Guardiola to Bayern

The Franchise wrote:If you have a plan B which is so good, make it your plan A.

Cant believe this myth still exists

Definitely a myth

But when "Plan A" has the potential to be so impotent offensively as well as exposing defensive weaknesses you can't blame people for suggesting that they play differently.

EDIT: Oh I guess trying to get players sent off can be considered Pep's plan B. Problem is he doesn't have Busquets on his team any more with that subtle skill. Instead Ribery and Mandzukic tried to provoke fights all night

Mr Nick09 wrote:but when he whooped the whole of europe with only one plan that wasnt an issue was it? Coaches are very much like players i think. Some have unstoppable skills they will go to all the time, and most of the time it will work, like Robben. Some only specialize in some aspects of the game and try to be the best at it without concern for other parts of the game. Others try to become as well rounded as they can, they try to develop many skills.

Managers are like that, Guardiola is just at the very extreme of the guy who thinks one way, and maybe because he won so much with barca, is now convinced it's the only way for him. If he had struggled, maybe he would have learned other things to compensate.

To me the biggest challenge of pep, and potentially what will ruin him, is the way he phases out the players he doesnt want anymore. Because that might  include the likes of Schweinsteiger, Ribery/Robben, Kroos...

The turnover was probably the biggest weakness of this bayern team if i look back, players never settled into roles and that hurt them the most at the most important moment of their season. At barca he had a very entrenched first xi that pretty much never changed in big games.

That indeed is something I thought as well. He isn't as souvereign dealing with rotation as Jupp was.

With Pep I felt that rotating/letting players play different positions more often than not made them insecure.

Bayern got killed by counters though..i dont know what you are talking about. Pep got outclassed tactically by Ancelotti...Always 2 vs 2 situations formed, bale and Ronaldo vs average defenders like Boeteng and Dante there was only one outcome.

Ribbery and Robben ball hogging also caused the passing to become slow paced. They were trying to beat FB's one on one instead making quick passes although Ancelotti clearly gave no space for Bayern to play in the hole.

Ancelotti owned Pep and Bayern currently looks like a poor imitation of Barcelona with out Messi,iniesta and Xavi.

@Hapless, your assumption is that if you were in form you would have won without question?

you are asking the wrong questions, or worse, reaching the wrong conclusions. Ancelotti completely outwitted Pep. The fact that you added Muller in the second game meant that you left piggy and kroos alone in midfield, which is where we applied pressure and pushed a lot higher than in the first game.

Your form werent great as of late, but the way carlo checkmated you was brilliant. And shame on you for reaching the most important part of the year with such poor form, that's not the stuff of champions.

Plan B is not a myth.  It doesn't mean that you change your system necessarily if your system is very specific...  but you can make personnel changes that make you execute your system in a different manner.

For example, instead of having Kroos and Piggy in the midfield where it forced Alaba and Lahm to be overly conservative out of fear of the counter...  but Javi Martinez in there and ask him to play a lower/covering role.  That frees up one of your fullbacks to attack more.

Another example is to play Goetze as the false 9 obviously.  Pepe-Ramos have issues against quickness, athleticism and skill.  They have absolutely no issues with defending a tall statue in the middle.  It would also allow Mueller to make better runs since Mandzukic isn't creating a traffic jam in the middle.

The great managers are able to have a couple of formations they can use and a couple of player lineups.  For example, Madrid can play a 433 with BBC or a 442 with one of BBC on the bench and Isco in there.  Comfortable in either formation.  Just depends what we need.  We've adjusted in-game with this type of change too.

Plan B is not a myth... it's just not something as drastic as people conceive it to be.  It's about adapting within your base scheme(s).

Mr Nick09 wrote:you are asking the wrong questions, or worse, reaching the wrong conclusions. Ancelotti completely outwitted Pep.

This, a million times this.
I'm sorry, but this wouldn't ever have happened to Don Jupp.

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:If you have a plan B which is so good, make it your plan A.

Cant believe this myth still exists

Definitely a myth

But when "Plan A" has the potential to be so impotent offensively as well as exposing defensive weaknesses you can't blame people for suggesting that they play differently.

