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The Chappers Blog - June 20th

I wonder how Roman Abramovic is feeling this morning. Probably quite content as he is very rich and will have woken up next to his stunning girlfriend. However I wonder if he is having doubts about his appointment of Big Phil.

Now this isn't a knee jerk reaction because Portugal lost to Germany although this little blog has been prompted by them going out last night. All through this tournament the Portuguese have looked awful at the back despite having in my opinion the best centre half in the Premier League in Ricardo Carvalho. Bosingwa has looked like a very good full back as well, particularly when going forward, Add to those two, Real Madrid's Pepe and it is not as if they have lightweights at the back. However they have looked disorganised and unable to defend set pieces. Surely that comes down to coaching? It is all very well having free flowing players but you still need some kind of organisation. Brian Clough was once asked what he wanted his players to do when defending corners and he replied 'head it away' and attacking corners? 'Head it in' was the reply. You can't argue with the sentiments but the players still need to know where to stand and where their colleagues are standing to perform even the basic of tasks.

One of Big Phil's assets is that he isn't afraid to make substitutions to change the course of a game. It is a fair point but you could argue that as his teams are always sent out the same way from the start that he needs to make those changes. Joachim Low tactically outclassed him last night by sending Germany out in a 4-5-1 formation. Bastian Schweinsteiger on the right forced Paulo Ferreira backwards so that he couldn't get forward to support Cristiano Ronaldo. And by playing 3 in the middle of midfield Michael Ballack had a more flexible role that he reveled in. As I understand it a lot of Germans always thought Low was the power behind Jurgen Klinsmann at the 2006 World Cup and the more you see of Germany the more you can believe it.

I am a massive geek when it comes to formations and coaching and we touched on it on the podcast with Dean Windass. He is doing his coaching badges at the moment and told me there wasn't any one manager in Euro 2008 that he would model himself on. I would suggest that along with Low, Slaven Bilic and Guus Hiddink have been the others to impress me with how they set their sides up. Yet only one of them was linked with the Chelsea job and that was Hiddink and that was a lot to do with his links to Abramovic and Frank Arnesen.

What do you think big clubs are looking for in a manager nowadays. Do they want figureheads who are good motivators like Scolari or should they be looking for the master tacticians and coaches? Chelsea had both in Jose Mourinho and they think they have another Mourinho in Scolari. I would suggest that Low is closer to Mourinho than Big Phil. Not just as managers but also they both look good in a suit.

That makes me sound like my gran so I will leave it there and go back to championship manager to work on some more formations.

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