Question about Brian Laws

[Guest Theboylangers]

I was at Hillsborough, but I was too busy paying attention to our appalling defensive display to take notice of the football you were playing

Missed the game at Turf Moor, but it's become customary this century for you to batter us at our place. I had the misfortune of witnessing a relegated Sheff Wed side stick 7 goals past us.

I genuinely like Burnley as a football club, and having visited the town many times can vouch for how fanatical their supporters are.

I hope Laws keeps them up but their impressive early season home form is starting to tail off and their away form is woeful. As we all know, our away form whilst under Laws was also dreadful and I can't see him turning that round for them.

They'll probably get a few good home wins with Laws's undoubted ability to get the players up for a massive game.

Overall, I think Laws was a reasonable manager for us but I was never his biggest fan. Some good times, some bad - maybe a few more than the good, but in all honesty, I don't think I'd swap our manager for Burnley's.

[gabbywokingowl]

Laws is not the worst manager in the world and will probably do ok for you initially (new manager syndrome) but in the medium term watch out the defence playing like they've never met before, left footed players playing on the right & vv, general lack of any movement in midfield, your strikers getting isolated with balls humped up to them and mind-numbing substitutions if the team ever look like they're starting to get into gear.

[markcurtains]

You'll probably beat Blackburn next time you play them. (I would be hoping for this no matter who your manager was)

[shandypants]

Good points:

Passionate (extremely. he feels every defeat and seems to be at one with the community and local fans)

Open footballing style (at times). He does like to try get the ball down and play, though this season his signings and odd tactics really have stifled this

Good knowledge of the game. Uses prozone a lot. Makes sure he has dossiers of opponents and has stat after stat on each and every player

That's where the good ends I am afraid

Bad Points:

Tactically naive. very inflexible with tactics. Has one rigid system of a defensive 442, with a central midfielder (defensive) on one wing and one attackive winger on the other.

He also tried a loan striker, but did not play the midfielders and wide men correctly, so that one loan front man was left exposed and un-supported

Substitutions. He is really ineffective at making changes to try influence the game. He rarely 'goes for it' when behind and does not know how to chase leads, or hold onto them

Favourites. Brian will unfortunately develop favourites. He picks them week in, week out until they become complacent. They lose their edge as they know any performance will do, yet still remain in the side

Finally..... transfers and signings. Don't get me started. He has made one good signing for us, Lee Grant on a free.

He has spent what little money we have on absolute trash. This is the main reason why Wednesday fans are amazed he has got the job

Bought Franny Jeffers for £800,000 on 9k per week, he has scored 4 or 5 goals in 3 years.

Spent £400,000 on 2 strikers, who again have found themselves benced, out of sorts, or just not good enough and rarely look like scoring 5-10 goals a season.

Loan market - this season, during our bad spell, he brought in Warren Feeney and Tom Soares, as he said we needed to freshen it up and get some more options in up front.

He then sends the fans favourite 'Sodje' out on loan, citing a lack of match fitness..... then, he does not play the loan signings for the first 2 or 3 games they are here.... unbelievable.

So, in summary, I am totally shocked Laws has been appointed, he is not the man who you need when money is tight, is not tactically cut out for the top flight, but will give you fight, passion and possibly some good football (if he brings in or uses the right players)

Spot on and I would also say that he seems nervous about taking that risk the could change the game. Too conservative in this respect. Always more or less like for like substitutions and never altered the formation away from defensive to attacking during the game.

Saying that, he is one hell of a nice guy. Unfortunately, nice guys don't always win. I really hope he does though.

[brian joicey]

The best three of which were sold - Whelan, Brunt and Bougherra.

eventually, but not before the matches that were mentioned as laws' best performances (leics away 4-1 and leeds away 3-2)

[Essix Blue]

All of that said, there's nothing else to do but back him now and pray our concern was ill-founded.

Exactly.

And most Wednesdayites will wish him all the best and hope he does well!

[Big Malc]

Good points:

attackive

GGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN..........

Nice to see you've toned it down a bit though.

To the OP - he's a nice guy. Start praying.

Edited January 13, 2010 by Big Malc

[rica]

He came in a turned us from a kick and run team (under sturrock) to a decent passing side.

He signed us some good players, esp given the crap budget he is working with (Gray, Potter, JOC).

HOWEVER in the last 2 months with us he appeared to run out of ideas. He has spent two years moulding a team he wanted and they didn't seem to know what to do with them tactically. I am surprised you have gone for him but he isn't as bad as many of the other posters have said. He just ran out of steam here (which happens to loads of managers after 2 or 3 years).

If you appointed Sean O'Driscoll you would have signed the best coach outside the Prem. He may have got you relegated though as at Donny it took 18 months for the team to start to understand what he is mumbling about.