EDIT: Oh I guess trying to get players sent off can be considered Pep's plan B. Problem is he doesn't have Busquets on his team any more with that subtle skill. Instead Ribery and Mandzukic tried to provoke fights all night

The problem wasnt the "plan"..and by plan I only assume people mean the entire way the team plans.

The problem was of the some specific tactics and the players within them.

The same players that just won a triple, the only thing that changed is the coach, and now the team sucks, and people tell me the coach did everything right?

I do believe in plan Bs honestly. Plan A is obviously the one you use all the time but sometimes there is a need to shake things up abit to avoid being predictable when things don't work

I'll give you an example. Carlo after the game against Bayern said that he knew Bayern played predominantly through the wing so he put extra emphasis on having our wide players track back. If anyone watches it closely Coentrao forced robben onto his left and DiMaria and Alonso were waiting there, so they gave him no time to cut in and shoot like he always does and forced him to pass the ball back or sideways due to the lack of options. In this instance it was important for Bayern to change their approach by targeting the middle of our team where we hadn't prepared to stale them.

Another perfect example of needing a plan b is Atleti who can do one thing only and thats to push up their fullbacks and cross, they fail that and they fail to score, it was obvious against Chelsea in the first leg when Mou used Willian and Ramires as two wing backs to stop those crosses and throughout the whole game Atleti kept putting in hopeful balls none of which worked

Mr Nick09 wrote:@Hapless, your assumption is that if you were in form you would have won without question?

you are asking the wrong questions, or worse, reaching the wrong conclusions. Ancelotti completely outwitted Pep. The fact that you added Muller in the second game meant that you left piggy and kroos alone in midfield, which is where we applied pressure and pushed a lot higher than in the first game.

Your form werent great as of late, but the way carlo checkmated you was brilliant. And shame on you for reaching the most important part of the year with such poor form, that's not the stuff of champions.

Where did I say anything coming close to that?

Of course Carlo's approach was brilliant, but it was because he made you so defensively strong, and we had no way through. We didn't have one good chance in 180 minutes.

Schweinsteiger and Kroos simply put are no defensive midfield, and they couldn't stop your high speed combinations when countering. Martinez should've been in there, or (which I'm at a loss to understand) Pep could've at least left Lahm there after he molded him into the role the whole first half season, only to revert back for the 'big games'.
Pep's lineups were all over the place sometimes.

Still - the goals came from bad defending, not from general system failure. Our toothlessness came from not running.
This was a combination of the worst elements of Pep's gameplan (i e intentionally taking speed out of the game, 'controlling', no 'end-to-end' game) together with a lack of overall edge by our players.

And you can't deny determination and intensity is so very important in such games, the little differences.

You haven't won the thing for ten years, we won it last year. That makes a difference, I'm annyoed that it does, but it's true.
If we hadn't had anything to prove, we wouldn't have won the treble last year.

This year we weren't as hungry and thereby started to overestimate our own quality.

The Franchise wrote:

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:If you have a plan B which is so good, make it your plan A.

Cant believe this myth still exists

Definitely a myth

But when "Plan A" has the potential to be so impotent offensively as well as exposing defensive weaknesses you can't blame people for suggesting that they play differently.

EDIT: Oh I guess trying to get players sent off can be considered Pep's plan B. Problem is he doesn't have Busquets on his team any more with that subtle skill. Instead Ribery and Mandzukic tried to provoke fights all night

The problem wasnt the "plan"..and by plan I only assume people mean the entire way the team plans.

The problem was of the some specific tactics and the players within them.

Agree to an extent. But that is just another way of saying that Pep tried to force a square peg into a round hole. As a coach you shouldn't be looking to exposing the weaknesses of your own players or worse asking them to do things they are not good at.

Mourinho is guilty of this as well. Forcing your players to adjust to your rigid extreme seems an impractical way to win football matches. Compare it to Ancelotti talking about "balance" for six months and I'm starting to think that Carlo may have the right idea.

Everyone in Munich...  fans, management, players, etc....  knew that Pep has a specific system and that there would be a revolution in playing style.  Everyone was also excited about it (i had my doubts because making Ribery and Robben play tiki taka is the height of stupidity to me).  So you can't blame Pep for being who he is...  he has a system and he needs to find the players that make it work, which is obviously not several of the current ones.  If you wanted to continue what Heynckes had built, then you should have kept Heynckes.  

