Lessons To Be Learned?

Lessons To Be Learned?

England scored early doors. Great goal, well worked, defensive mix up, but a class finish. One nil up and what they wanted – the home side and slight match favourites (according to the bookies) on the back foot immediately. For twenty minutes England looked confident and passed the ball around with ease and almost got a second. With me so far? Twenty five minutes in. Star striker gets injured, star striker that all the press hype has been about. Star striker that has scored most of your goals so far bar one midfielder who has chipped in when it matters. Star striker is forced to leave the field to be replaced by another striker who has had good performances in the past and scored goals. Game plan changes and team goes on the back foot for the remainder of the game.

Forget the personnel involved but I have read this book time and time again. We do it all too often for my liking. We get a goal, we are in the ascendancy and then for whatever reason we start thinking that as the formation has changed we need to play differently. We sit back, we defend the lead and we hope for a break out. We resort to long balls, the midfield sits to deep, we give away possession all too quickly and we give the opposition the impetus. And what happens? Eventually we concede a goal. And when we conceded it we wake up and go back to Plan A and almost snatch a winner. For England read Swansea City too many times in the past.

The match in Lisbon should have had no bearing on Swansea City in reality other than the realisation that Frank Lampard is now one of the best midfielders in Europe. And we knew that could happen when we saw him here at the Vetch. But for me it did hit home that many many times we have played that gameplan that England found themselves sucked into. And too many times we, just like the English did, came unstuck by it. Sure they defended with bravery and desperation at times but when you allow the opposition to come at you for 70 minutes, law of averages almost says that they will snatch a goal sooner or later. And so it proved. For an early exit from Euro 2004 read two (or three) dropped points in the league. It becomes costly.

The ironic thing was that the star striker in the game I refer to (the one in Lisbon) had done little in the game itself and maybe it could have made the team stronger on this one occasion – we will never know for certain because of the sitting back.

But we can learn from it. We have seen what it can do and it is so frustrating when we do it ourselves. One of the things that maybe we should have the team watching is the 90 minutes from Lisbon time and time again. When you are on the front foot never give the opposition the chance to have you on the back foot. Go for the jugular. For those that have watched darts over the past 15 years you have the greatest exponent of that in Phil Taylor who never lets up on an opponent. At 5-0 up in the best of 11, you would nearly always back him to win 6-0 with ease as the front foot is there and he won’t let up.

There are lessons to be learned from Lisbon by us – ironic when you consider we weren’t even there!

Why not check out the latest Vetch Verdict on the BBC site?