Holding on to a 1 nil lead..
Holding on to a 1-0 score if a very fine balancing act Psychologically
Ireland...........................................Israel
1. Do we hold what we have............They are sitting back...ATTACK
2. Do we go for the jugular..............They are leaving hole at the back..ATTACK
3. Do we play posssession football.........We need to get the ball..
'we have the ball they cannot score'
In most cases, the winning manager does not have a policy, especially in our case where we scored so early. So in most cases when a team scores early the responsibility, falls to the captain or the 'leader' on the pitch. A small exception maybe a good goalkeeper pushing his team out. Funnily enough the same applies to the opposition.
The time then becomes an ever increasing factor Psychologically.
The losing team gets more desparate and the winning team becomes more rigid and gets tangled in an ever increasing self fulfilled prophecy, in believing that what it is currently doing is correct, "we winning, they are losing"
Option no. 1 above is the worse option for a winning team. They would have to be exceptional defensively to be confident, to the extent of a premiership team playing a Sunday league team. The main hole with 'lets hold what we have' is that luck plays a big role and bites you when you least expect it.murphy's Law. The biggest example is the losing team getting a last minute deflected goal or ball spinning unexpectedly in to the goal or the the linesman not sticking up his flag when the scorer was offside..Wim Kieft type goal.
Option no. 2 above is the next bad option for a winning team. They would have to be exceptional attacking team to be confident, again to the extent of a premiership team playing a Sunday league team. The main hole is that your defense needs to be as good as your offense. The biggest example is Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, they would score 3, but the opposition would score 4 !!
Option no. 3 This is what Ireland played against Israel. The trouble is that it plays the law of averages. This is where Ireland's logic takes a hit.If the ball is in our possession for 60 minutes, the Israelis have less chance to score, this is true, but it only takes a minute to score. So it would still leave Israel with 30 chances to score. Where we started to fall down in this possession footbal logic was that for the 60 minutes we had the ball we only used 10 of them to score where Israel used all 30 minutes !!!
Personally, what I believe is a combination of all 3.
With Option 3 being used the greatest.
Once we scored the Important thing was to ensure that the opposition did not strike back soon. Once 10-20 minutes of defending has passed after we scored, we then use Option 3 , with opportunities in there final third punished using option 2 this puts the opposition on the back foot and stops them building a momentum towards a pre half time charge, this is one of the most crucial things to do in a Psychological game especially away from home. For the 5 minutes before half time we slowly revert back to option 1
The second half should mirror the first, defend after their onslaught in the begining of the second half, play option 3, and slowly revert back to Option 1.
Attacking with vigour when in the final third. unbalances the opposition, they have to regroup, this takes time, this is where the odd serious attack can be worth 10 minutes of possession football.
This is where we really fell down in Israel, when we attacked, we got to the edge of their box, we stopped, put it into reverse and went back to the halfway line. Soon the Israelis realised that we were not even going to have a shot at goal, they pushed even more forward and we paid the consequence.
Never give 'the opposition' an even break.... Psychologically, this game effected ME, it took a while to stop me sulking about the result, but I am alright now.......... ;)