Tiki taka is neither something you perfect overnight nor a system that every player can thrive in.

VivaStPauli wrote:The same players that just won a triple, the only thing that changed is the coach, and now the team sucks, and people tell me the coach did everything right?

Im sorry, did I say that?

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:If you have a plan B which is so good, make it your plan A.

Cant believe this myth still exists

Definitely a myth

But when "Plan A" has the potential to be so impotent offensively as well as exposing defensive weaknesses you can't blame people for suggesting that they play differently.

EDIT: Oh I guess trying to get players sent off can be considered Pep's plan B. Problem is he doesn't have Busquets on his team any more with that subtle skill. Instead Ribery and Mandzukic tried to provoke fights all night

The problem wasnt the "plan"..and by plan I only assume people mean the entire way the team plans.

The problem was of the some specific tactics and the players within them.

Agree to an extent. But that is just another way of saying that Pep tried to force a square peg into a round hole. As a coach you shouldn't be looking to exposing the weaknesses of your own players or worse asking them to do things they are not good at.

Eyy?

I dont think you understand what I am saying.

I am saying, the specific tactics on the night were not correct.

Allowing 2 v 2 at the back, no numerical superiority for example.

Only 2 midfielders, neither being a protector or a ball carrier. No interchanging of the lines, never did Bastian move from one zone of the pitch to the other to create superiority for example.



In terms of the players, he didnt have Thiago nor Gotze in the type of condition he probably would have liked and his further error was playing Muller and Mandz. His team looked very linear and rigid, un Pep like.

Not about asking them to do things they arent good at. Some of the players are very good at playing Pep's way..and I think people are being lazy to compare Bayern to Barca and come to the conclusion that he has turned them into a worse version of us.

That is lazy analysis. Bayern play differently and attack through different areas.

VivaStPauli wrote:The same players that just won a triple, the only thing that changed is the coach, and now the team sucks, and people tell me the coach did everything right?

What people are telling you that?

halamadrid2 wrote:I do believe in plan Bs honestly. Plan A is obviously the one you use all the time but sometimes there is a need to shake things up abit to avoid being predictable when things don't work

I'll give you an example. Carlo after the game against Bayern said that he knew Bayern played predominantly through the wing so he put extra emphasis on having our wide players track back. If anyone watches it closely Coentrao forced robben onto his left and DiMaria and Alonso were waiting there, so they gave him no time to cut in and shoot like he always does and forced him to pass the ball back or sideways due to the lack of options. In this instance it was important for Bayern to change their approach by targeting the middle of our team where we hadn't prepared to stale them.

Another perfect example of needing a plan b is Atleti who can do one thing only and thats to push up their fullbacks and cross, they fail that and they fail to score, it was obvious against Chelsea in the first leg when Mou used Willian and Ramires as two wing backs to stop those crosses and throughout the whole game Atleti kept putting in hopeful balls none of which worked

This is not plan B, this is just tactics.

sportsczy wrote:Everyone in Munich...  fans, management, players, etc....  knew that Pep has a specific system and that there would be a revolution in playing style.  Everyone was also excited about it (i had my doubts because making Ribery and Robben play tiki taka is the height of stupidity to me).  So you can't blame Pep for being who he is...  he has a system and he needs to find the players that make it work, which is obviously not several of the current ones.  If you wanted to continue what Heynckes had built, then you should have kept Heynckes.  

Tiki taka is neither something you perfect overnight nor a system that every player can thrive in.

I don't blame Pep for being who he is, I blame him for making an exciting team boring to watch. And to add insult to injury, he made that boring team also an embarrassment to watch.

Of course it was all foreseeable, but I get to shit all over Peps achievements, because I didn't like the signing from the beginning, started calling his defensive work shoddy at around match day two, and have been hating on his team selection since the end of last year's summer, I'm also not a Bayern fan, so I have no loyalty at stake, I just very much enjoyed Heynckes' Bayern play, and they also won a lot, while I disliked watching Pep's Bayern play, or rather play backpasses, who now also got absolutely embarrassed by a team that couldn't manage to score once in the Signal Iduna Park (ok, that's just me being mean) - he ruined Bayern, it was completely foreseeable, and his idiotic love for Tiago over players who can actually defend will hurt them even further next season if they don't sack the man.

