How To Tell A Story

Hello everyone and welcome back!
I'm sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, to be honest, I had nothing of note to write about tactically and I still don't, but what I do have is a hilarious story. This story is consists of both the most awkward moment of my life as well as the most proud moment of my life so far. I hope you enjoy it!

As a Londoner, one of the major destinations of visit is Oxford street, especially in my case given that I live only 5 minutes away. Having gone to meet some friends and enjoyed a walk through the back avenues of the revered street, I decided it was time to return home, but in the blistering heat London is experiencing at the moment, I figured I should get a Frappuccino from my beloved Starbucks. Of course, the best location on Oxford street is the Selfridge's Starbucks and I duly made my way there.

Walking down the road and making my way to Selfridge's, blasting some Flux Pavilion through my headphones, I finally arrived at the main entrance of Selfridge's and entered through the revolving doors. Upon entering, I had to make my way through the perfumery in order to reach the escalators leading up to the Starbucks that held my delicious Frappuccino. However, as I was about to reach the escalators, I was stopped by a cologne saleswoman.

She seemed nice and appeared to be having a hard time attracting attention for reasons beyond my understanding, so I decided to give her my time. She asked if I would like to try on the latest release of some brand of which I wasn't familiar with and I accepted.

Having sprayed the cologne onto my wrist as standard, I decided to do the common courtesy thing of smelling my wrist, smiling and saying how lovely it smelt. I then decided to ask if it was possible to perhaps have a tester card with the scent in order to further help elongate the unnecessary small talk of cologne testing. With a smile, she immediately went to her back pocket, seemingly where the cards were located. Now, this is where the story truly picks up.




You see, as she reaches into her back pocket, it becomes clear that her trousers may be slightly too tight and she was having difficulty pulling out the cards. As a result, she began to concentrate hard and try to force them out which does eventually succeed. However, he concentration seems to take quite a significant toll on her facial muscles and unfortunately for her, her lips give way and she begins to drool. What was more unfortunate was that she managed to drool on the card she was offering me.

Now, in these sorts of situations, one of two things can happen. Either we both decide to ignore it, or we both acknowledge what happens in the most awkward way possible. By my own admission, my nature made it almost impossible not to react awkwardly and this was done through eye contact. We both stared very suddenly into each others eyes, analysing the movement to see how the other reacted. The worst part of this was that it must have lasted at least 20 seconds before one of us finally gave way and she apologized for the incident.

Now, usually in this sort of situation (not that it happens often... or ever) I imagine I would react in the same way as the man above me here. However, I had some wit and energy built up and produced arguably one of the greatest moments of my existence.


As soon as she apologised I immediately, without hesitation replied by saying:

Don't worry, it happens all the time

Thanks for reading everyone.

how many centre backs?

So I want to thank everyone for reading my first ever post, I'm really grateful to those who read and were interested in it.
I want to expand a point I made in my last post about Harry Redknapp confirming his desire to switch to a formation with 3 centre backs for the new season at Queens Park Rangers in lieu of his signing of Rio Ferdinand and - The increasingly likely transfer of - Steven Caulker. This would be a huge shift in style from Redknapps usual and traditional 4 at the back formations however this isn't unheard of from him.

It is rather well documented that he has done this before at times during his Portsmouth tenure as well as last season in the championship when midfielders were lacking in number. For me what makes this work is to have two centre backs who can operate as full back when necessary. This is in fact the case for QPR with Nedum Onuoha who has played at right back for alot of his career before his excellent transition to centre back upon the arrival of Redknapp at QPR, while on the left, Caulker has the pace and awareness to move out to Left back when necessary. The rotation allows for fluidity in motion as the wing backs can alternate in attacking.














As an example, if QPR were to play a back 5 of Traore, Caulker, Ferdinand, Onuoha and Simpson, the initial position of these players would be as shown on the image to the left.

















Assuming that an attack is taking place on the left hand side of the field, the formation would rotate as shown here, with Traore moving to an attacking midfield role and Remy moving out to the right (A position he can play) allowing Caulker to move to the left back position to reduce the danger of a counter attack as well as Simpson dropping deeper to help defensively.

