Once the squad was picked and the successful players were invited to training, we asked them to meet us in a classroom where we spent around 20 minutes presenting the playing philosophy we were looking to implement for the season, and certain standards we were looking for as a minimum.
We felt last season that training performances were poor from the players, but we believed that was partly down to us both being new and not organising our sessions as well as we would have liked. We knew in the summer that we would plan all sessions properly over the weekend prior to training and that each session would have specific targets and goals that we wanted to hit in terms of developing this playing philosophy. Therefore because we were doing this, we asked for the players to improve their performances in training and to train with the same intensity that they would play a game with. The points were basic, but we wanted to see improvement from last season, which was outlined by the very cliche “Progression no Perfection” bullet point that was used.
Playing Style
The second part of the presentation was to describe and explain the style of play that we would be looking to play this season. A fair few of the lads from last season were still in the squad, and they were used to the 3-5-2 from the previous year. We explained to them and the new players that we would be opting for a 4-3-3 this year, with our secondary formation being a 4-4-2. The thinking behind this was that we noticed a lot of goals at this level tend to come from wide play, and with a 3-5-2, you will generally end up with the Wing Backs being overloaded by the opposition winger and full back, so we felt that allowing more defensive support out wide would be of benefit, as would having more attacking threat on the wings.
We also set out to make a conscious effort to try and play from the back and make everyone feel confident in possession. I spent some time over the summer studying several elite coaches by reading analysis blogs, coaching books and watching football, and I liked the idea that Marcelo Bielsa has used historically which is that of a 3-3-3-1 on goal kicks (Shown below). This was presented to the players, and the idea is that the 2 Centre Backs split towards the corners of the area, the holding midfielder drops in around the D of the area, with the Full Backs pushing up and hugging the touchline. The 2 Central midfielders divide themselves so one pushes forward in support of the Centre Forward, with the other one dropping back and being the link player. The wingers then come into the pitch to become narrower and to try and cause confusion for the defenders.
We felt that this would be fairly easy to implement as we knew from last season that our defenders were confident in possession, and our goalkeeper was also composed with the ball at his feet. The main concern was that if we get caught out once trying to play this way, that the lads would panic and resort to long ball instead. This playing out from the back formed the main part of the session as well as trying to coach defending from the front.
Knowing that the speed of the team is above average for this age and this level, we wanted to try and implement a high pressing style as much as we possibly could. This in my opinion is something that can’t be taught in one 1h30 session once a week and would be something that we would see a gradual improvement on over the games that we play. In the session, as the defenders were looking to play out from the back, the defenders were asked to press high and win the ball back. It was fair to say that the defenders won this little contest as they showed fantastic levels of composure at times and played through the press with relative ease.
As this was the first session the lads had together, the session was ended by just covering a few basics in preparation for the first game of the season that was approaching. So the final 10-15 minutes of the session was spent on Attacking & Defending corners. This was a weakness for us last season, (and haunted me as we played a game towards the end of the season where the opponent didn’t actually get into our half for the first 10 minutes of the game, however we conceded a corner cheaply and as a result went 1-0 down from some terrible defending) so we needed to ensure we were well prepared for this going into the first game which would be away in a couple of days time in Wrexham.
Coaching & Analysis Blog 