In reply DV .. why did he change the side?
Because hes not a good manager .. nice bloke .. crap manager
This "never change a winning" side bollocks is exacty that ...bollocks.
Take a look at the Prem.....see all those clubs at the top, they win week in week out..change the team almost as often.
Most successful club side this county's ever seen....Bob Paisley would drop a player from a winning side like a shot if one of his top players came back from injury. So would Clough, so does Ferguson.
Face it we're down, not because the manager's coaching isn't cutting it, but because the squad is basically a bit shit. And that happens when you cut the wage bill to the bone and have a transfer kitty of fuck all.
Clough had the same team out at Derby County week after week. Cloughie seldom changed that team,.... Hector, O'Hare, McGovern, BasTodd, etc. He did change his Forest Team personnel to win the European cup the first time, but the team structuredidn't change.
Liverpool and Derby had particular styles and systems. If the changes were made, the players did the same job as the players they replaced. The nucleus, and methodology of these sides didn't change throughout a season. Clough played 4:4:2 without fail, home or away for league games. Swindon Town won promotion and the League Cup, with a teriffic system ahead of it's time, it was basically 4:5:1, with Peter Noble the loan striker. John Smith was inch perfect and let the ball do the work. Joey Butler had the holding role, and Roger Smart just about invented "work rate". They didn't need two strikers because they had a winger who was one of te best finishers to ever put on football boots. They only played 4:4:2 after signing Aurthur Horsfield.
The point is that you can change the team around, but the structure and cohesiveness need still to be maintained. Players need to play many games with their team mates to gain understandings. Rogers knew exactly where Noble was going to arrive for a header, I am not so sure about Horsfield, who ended up being a decent center half.
Finally, Premier League footballers are Premier League for a reason. They are told what job to do and they do it. So changing the personnel around might work these days for a top team because they are well coached and skilled enough to maintain the system, but there's a snowball's chance in hell that the current Swindon players can cope with formational and tactical changes that occur more often than a whore's drawers going up and down on a Saturday night. So I suppose I am agreeing with you about the standard of the players, but you cannot expect to get results if you don't have a system that the players understand and are capable of complying with. Not playing exactly the same starting eleven that played on Monday, and not playing the same formation was rather questionable in the circumstances. At least they would have had an idea who was going to track back and cover a Brentford player who ran eighty yards thinking he must have been after hours on the training ground. With 3:4:3 and a unique starting eleven, they evidentially didn't know where the f*ck their team mates were, and whose job was to do what.
