The case for the defence

[maccawozzagod]

he names Edwards as the best defender (right back) over the last few months but has played him at centre back and left back or not at all ..

[yerself]

Originally Posted by maccawozzagod

he names Edwards as the best defender

That's the only sense he's spoken in the last couple of months. I think Phil Edwards has been the best defender we have since the day he signed from Wigan. Should we trust his judgement though? He still seems to think Shaun Whalley's a footballer

[Revived Red]

Originally Posted by JEFF

It might create a better understanding, but, if the back four are not good enough things will never get better.

It is difficult to judge if the back four are good enough because they are not given the chance to form a cohesive unit. If one of them, especially one of the centre backs, has a bad game, then he is dropped for the next game. Though there does appear to have been one exception to that!

[Reamer]

Two of the back four from the last game played are loan players so if Tinker&Bell cannot extend the deals for Thomas and Kempson they will be forced into changes anyway. Edwards deserves a mention for the way he's played recently. He's been played on left and in centre but he always looks more comfortable at right back

[Phil Whalley]

Hello RR, hope you’re well.

I agree that all the blame cannot be placed on our never-settled defence. We play hell when we think Coley is persevering with the wrong line-up, but can we point to evidence that one particular combination has proved to be clearly the most effective? A change of personnel may have the desired effect one game, but then appears frail the next. This suggests to me that the key is not necessarily the personnel but the organisation.

Coley’s argument that he can coach the defenders from a striker’s perspective has been proved short of the mark. We need a qualified defensive coach. One assumes that they don’t come cheap, but it may be the best investment we could make with what we have. Roberts, for example, is very good in the air, incisive in the tackle, but short of pace off the mark. But we must be realistic about all this. With these attributes he is a typical Fourth Division central defender. If he had blistering speed and faultless positioning too, then he wouldn’t be playing at our level. For this league, Roberts is a decent defender, and there is nothing fundamentally flawed about an established central partnership such as him and Kempson, but our defenders desperately need specialised coaching to help them improve on their positioning, their awareness of what is going on around them and, subsequently, their ability to cover.

In the case of both Edwards and Richardson, we have two potentially very good full-backs, but neither are the finished article yet. Edwards has done well recently, but he has a tendency to be pulled around and to fly into tackles, such as the one that cost us a pen at Walsall last season when we had the lead and looked comfortable. Those kind of mistakes – nothing to do with ability but about reading a game and making the right decisions under pressure – can be eliminated with focused tuition. It doesn’t matter how old the player is, you can always learn and improve.

Another thing we need to improve on is holding a game for a period. Our inability to do this is partly behind our lack of draws. Sunday was such an instance. We were terribly unlucky with the pen, which looked from where I was a disgracefully bad, knee-jerk decision. So an extremely good 45 minutes worth of work compromised, but not down the pan. I’m sure some will disagree with my thinking here, but away from home my instincts in such a situation would be to assume that Rochdale would regroup and press forward, and so to compress the midfield and smother them until we got into the period of the game, after an hour or so, when tiredness starts to see teams lose possession and shape more readily. Then we can become more adventurous.

It’s a cautious strategy for sure, but thinking back to games such as the 1-1 at Wycombe, the 0-0 at Hereford and the 2-1 win at Mansfield, we tend to do well in games that become attritional. I know this goes against the sort of football that we like to see Stanley play, but we have to evolve our game plan. When we open up and simply try and play attacking football, we get punished heavily in this league as teams have players with the quality to exploit the gaps, unlike most sides in non-league.

I’m absolutely not saying that this should become our default style of play, but we should have it as an option to use at the appropriate time, and in Mannix and Harris, we have the players to do it. But the ability to hold teams does depend on fitness and work rate, and the latter was missing in the second-half on Sunday, and am I right to suspect that we are perhaps not as fit or as strong as some of the other sides we meet? I’ve heard a few comments remarking on how Kempson’s physical conditioning has improved since his last time here, and as a full-time outfit we now have no excuses for this.

See you all at Chesterfield

Phil

[Oggy]

Originally Posted by Phil Whalley

..... This suggests to me that the key is not necessarily the personnel but the organisation.
We need a qualified defensive coach. One assumes that they don’t come cheap, but it may be the best investment we could make with what we have.
Another thing we need to improve on is holding a game for a period. Our inability to do this is partly behind our lack of draws.
It’s a cautious strategy for sure .. but we have to evolve our game plan.

Agree with the gist of what Phil is saying, and the pieces I've quoted would surely be the way forward, without, as he says, totally losing our attacking style.

Coleman's audacity in not closing games down in non-league times probably accelerated our move back to the league, winning games where most managers would settle for a draw. But we never close games down, don't think we know how to, although we can sometimes hold on tenaciously.

We are, and always have been, susceptible to quick breaks, almost more prone to concede a goal at our own corners, than score one. But the inability to defend corners and set pieces really stands out in my mind, free headers especially.

As Phil says, we have to evolve our game plan, I would certainly put forward an argument for Rocky as a capable defender at this level, alongside Roberts, but always feel you need at least 3 decent centre backs on the books.

Having a defensive coach could be a better use of our limited resources, to get the best out of what we have.