TT BLOG

Chris Wade – @tufcchris

Chris discusses the Gulls

TALKING TACTICS

Tactics. Do they matter?

Everybody has their own view on the importance of all things tactics on a football pitch. Some people will have you believe that it’s 11 v 11 and who is better on the day. If your players turn up and perform, then how you set up is irrelevant. Play better and you win.

But I have always been fascinated in planning, strategy and implementation on the pitch. No teams set up the same and try and play in the same way, and never has this been better demonstrated than at Plainmoor in recent days. Aveley and Chippenham Town went about trying to take something from their trip to the English Riveria in completely different ways. How Torquay were then able to adapt their style to try and claim the points was the key.

Last Saturday at Plainmoor, Aveley arrived and were clearly here for a point. Their game plan was to frustrate, break the game up and eat some time up where they could. That was the frustrating bit. But they were also very organised and structured. They came with a clear intention to be solid, stay in shape and not be pulled around by attempts to play football around them. What followed was a game where Torquay tried to build from the back, but due to the way that they were closing down the spaces and following the yellow shirts around, the ball kept going backwards again.

This new look Torquay have showed how they don’t like to waste the football, and we kept trying to go back, recycle the ball and start again. But the way that Aveley narrowed the pitch meant that we ended up trying to seek space in wide areas. Crosses came into the box rather than being able to create anything. I don’t personally think that they deserved anything from the game, as their play was poor, too direct and lacked quality. But if you only score one goal, it only takes one moment of quality to peg the scores back, and that it what happened.

Fast forward three days to Tuesday night against Chippenham Town. Compare and contrast or what?! The Bluebirds came with such a contrast it was barely believable. They came to play football. Whereas everything had been long on Saturday, everything started from the goalkeeper and playing out from the back. But it is a high risk strategy. In a rarely seen tactic, they were happy to go 5 v 5 in their own back third. They wanted to play around us and beat the front press to get into the middle third and flow. They almost went 5-1-4 from their own dead ball. They then had the option of going long if the space had been closed. An extraordinary tactic that will both pay off and cost them goals.

What was their ultimate undoing was that they lacked intensity in a lot of what they did in the first 45 minutes. Their defenders did not engage quickly enough or tight enough, and the first goal was the perfect example. James Hamon’s long kick was chased into the left back area by Ben Seymour. He had time to control the ball, turn, run at the defender and deliver a cross that was nodded in by Lirak Hasani. The ease with which it happened should never have been possible. Engage him, show him wider and allow your mates in the middle to organise themselves. But they stepped off all half, and were second to most balls.

But the tactical way of football is that you can always change it. They changed their formation and structure to a back four at half time, closing the space in wide areas that Finn Tonks and Matty Carson had exploited so well in the first half. They were much more man for man in central areas, and consequently we couldn’t move the ball around them or though as easily or effectively. Thank said, we could/should still have had three more goals in the second half.

The ways that all teams approach the game of football is what makes it so interesting. You never know what comes next and how the next opposition will try and win the next game. That is what Paul Wotton is working hard on as I type.

What will Welling do at the weekend I wonder…..