Areas to improve

LeixlipRed

Think a hall would be best. You'd need a pretty powerful stereo to hear it outside over voices and stuff. Anyone know of any halls in the city centre you can book?

homerjay2005

is there a charge involved? as in, is it just a case of us turning up with a chart, speakers and a cd player or is there a proper set up that does this?

maybe we could rent an indoor hall next week?

no word back on the friendly next week by the way...

Fatmag

St Benildus has a sportshall that would be ideal for it, We used to play indoor soccer there. Its in stillorgan but only 5 mins walk from the kilmacud luas stop.

LeixlipRed

Sounds good!

FrankGrimes

This is not a problem that suddenly sprung up last night or the game before - it's something that we have been dealing with for 5 seasons so unless there was a drastic change last night to a situation where we had throwers that were fully in control of the situation and were taking command and giving instructions to receivers but those receivers were ignoring the instructions, the points I made above still apply.

You can throw to a receiver 5 yards away without fouling no problem - bend your back and realease it from behind your head and its a perfectly good throw-in, but yeh most of the time it should be going further than 5 yards.

"anybody can throw a ball for gods sake" - watching our games sometimes I'd say a neutral would rarely agree with that.

And it most definitely does not balance out - you're looking at it very narrowly by just counting foul throws, the point is that even on the throws we don't foul we rarely win good possession. Other teams build good platforms from their own throw-ins (and there's even one team that use them as a great attacking option), we rarely do.

There are definitely things the receivers can do to work harder to get into space to make it easier for the thrower to pick them out so there's plenty of room for improvement there. But I really don't think any neutral watching our games from an objective viewpoint couldn't come to the conclusion that the main cause of the problem is the quality of the throwing.

dfx-

I think fitness is a waste of training if we can get the numbers. I'd suggest an attack v. defence style session where fitness is put into practical action.

Frees, corners, throws, organisational shape, set-piece delivery and maybe even develop something different or a common target for our own set-pieces. There's talk of keeping the ball low so we need to be able to develop an understanding on the ball. Alternatively with a high ball, the second ball might be important

There's lots of teamwork and on-the-ball stuff that people can't do by themselves compared to fitness.

*Ten minutes of penalty box defending/attacking with the first choice back line, then add in one substitute
*Midfield practice through balls to strikers and defence practice anticipating them/clearing them/covering them
*Catching/Punching practice
*Defensive and attacking set-ups for frees.

Even watching the final last night, Microsoft panicked at 2-0 under an aerial bombardment and they looked all-at-sea in terms of dealing with it and clearing it. Despite looking fit.

Baggly

homerjay2005 wrote: »

is there a charge involved? as in, is it just a case of us turning up with a chart, speakers and a cd player or is there a proper set up that does this?

maybe we could rent an indoor hall next week?

no word back on the friendly next week by the way...

We can do this by ourselves no problem.

Fatmag wrote: »

St Benildus has a sportshall that would be ideal for it, We used to play indoor soccer there. Its in stillorgan but only 5 mins walk from the kilmacud luas stop.

That place in Stillorgan sounds good. Maybe you could pass on a number to me or give them a call yourself, if you have been in contact with them yourself, when we decide on a day of course.

dfx- wrote: »

I think fitness is a waste of training if we can get the numbers. I'd suggest an attack v. defence style session where fitness is put into practical action.

Frees, corners, throws, organisational shape, set-piece delivery and maybe even develop something different or a common target for our own set-pieces. There's talk of keeping the ball low so we need to be able to develop an understanding on the ball. Alternatively with a high ball, the second ball might be important

There's lots of teamwork and on-the-ball stuff that people can't do by themselves compared to fitness.

Fitness is not a waste of training. I mean, if fitness wasnt a problem, we wouldnt be saying it needs to be addressed, and addressed by the team. Ill agree that we need to talk about what type of football we wanna play and maybe work on set pieces, but i would say these have equal importance. In fact is it not the point of these friendlies to achieve what you mentioned...

dfx-

Ok, it's not a waste of training, but I think if we can get the numbers together, it's much better put into use in practical defensive/attacking situations.