[Mr. Chow]

i would take a cover to put over your eyes for next game kidda....we played good football for 45 mins then long ball for rest...just hope your team doesnt go 2-0 in the first half

[Bluesteel]

With some good players at the club when he first joined he took the shackles off (whereas Sturrock wanted everything quite tight) allowing Tudgay, Bougherra, Brunt and Whelan to express themselves and the club went on a run with no pressure on anyone.

His style works well as long as you have the personell to do it, Laws had to sell all of these players bar Tudgay and then rebuild with less money. Having said that some of the players he decided to spend his limited resources on have been very dissapointing, the names and reputations seem decent on paper but in reality have offered little.

The likelihood is with the likes of Eagles, Elliot, Blake, Paterson, Mcdonald et al he will let them "express themselves" and in the short term you will play some nice passing football. But as stated Brian doesnt always seem to know how to mix it up, he would occassionally try and stifle away teams wingers by playing a left back in midfield but that only made it worse, I think he realised at Wednesday that he just needed to attack, attack, attack.

This worked well at the start of the season as we kept the ball well, played some cracking football and scored a load of goals, yet looked very open at the back. However, it didnt matter as the strikers and wingers were confident. But when they lost confidence, Brian couldnt tighten us up and we were left playing an open attacking system without the players to pull it off effectively i.e a good anchor man and a real finisher yet he still persisted to watch us pass the ball around on the edge of their D to no avail and not really tackle anything.

I think he has good ideas but wasnt necessarily able to either get the right people in or made errors in choosing some of his players (although the experience of Miller and Purse seemed what we needed in the summer to be fair) and it just went stale. If you keep your good attacking players then I think he could do well for you to be honest.

By the end of his time here looking at his record other than in his first season when we had some actual quality he didnt get us to be very consistent with back to back wins (I think Deloitte have pulled your pants down a bit with their analysis) but you could argue that consistency for many teams requires ££.

Edited January 13, 2010 by Bluesteel

[WBridgfordowl]

It could happen that they don't win a game for the rest of the season. There must be a big malaise around the club following the departure of Coyle - is Laws the man to reignite the place?

Interesting times.....................

[Glaser]

GGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN..........

Nice to see you've toned it down a bit though.

To the OP - he's a nice guy. Start praying.

The word is used on Football manager !!!

[Will Kirby]

In our pomp under Laws we played some cracking football.

I'd say our biggest weakness under Laws was actually that we didn't have a Plan B when the passing game was neutralised by teams playing 'ugly', pressing football. We became very easy to play against when teams worked out we only had one way of playing...even if that one way was quite easy on the eye.

Pressing football isn't 'playing ugly', unless you think Barça play ugly! Defending is defending, attacking is attacking. There's nothing to stop a brilliantly skillful attacking side from rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in when they lose the ball.

[Owls2k]

I wonder what his first sub will be.

[TheGodfather]

Pressing football isn't 'playing ugly', unless you think Barça play ugly! Defending is defending, attacking is attacking. There's nothing to stop a brilliantly skillful attacking side from rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in when they lose the ball.

Maybe I didn't make that clear enough.

'Ugly' refered to long ball, physical football. Very 'Bolton-esque'.

Pressing football, as you said, doesn't necessarily mean unattractive football.

Two different types of opposition we very much struggled against under Laws. The United, Forrest and Port Vale games being perfect examples.

[Guest intercity0wl]

I wonder what his first sub will be.

I would guess he will go for a BLT or Egg and Prawn Mayo Edited January 13, 2010 by intercity0wl

[edmontonowl]

To the OP:

Brian Laws plays the type of football that achieves the lofty heights of 23rd in The Championship.

That should be all you need to know.

He can't motivate players or get results.

God help ya

[bobtheowl]

If you had asked that question on here at the beggining of the season you would have got completely different answers to the ones you are getting now, as it was generally considered he was doing as good a job as could be expected.

A nice guy who at times got us playing some good stuff as long as other teams allowed us to play, and did not push up on us

Personally i think his tactics could be somewhat baffling, playing players out of position ect, and his substitutions even more so. In the end with us in free fall and with the loss of the support of the fans our parting had to come.

Hope he does well for you and will be interested in the quality of player he now tries to sign with a bit of money available.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Good Luck Brian.

[Guest carlg]

He plays a sort of baffling, tacticless style of football designed to confuse the opposition.

It's very fluid. Watch out for his substitutions, and interesting choice of signing.

Don't give him any money to spend or you will regret it.

Apart from that, he's brilliant.

Spot on. Oh, and he's a bloody nice bloke!

[BRUCE LEE]

He came across as a simple, genuine guy.

Not sure he knew what was happening towards the end of his tenure, his obsession for Pro Zone stats became unhealthy and he certainly based his formation based on it.

His pessistence with certain favourates was baffling, Spurr being the main culprit.

Saying that you can't take away some of the fantastic results we got during his time with the club... i'll have fond memories of him to be honest, but i'm glad he's moved on.