This will rotate back to the original formation when defending with everyone back and when an attack on the right is necessary, Taarabt will move out to the left with Simpson attacking down the right and Onuoha moving to right back as cover.









The most interesting of these possibilities however is when attacking through the middle. This will be assisted by Rio Ferdinand's experience of playing in an anchor man role for Redknapp at times during his West Ham career. This could be essential when driving up the field through the centre as a play making centre back such as Ferdinand would be complimented by the two deep lying centre backs in Onuoha and caulker. This puts more bodies in midfield and allows for greater control of the pitch, which can be key when playing against teams set up to counter attack. Having Ferdinand play also opens up our own line of counter attacking play if he wins the ball from deep and charges up into that anchoring role. This is something Queens Park Rangers have lacked in the past and it could be the key to premier league survival.

Having 3 centre backs rotating week after week also limits the weaknesses of some key QPR defenders, namely Richard Dunne and Clint Hill, who some would suggest lack the pace required to survive in the Premier League. These two centre backs are rather famously slow and would perhaps be exploited in a 2 centre back lineup. But having them play with pacy centre backs who are willing to lie deep will benefit the style of defending of the slower players as they are always covered by the faster players and thus, can't be targeted as a weak point by attackers.

Bear in mind this is all speculative as I certainly don't have the experience of Redknapp as a manager and tactician but this seems like the most logical method of playing this formation.

With all this in mind, I do wonder how well other teams would fare should they decide to play like this with their current players. While it would take far too long to speculate this in a blog post, perhaps I will post it onto youtube as a video for my channel. If this is something you may be interested in, please do let me know so I can get to work on it immediately.

That is all for now though, hopefully you did enjoy this post and leave any suggestions you have as a comment for me. Not too sure how the commenting system works mind you seeing as this is still my first 24 hours of blogging.

Thanks anyway and this is me signing off for now, have a great day. 

My First Post

Hello everyone and welcome to my first ever blog post. I decided to start this blog because I have been a football fan for almost all of my life (I am 19 now by the way) and I have developed something of an interest in management and tactics. Having lived in England for almost all of my life, I have watched the sport develop in its home. This growth of popularity however, has led to a stalling of its tactical change, with many managers - especially British managers - Choosing not to adventure tactically, perhaps due to the financial costs of potential failure, particularly within the Premier League, or it could be down to the fear of this tactical change leading to unrest within the fan base.

Despite these issues, the rise of young(ish) managers such as Roberto Martinez of Everton, Mauricio Pochettino of Tottenham Hotspur, Brendan Rodgers of Liverpool and Gus Poyet of Sunderland, has suggested that British football still has the potential to change and perhaps become even more popular. This has perhaps been highlighted by a recent quote by Harry Redknapp suggesting that, having signed Rio Ferdinand for QPR and potentially completing the signing of Steven Caulker from Cardiff City, a change of formation to a 3 at the back formation may be necessary to accommodate the abundance of first team talent in that position. I don't think many people could ever imagine such a classically trained British manager to ever change from a standard 442 or 4231 to a 3 at the back formation and this could be the start of an important period in top level English football.

Nevertheless, I don't want to delve too deep into this just yet, especially given that this is my first blog post ever so I am just going to introduce myself to you. As I already said, I am a 19 year old university student, currently majoring in Mechanical Engineering in London. I have a level 1 coaching degree in Football and plan on taking my level 2 in the near future. I have supported my beloved Queens Park Rangers for quite a while now and have been a season ticket holder for the last 3 years and will remain so for a very long time hopefully. I am of Lebanese origin but have lived in England for 17 of my 19 years of life, with 2 years spent in Lebanon from 2004 to 2006 (we were evacuated during the summer war of 2006 back to London). Finally, I run a YouTube channel under the name: GameRager95 where I mainly play video games with an emphasis on FIFA. If this does interest you, please don't hesitate to search for me on YouTube.

Other than that, I want to thank you for reading today and hope you continue to do so in the future. Have a great day everyone!