Verdibianchi - Comments

Yes, I realise teams adapt, and I don't believe in killer tactics. I like the puzzle, I like trying to find out how it works, how I can adapt and react too.

Think of it like a jigsaw where the picture changes every now and then but you have an idea of what the picture sort of looks like. You know the picture is of a cow in the field, sometimes he is lying down, sometimes he's stood under a tree, sometimes he's taking a huge dump and the fun comes in working out what the cow is doing and where he is. At the moment, I don't know if there is a cow. It's driving me up the wall.

I hear you. I'm not one of the bug conspiracy theorists, or from the 'SI have made it rubbish and stabbed us all in the back' school. There's logic at play, I always approach it like a puzzle to be solved and work out some sort of formula. I'm not talking killer tactics or anything like that, but I can work out that if I do A then B and C more likely than not will follow.

This year I'm clueless. I really can't find a way in. I can't get a consistent run, players form is all over the place, an instruction that will reap great benefits in one match will be disastrous in the next. I appreciate that things won't always work all the time, but I just don't see how a player can go from world class to toe curlingly piss poor to world class and back again in consecutive matches.

I try to fit the system to the players, the players to the system, a combination of both, I'll adjust the roles and def/sup/att bias, none of it seems to have any discernible logical outcome. It is now winding me right up. I don't understand how I can take a solid performing unit like Everton, play a side like Man City off the park, and I mean lay waste to them, and then in the next match have these titans of players reduced to the school playground and get an absolute tonking at the hands of Southampton.

I'm convinced the problem is with me, rather than the game, but I just can't find the key.

My real concern is the training, which I just don't get. It seems very superficial to me, and I can't see Ferguson strolling onto the training pitch and tell Rooney and co, 'well lads this week we're working on defending', it's just not credible, and I don't see how the training module effects the team.

What's especially galling is that in a multiplayer game with a mate, he's just stuck training on balanced, delegated match prep to his asst and just uses the preset 442 - he's doing quite well. But I don't want that, I like the challenge of analysing the squad, building a system that suits their qualities and minimises their weaknesses.

But this, It's got me completely stumped. Has anyone managed to get a handle on this?

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