Tag: offence

Big forward, little forward

When most teams play a front two, it comprises of a small quick guy (called the Number Ten) and a big guy (called the Number Nine). The convention is that when the team is defending, one of these two stays up ahead (just beating the off-side mark, wherever the opposition defence line is), while the other tracks back in order to help out with the defence. The worldwide convention in this regard is for the Number Nine to stay up front in anticipation of an attack while the Number Ten drops back to defend.

Liverpool, of late, however, have played differently. Their Number Ten (figuratively, since he wears seven on his back) Luis Suarez is the one usually left alone upfront when the team is defending, while the number Nine Andy Carroll tracks back to help out in defence.

The logic of this policy is two-fold. One, an additional big player coming back to defend means greater ability to win defensive headers within the box (think of it in terms of winning rebounds in basketball). Secondly, Liverpool under Dalglish have preferred a pass-the-ball-out-of-defence method rather than clearances. This means that when the offence breaks and a counterattack is to be launched, the ball is more likely to be played along the ground to the forward rather than up in the air. And Suarez is the more likely of the pair of forwards more likely to make use of that.

So what is the concept behind the conventional wisdom of leaving Nine upfront with Ten dropping back into defence? The typical strategy in English football is to clear the ball out of defence rather than passing it out, and the big number nine is well positioned to receive it upfront. The big nines usually also have the ability to ‘hold up’ the ball, to allow his team-mates to join him. The number ten, being quick, is able to quickly join the number nine in attack.

The other factor behind leaving the number nine upfront is that they are usually one-dimensional players, with the only abilities being to win headers and hold up the ball. They are either no good in defence, or have big strikers’ egos that prevents from joining defence effectively. Number tens, on the other hand are more skilled all-round and are more likely to come of use in defence.

In this sense, Carroll is not bad at defence, and more importantly he is young and out of form, which makes it easy for Dalglish to force him to track back while defending. So far, it seems to be working.

Teaching Music in Schools

How many of you actually enjoyed your “songs”/music lessons in school? Not too many, I suppose. Actually I don’t think more than a tenth of the students would have ever enjoyed these lessons. And I don’t think there is too much surprise in this given the kind of stuff that is taught in schools.

At some point of time during my schooling, we used to have three (!!) “songs” classes during a week, each handled by a different teacher who would teach songs in different languages. The greying guitar-wielding fag-smelling Samson was a fixture, while the other two classes were handled by different people each year, none of whom I remember. One thing that connected all of them, irrespective of the differences in the nature of songs, was that most of the songs they taught were easily classified by us as “uncool” (back then, and even now I’d consider them uncool).

So earlier today I was trying to remember the different songs that had been taught to me in the “songs periods” in school, and the common thread was religion – irrespective of language. A disproportionately large proportion (yeah I love that phrase) of songs that were taught to us were about God, or doing good, or some such thing which could be approximated to a prayer. I remember that Samson also taught us some Christmas carols, but I would argue that even those can be classified as religious music.

There was no wonder that most of us dreaded the music lessons, and the only way we could look forward to them was to replace every significant word in a song with its opposite, or to simply replace it with moTTe (egg). No offence to any of the Gods in whose praise we were supposed to sing those songs but this was the only way we could make the lessons even remotely interesting.

I’m sure most of you would have also gone through similar experiences. And now consider this, courtesy askingfortreble:

Yeah that’s a bunch of schoolkids singing O Fortuna by Carl Orff. If you are done listening to that, then look at this – again being performed by students of the same school.

You heard right! They were singing Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters! Don’t you wish they had taught that to you in school? And made you sing it during the annual day? And if not anything else the bragging rights that would’ve given you later when you went to college? Or the coolness?

Thinking about it, Samson did teach us a couple of songs that were, in hindsight, cool. Ok we did enjoy them when he taught them to us also but they got lost in the midst of so many uncool songs that we never realized we knew such cool stuff. Harry Belafonte’s Jamaican Farewell and Dylan’s Blowing in the wind. Yeah, we learnt them in school but nobody told us they were cool.

Looking back, I wish we were taught many more such songs back then rather than having to substitute words of other songs with “motte”. For all you know, I might have actually taken up singing (ok that might be a stretch; even though I’ve learnt to play the classical violin for 6 years I hardly play it nowadays – ok that also maybe because most of the songs i know are uncool). Yeah I’m such a wannabe.