions League game.
“He noticed that, when teams started to go for man-for-man, it would leave (Erling) Haaland on the halfway line. So Ederson would go long.”
That is what Bristol City try to do intermittently, but they do not have Haaland at No 9, the ball does not stick and Rovers mop up. The visitors return to their way of playing from the back, to the jeers of some of their own fans. Barry-Murphy recognises the situation, the need to win, the Saturday afternoon tension.
“I’m proud of what I did at Rochdale,” he says. “It means a lot to me. But I wouldn’t dispute for a minute that we kept the ball for possession’s sake. And I got it wrong sometimes.
“I’ve a deep belief in the way I think the game should be played and I’ll never go away from that, but you have to be respectful of who you face.
“When I was a younger coach or manager, I was obsessed with having possession and it’s something myself and other players fed off, because during our careers we were starved of the ball. But when I look back now I’m not sure if I always got the balance right. It’s about attacking in an efficient manner — being patient or attacking quickly, dynamically. Giving players the feel of rhythms is something you as a coach can do. Efficiency is a very important word.
“In League One, Rochdale were a very small fish. We’d young players and we’d play against the likes of Hull and Sunderland and these big squads. The way we wanted to compete was to have the ball for periods, which is not what smaller teams are meant to do.
“I’d read (Mauricio) Pochettino’s diaries from Espanyol and when they played Barcelona, the expectation was they’d defend on the edge of their box. He wanted to change that. At Rochdale we wanted to have our own philosophy, play with a style that gave us a point of difference, keeping the ball away from the bigger teams for as long as we could. We couldn’t just go out and buy a striker.
“The difference at Man City is that you’d build up possession to give the ball to Cole Palmer, who can go and beat five players, or to Oscar Bobb and he’s like Messi. He beats players in a flash and I’d never seen that up close before.
“Your job then is to get the ball to those players and in the most efficient way — sometimes that will be one pass, sometimes 50 passes. At Rochdale we didn’t have that and my perception was that the quicker we attacked, the quicker the chance we’d give the ball to a big team who would then pound us for 90 minutes.”
In both of these roles, development was a key word and pursuit. Yet the two environments and challenges were very different.
“Week after week at Rochdale I’d come out and say the lads did well, did exactly what we practised,” he recalls. “And the reply would be, ‘But you got beat’. I said, ‘Yeah, but we could be at the bottom of the table anyway and kicking it long’.
“Then there’d be no reference point for the players, who we believe will benefit in the long term and will succeed — though there’s no guarantees.
“But it’s ingrained in us all to want to win.
“At City the players are all on big contracts, but some come from pretty poor backgrounds, so have a lot of pressure on their shoulders. What you have to do is convince them that your way of working will improve them as players, give them the rewards they want: ‘But you have to do it as part of a team otherwise you won’t get the chance.’
“You’re trying to create that common goal. ‘Convince’ or ‘influence’, I don’t know which word is better. I always said to the players that I’d convince them of what I was doing because I know it works. Ideally you want every player to believe you and hang off every word, but they don’t. You’ve to show them there’s substance to what you’re saying.
“They’ve all got different characteristics. Oscar Bobb will do anything for the team because he wants the team to succeed above all else. Within that he wants to improve individually. But it’s not very common to see someone that selfless.”
At half-time Bristol City manager Liam Manning makes one change and, after Blackburn go 2-0 ahead on 55 minutes, he soon makes three more. City get better, Armstrong propels his team forward. Then there’s the chance and the Rovers break away and it’s 3-0.
On the final whistle, the two coaches, John Eustace and Manning, shake hands. They’ve had the opposite experience from the same game. Barry-Murphy knows these Saturday five o’clock feelings. The differences.
“I imagine Liam will be heading back on the bus thinking it didn’t go their way and they didn’t perform to the levels they wanted,” he says. “For all that, they gave the first goal to Blackburn and there was a point in the game where it could have been 2-1. At 3-0 it feels deflating and demoralising.
“But that’s just the nature of the game and it’s important to remind yourself how volatile it can be, how small things can leave a large imprint. John Eustace will have the same awareness about what happened and what could have happened.”
The uncontrollable elements of the afternoon are striking, and from that perspective, it looks an angst-ridden profession to seek out. But Barry-Murphy, as he says, wants it. “If there were guarantees, you wouldn’t get the buzz, would you?”
He has spoken to one Championship club this summer — not Preston, despite the links — and the managerial churn in the division means opportunities are likely. Barry-Murphy will take with him three decades in the game and three years alongside Guardiola. How is he before and after that experience?
“Pep changes the way you think about football. I used to hear people say that and think, ‘Really?’ It sounds a bit dramatic, like. But he does. He makes sense of the way you have to work repetitively every single day to bring to life the things you want to see on the day of a game. It’s so simple in terms of how he implements it, but it’s so difficult in terms of how obsessive he is about repetition and preparation. He’s incredible, incredible.”
Guardiola accepts coaches such as Mikel Arteta, Maresca and Barry-Murphy will want to test themselves after being in his professional company, and City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain has told Barry-Murphy it is his time “to go and fly, show what I can do. It’s given me encouragement to go and do what I’m going to do. Txiki said, ‘Put yourself on the line, test yourself’ — amid that jeopardy we’ve spoken about.
“Where I go next, I will want us to attack in the most efficient manner, always progressing the game. You don’t have to worry about satisfying the audience then, because what they’re seeing is that you’re always trying to attack. That’s why I feel so liberated by what I’ve done professionally, because I now know how to do it.
“I’m ready. I fancy it.” |  |
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