I genuinely don't know what people mean when they say things like 'the tactics are shit'. So I'm going to have a go at explaining what I think, when I think about tactics (and how they are inextricably linked to strategy and selection), and invite comments.
Strategy
For me this is the broad overview of how we are going to go about how we might play, and it can take a number of forms. These things might be true for every game, but they might depend on who you are up against and how much of the ball you have. There is am overlap with 'values' and 'philosophy' here.
We might have a few broad brush stroke thoughts - we might use some, or all
- Make the pitch big when we have the ball, small when we don't.
- Sit deep and narrow, and keep the distances tight so that we can't get played through. Break quick on turnover.
- Play high, press tight, close spaces all over the pitch, try to turnover the ball up the pitch
- Match up one to one, track runs, and win battles
- Use the full width, get in crosses
- Get the ball wide, pull their shape, come inside into the spaces
- Go long, get them turned
- play up to the striker, who gets hold of it, lay off to advancing midfield to get up the pitch
- defending the break, first centre-half contact on the ball, second centre-half sweep behind
- Prioritise holding possession, moving the ball quickly to tire the opposition, and probe for openings.
- Prioritise attacking quickly, trying to score, and accepting a higher level of turnover and time without the ball.
...that sort of thing.
Tactics
Inside that strategic framework, there might be some specific tactics, to achieve particular things in the game. Directed against specific oppononets, or to utilise attributes of your team. Things like:
- load the left side, to isolate a runner on the far side against their full-back. Play out to a target on the left, switch the ball to a ball player in the middle, who hits a long diag inside the full back for the runner.
- Run the full-back to get them turned. Chop back to stand them - shot if they don't cover the line to goal, channel run and ball to that overlapping run if they do. First and second phase runs centrally for scoring options
- Early target man run behind the centre-halves, long diag to drop over the back of them, head to goal, or drop it back for 2nd run.
- Near post forward runs, for early strike, or miss to hit 2nd run over the penalty spot.
- Get Yatesy on to rough up and irritate the fancy dan on the oppo team.
- Striker run to pin the centre-halves, hit the grass wide and behind for the winger to attack.
Of course there's a blurry line between strategy (values), and tactics. Both can be informed, or fucked up, by selection.
Selection
This has an impact on how able you are to execute strategy and tactics. for example:
- You have good physical attributes in one winger, who is good without the ball, but has a knack of not coming out with the ball when you play it to them. You have another who is mustard on the ball, but gets knocked over by a light breeze, and is positionally terrible without the ball. Do you pick the first one, and hope the slim statistical return gives you an outcome, or do you pick the second for enhanced threat at both ends? Do you change your strategy/tactics to accomodate them, or do you ask them to do the job, and accept the imperfection?
- You have excellent defenders, but you have terrible backups. How much do you play them 'in the red zone' and through injury - bearing in mind that if you put in a backup the fans will moan that you are clueless, and get you sacked?
- You have three strikers, one has an excellent all round game, but can't score, the other two can get a goal, but aren't really footballers. Whatchyagonnado?
- You have two centre-halves, one can run, one can't. How high are you setting up on the pitch - bearing in mind the further up you go, the more space in behind? Oh, factor into this that your goalkeeper can't catch - so the closer you set up to him, the more chance of seconds.
- What areas of the pitch are you pressing the ball in (loss of shape), and what areas are you setting up in - Bear in mind you are playing at a level largely against faster players, who can pop the ball around you, and have quality to hit the spaces.
- Midfield, you need competition around the ball when without it, but also quality on the ball when you get it...and you need to join up with attacks, because the forwards (largely) can't score. How do you square that circle with a balanced selection? If you pick more threat (at both ends) how do you cover without the ball?
Ultimately we have to play football, because more established teams have accumulated better athletes at the level. We can't play process football, because we don't have the best collection of physical attributes in any given game. That means decision making and touch are key. We are likely going to get overrun. But we will have a narrow window where we can get an early ball off into movement. That means playing on the edge a bit, and it means that it mostly wont come off - so you need to cover cheap turnover. When attacking a set defence we can pop it into the mixer, with likely low returns, or we can play it around either with no threat, or with a high likelihood of getting run off it and broken against. No particular evidence that either way yields much of a return.
Of course this is just a set of examples, and is not comprehensive or coherent. My personal view is that the more that can be addressed with 'values', and leave on the ball decisions in the moment to (what are largely) good players, the better. The more that you stray from these general values, the more that can go wrong 'in game'. Compared with most of our oppostion touch, pass, and movement, have to be spot on to gain an advantage...and they probably wont be most of the time. Of course in Europe where our balance of attributes is generally higher than the opposition the dynamic is often reversed.
So for me 'tactics' is a big jumble of all sorts of competing considerations. What is it for you? When you say the tactics are shit, do you mean that, or the execution, or that our values are wrong? When you don't like things that happen when we are pointing one way, are you thinking about the impact of doing something different when we are pointing the other way? What is the magic solution that means we win all of our games? - and these things will always be levelled against a manager unless they do.
Pep is the best manager, because he has the best tactics, yes? So if we played the same tactics when we played them, would we get the best result? (trick question, of course not, we would get bummed) So can you see that the best tactics, are no such thing? It depends on the attributes at your disposal, and who you are playing against. Managers are often accused of being 'negative' and losing because of that, and the plaintive cry goes up that they are useless, and need to be replaced....but is it possible that was actually a good result in the sense that it was less bad than it might otherwise have been? This is not a level playing field. There is not one unit of player that is the same in all cases. Football, generally, is about putting together the best collection of players, and letting the results attrition themselves out. What makes it beautiful is the lumpy statistical nature of the goal and it's impact on a game (though as much as possible has been done to the laws to keep the playing field uneven and the advantage with the more expensive, where aquired for the appriopriate value, squads - such that that attritional advantage wins out more often than not).
