cragbankshrimp wrote:The opposite side of the coin is the way Derek sets his stall out not to get beat. This has obviously been more effective regarding promotion and staying in League one, but can be pretty painful to watch at times.
Absolutely not true about our promotion season. In the games vs promotion rivals, yes a few were in the mould of being tough to break down etc. But for the most part, it was incredibly exciting counter attacking football. Counter attacking doesn't necessarily equal negativeness/defensiveness.
I'm hoping the addition of Shaw at DM will give Adams a bit more confidence to field an extra attacking player instead of an extra DM, and we can offer a bit more agency when we win the ball back, particularly against weaker sides.
Funny thing with Robinson/Adams is while they had quite different methods, the end product wasn't too dissimilar - low possession, counter attacking, emphasis on pressing, quite a lot of long/direct balls. It's an absolute myth that Robinson was trying to get us playing champagne tiki-taka, albeit one I think he liked to perpetuate.
The football played under Robinson between the signings of Bedeau/Carson and him leaving was superb. Exciting, creating chances, squeezing times higher up the pitch (Bedeau/Carson helped enable this I think), counter-pressing. We deserved more points from games like Gillingham and Bolton. Had he stayed there was a good chance we would have stayed up if those performances had continued.
Worth remembering the huge dip under Adams before he got a set-up really tied down that suited the players and his methods, and consequently we had that streak of form with three wins that basically kept us up.
Main issue for both of them has been coming into squads that needed lots of work to get them to suit their methods, and it taking a while to sort that.
They've both got differences, but like most managers they work best when they're able to have a group of players that can really carry out their instructions and suit the style they want to play.