Should've begged Heynckes to not retire, or thrown sacks of untaxed Euros at Ottmar Hitzfeld, imho.

If I sound butthurt, that's because Pep ruined an entirely good evening I planned to spend in the pub, watching football. And that evening turned into agony, and shame. And I even kind of like Real.

The funny thing of course is, that we lost the CL 2012 under Jupp just the same way: 'dominating', but not getting through.
17-0 (or something) corners, and then ONE corner where Drogba scores.

I think the differences between Jupp's and Pep's 'plan', and the difference in the way we play, are a bit overstated.

The Franchise wrote:

halamadrid2 wrote:I do believe in plan Bs honestly. Plan A is obviously the one you use all the time but sometimes there is a need to shake things up abit to avoid being predictable when things don't work

I'll give you an example. Carlo after the game against Bayern said that he knew Bayern played predominantly through the wing so he put extra emphasis on having our wide players track back. If anyone watches it closely Coentrao forced robben onto his left and DiMaria and Alonso were waiting there, so they gave him no time to cut in and shoot like he always does and forced him to pass the ball back or sideways due to the lack of options. In this instance it was important for Bayern to change their approach by targeting the middle of our team where we hadn't prepared to stale them.

Another perfect example of needing a plan b is Atleti who can do one thing only and thats to push up their fullbacks and cross, they fail that and they fail to score, it was obvious against Chelsea in the first leg when Mou used Willian and Ramires as two wing backs to stop those crosses and throughout the whole game Atleti kept putting in hopeful balls none of which worked

This is not plan B, this is just tactics.

Exactly, an entirely different approach to the one they are used to. I wouldn't call a plan b putting in entirely different players at all. Some players are flexible and so different ways of playing is possible with having the exact same players on the pitch.

The Franchise wrote:

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:

The problem wasnt the "plan"..and by plan I only assume people mean the entire way the team plans.

The problem was of the some specific tactics and the players within them.

Agree to an extent. But that is just another way of saying that Pep tried to force a square peg into a round hole. As a coach you shouldn't be looking to exposing the weaknesses of your own players or worse asking them to do things they are not good at.

Eyy?

I dont think you understand what I am saying.

I am saying, the specific tactics on the night were not correct.

Allowing 2 v 2 at the back, no numerical superiority for example.

Only 2 midfielders, neither being a protector or a ball carrier. No interchanging of the lines, never did Bastian move from one zone of the pitch to the other to create superiority for example.



In terms of the players, he didnt have Thiago nor Gotze in the type of condition he probably would have liked and his further error was playing Muller and Mandz. His team looked very linear and rigid, un Pep like.

Not about asking them to do things they arent good at. Some of the players are very good at playing Pep's way..and I think people are being lazy to compare Bayern to Barca and come to the conclusion that he has turned them into a worse version of us.

That is lazy analysis. Bayern play differently and attack through different areas.

Oh on the night the tactics were shocking, that goes without question.

What I meant was Bayern have players in crucial positions that don't look comfortable with their roles. Schweinsteiger is a bad defender in my opinion, Kroos isn't much better and both don't have the agility or industry needed to fill in gaps when they need to. I also don't think Thiago could have carried Bayern on is own in that sense and Pep just refused to use Goetze as anything other than a sub. As for the centre backs, Dante and Boateng looked lost at sea in both games and frequently made bad decisions when defending.

I'm not saying Guardiola's method or style is wrong btw, it obviously is one of the best when a team can pull it off, however I don't think this Bayern team can do that, at least not yet.

Hapless_Hans wrote:The funny thing of course is, that we lost the CL 2012 under Jupp just the same way: 'dominating', but not getting through.
17-0 (or something) corners, and then ONE corner where Drogba scores.

I think the differences between Jupp's and Pep's 'plan', and the difference in the way we play, are a bit overstated.

Come on, Vista, just has an anti Pep agenda..he isnt thinking with any logic here. That much is clear.

He is talking about poor Thiago defence and how it is ruining Bayern...after a game he didnt play and you let in 4 goals.