The problem with the pre-season has been so many new players and so many switches and changes that no organisation has been developed beyond any individual game. The first 10 minutes last night showed the cost of such rotation and the improved solidity as players got used to their roles benefited us greatly.

With so many new players, familiarity and anticipation of what each other is going to do with and without the ball is a big big thing.

helimachoptor

LOTP wrote: »

Fitness is not a waste of training. I mean, if fitness wasnt a problem, we wouldnt be saying it needs to be addressed, and addressed by the team. Ill agree that we need to talk about what type of football we wanna play and maybe work on set pieces, but i would say these have equal importance. In fact is it not the point of these friendlies to achieve what you mentioned...

some good points DFX, we are all decent players are are playing for the most part better as a team with each game. But again communication is needed on the pitch. For example if we have a corner they the opposition will have usually 2 strikers, that should leave one of our full backs with a bit of space to move up and and chip the keeper:D or whip a ball in from a clearance. The keeper or centre half should be calling this.

Again for last night i tried a few balls into the box in the air which were cut out but once the lads made it clear they wanted it on the ground we started making chances.

dfx- wrote: »

*Ten minutes of penalty box defending/attacking with the first choice back line, then add in one substitute
*Catching/Punching practice
*Defensive and attacking set-ups for frees.

Even watching the final last night, Microsoft panicked at 2-0 under an aerial bombardment and they looked all-at-sea in terms of dealing with it and clearing it. Despite looking fit.

Trying to get people out for training might be hard (i'm not sure how much success you lads have had in the past with it)

Catching and punching needs to be better, dfx if you come for a corner with fists out most people aren't going to try and stick their head on it especially if you scream when going for it. Also if a through ball is played you need to be out quicker rather than letting the defender try and clear it up, take our guy out, we dont mind.

for some reason the opposition seems to always have a free man though last night it was better, full backs on posts and then CBs direct who is marking who in the box who is to keep an eye on the potential runners. DFX you could also do this.

We got men on their keeper last night which always increases the chances of a goal, this should be done for every single set piece and in return our keeper should be protected from this.

Baggly

helimachoptor wrote: »

We got men on their keeper last night which always increases the chances of a goal, this should be done for every single set piece and in return our keeper should be protected from this.

If im not taking it, ill be doing this.

Surely we can do both though. The plan, as i understand it, is that people are still responsible for their own fitness training; we are just doing the bleep test as a benchmark ( and only once or twice a season at that). Plenty of time for the training listed above. Provided you can get people to training.

dfx-

Again good points helimachoptor. My main point is if we can get people out, we should look to use it for more than fitness. LOTP, no problem with the two..just the way I had been reading it that fitness would be the sole focus.

homerjay2005

so, bumping this thread...tonight was officially supposed to be half way, but the postponements have meant we missed 3 games.

im happy with the way things are going, if we said we would be second after 7 games and 1 game in hand +1 point off top, at the start of the season, we would have taken that.

this thread is about areas of improvement and i think we have met those so far. our defence is solid and we have used the same back 4/5 for all our wins. this is vital and we have been blessed so far. the fact that we have the joint best defence in the league testifies that. we also have been defending better, not just the back four, as a team. fitness was another topic and we are ok on this aspect. we are creating chances too aplenty, but maybe not taking as much as we should.

only disappointing aspect for me is that we are better than this and are making games very hard to win. however, we have had a bit of luck and thats good. we just need to work that little bit harder cos we have some super players and play good ball. tonight wasnt pretty but job done, as has been the case in every game.

lets take it on from here.

LeixlipRed

Fitness has definitely improved. I haven't been as fit as I am now since I was 16 or so. Mark in the middle as well has improved us on that count too. Gary is very fit as well.