"WHAT was he writing in that bloody notebook?" "His resignation letter I hope." That was a snippet ear-wigged in the B&Q builders yard today. It was the third time in two days I had heard the same conversation. It seems that a broad layer of Boro fans have neatly moved the focus of England's traditional need of a scapegoat to explain failure from pantomime villain Ronaldo to their former hate-figure Steve McClaren via Rooney and the departed Swede.
McClaren is coming in for a retrospective mauling from still hostile Boro fans (and a pre-emptive one from some soon to be hostile England ones) for the heinous crime of writing notes in the technical area during the ill-fated Portugal match.
The die is cast. This secretarial stupidity has given the critics a stick to beat him with before he even starts the job.
The messageboards, the phone-ins, the tabloid poison pens were full of barely disguised bile, infuriated by this brazen act of post-it note posturing. Even the normally line-toeing sycophant John Motson got in on the act: " he's preparing his shopping list," quipped the sheepskinned self-parody. That's rich coming from a man who couldn't function without a wheelbarrow full of ring-binders overflowing with ever more tenuous and opaque facts and stats. ("And that's the third time I have criticised Motson in this campaign, the most since 1998.")
Scribbling as the action unfolded is being presented as somehow a failing, an admission of managerial bankrupcy and an invitation to ridicule. Why? That is lunacy. And ignorant. Keeping tabs on the way the game is shaping up seems not only perfectly reasonable but desirable to me. How can the bench make the correct strategic decisions if they are not aware of every single subtle tactical nuance of the game?
The notes being scribbled down are about which opposition players are taking up what positions at free-kicks, how particular players are pushing into dangerous areas, which ones are causing problems and which ones are making mistakes. You can only prepare so far before a game based on what you expect the opposition to do. If they do something different then you need to be able to communicate that quickly and effectively to your players using easily recognised examples of on-field action. "He's done X twice; next time you do Y."
Spotting a tactical switch by the opposition quickly could be decisive. If you miss a change in tempo or shape it can cost a goal. It can cost the match. Identify it swiftly and you can nullify the threat before it hurts, change your own shape to counter it and possibly take advantage yourself if the change has left them weak in some areas.
Most top teams now use on-going in-match information analysis. It is of vital importance that you know exactly what the other team is doing and how you are coping with it. That is why so many managers sit in the stands for the first half. That is why Big Phil Scolari has a magnetic tactics board in his dug-out.
Every knows about Prozone, the computer programme that tracks the movement of players and ball to show trends in the game and pin-point strengths and weaknesses in teams and individuals. It may be bamboozling to us laymen (and to Terry Venables too if the early days of ITV Premiership highlights were anything to go by) but shrewd operators can devine tactical gold. It would be folly to ignore such data. You don't need to make a fetish of it but even old school bosses recognise the value of such a tool. Taking notes is a low tech equivilent to Prozone.
If anything the critics should be demanding the end of something as subjective as one individual's notetaking. The speed of the game and the physical impossibility of watching all 22 players makes the McClaren method flawed. In truth there should be someone in the dugout with a laptop communicating with a Prozone analyst in the stands.
Of course, information is not all. It is how it is used that is the important thing and instinct, philosophy, judgement, nerve and luck all have their part to play in turning knowledge into a successful tactical intervention. But having the information is a powerful weapon that can be decisive in winning games and to reject it is stupid. And to use information gathering as a stick to beat someone on the basis of personal animosity is stupider still.
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