He has set up a situation in which, unless Bayern win the CL every year with Pep (despite no team ever going back to back in the history of the CL), he is failing. Even if he did win, he would complain because it is "boring".

Against Chelsea, though, you tried, and failed. And everyone was angry as f*ck after it. Against Madrid, you kind of tried to have possession, which you did, never really attempted to score, and got absolutely trounced.

The only thing I liked about Bayern were the first 19 minutes in the first leg, and even there, I was screaming at the screen quite a bit, in a vain attempt to convince the football gods to make someone shoot a ball in Ikers general direction.

Hapless_Hans wrote:The funny thing of course is, that we lost the CL 2012 under Jupp just the same way: 'dominating', but not getting through.
17-0 (or something) corners, and then ONE corner where Drogba scores.

I think the differences between Jupp's and Pep's 'plan', and the difference in the way we play, are a bit overstated.

No, wouldnt call it the same way like 2012... in That final you actually created lot of chances and GOmez choked all of them away. You were actually the better team despite losing on shoot outs, how is that comparable to the sterile 'domination' we saw this week? doesnt make sense.Not even one chance created over 180 minutes.

Madrid didn't PTB...  we played a base 8 defense with 2 forwards (Bale and Benz in the first game; CR7 and Benz in the second) who were up the pitch.  We also pushed our line higher in the 2nd leg until we were forced to drop back... also, 3 strikers and no DMs in the second; 2 strikers, a converted AM and no DMs in the first leg.

Massive, massive difference with how Chelsea set up in 2012.

Also, in 2012, Bayern created all the chances and couldn't score while Chelsea scored one of its rare attacks.  Madrid created the most dangerous situations by far over Bayern.

Possession means nothing.  What you do with your possession is everything.  Madrid managed to create far more chances and allow very few despite only have 35% possession...

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:

Zealous wrote:

The Franchise wrote:

The problem wasnt the "plan"..and by plan I only assume people mean the entire way the team plans.

The problem was of the some specific tactics and the players within them.

Agree to an extent. But that is just another way of saying that Pep tried to force a square peg into a round hole. As a coach you shouldn't be looking to exposing the weaknesses of your own players or worse asking them to do things they are not good at.

Eyy?

I dont think you understand what I am saying.

I am saying, the specific tactics on the night were not correct.

Allowing 2 v 2 at the back, no numerical superiority for example.

Only 2 midfielders, neither being a protector or a ball carrier. No interchanging of the lines, never did Bastian move from one zone of the pitch to the other to create superiority for example.



In terms of the players, he didnt have Thiago nor Gotze in the type of condition he probably would have liked and his further error was playing Muller and Mandz. His team looked very linear and rigid, un Pep like.

Not about asking them to do things they arent good at. Some of the players are very good at playing Pep's way..and I think people are being lazy to compare Bayern to Barca and come to the conclusion that he has turned them into a worse version of us.

That is lazy analysis. Bayern play differently and attack through different areas.

Oh on the night the tactics were shocking, that goes without question.

What I meant was Bayern have players in crucial positions that don't look comfortable with their roles. Schweinsteiger is a bad defender in my opinion, Kroos isn't much better and both don't have the agility or industry needed to fill in gaps when they need to. I also don't think Thiago could have carried Bayern on is own in that sense and Pep just refused to use Goetze as anything other than a sub. As for the centre backs, Dante and Boateng looked lost at sea in both games and frequently made bad decisions when defending.

I'm not saying Guardiola's method or style is wrong btw, it obviously is one of the best when a team can pull it off, however I don't think this Bayern team can do that, at least not yet.

Schweinsteiger is a suspect defender imo also, which to me means he has to either play with someone more adpt defensively (Bayern dont have)..or the actual best way (considering the way Pep plays) is him in the pivot and 2 others ahead of him. Which Pep did not do, which is a mistake.

No one player can carry Bayern, you already know this. The point was they played a formation and line up which had no possibility to create overloads in defence and crowd out the counter attacks. Even with that, they let in 2 headed goals...something formation and tactics do not factor into.

Does Pep find it diffidult to bench the likes of Kroos and Piggy at bayern? because that's what i heard when he said today that next year he wont play as people want him to... it made no sense to start them together in that game. Maybe he got a call from Uli before the game...