Failing to learn from mistakes is this team’s downfall

Photo credit: Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 2.0

It’s been a topsy-turvy season to say the least. We’ve had flashes of brilliance from our attacking players, more than our fair share of nervy moments at the back, and a midfield that’s there one moment and then gone the next. Frustratingly, this was supposed to be the start of that second season where things clicked into place for Unai. His long-term training plans were finally supposed to take root and Pepe was supposed to be the final piece in that jigsaw that’s taken him so long to complete.

Unfortunately, things aren’t quite going to plan. We’ll support every one of our players to the end, but at some point you know that people have to be benched for the good of the team. Our captain being one prime example. Like Jordan Henderson at Liverpool, it seems that the captain’s armband means a guaranteed starting place regardless of form or consistency. What’s even more frustrating is that we see those flashes of brilliance that whet our appetites but, like a Swiss comet, they only come once every 2-3 games.

The team needs to get back to basics, play some poker (we’ll get to that later) and start learning from its mistakes. But first up, it’s got to be the manager who takes a look at himself.

The manager’s mistakes

We’re not quite sure what Kieran Tierney has done, but we are sure that he must start the next game. We said he should start against Sheffield United, but he remained an unused substitute even when we could have done with a little creativity on the left flank. This has been a symptom of Emery’s problem at the club so far – an unwillingness to take a chance.

How many times have we been screaming for a player who can run to the touchline and one such player sits on the bench unused? Or when we need a little more guile and creativity in midfield yet the most uninspiring player in our midfield ranks plays every minute of the match?

Emery surely has to analyze the matches and look back and think ‘perhaps that would have worked instead’. But then he repeats the same kind of mistake in the very next match. I’m not sure if it’s stubbornness, blind faith in the team he has chosen, or a fear that he’ll make the wrong decision. Whatever it is, it has to stop.

Unai is a good coach, but he’s not infallible and the quicker he realizes that he too can learn from his mistakes, the better. And speaking of mistakes…

What the defence can learn from poker

We know who we’d rather see on the pitch from these two

Photo credit: Wikipedia / CC BY 2.0

We mentioned poker earlier and with very good reason. It’s a game where mistakes can have dire consequences and, for this reason, poker players have learned to adapt. According to sports psychologist and poker coach Jared Tendler, poker psychology is not just about controlling your emotions, but also about learning to lose. Now that might sound like one of the oddest things to say about a football team, but bear with us – we’re going somewhere with this.

You see, what our friend Jared means by poker players learning to lose is that they accept defeat as part and parcel of the game. They know that at some stage they will lose, but rather than get downbeat about it, they simply take it on the chin and look at the entire experience as an opportunity to learn.

They analyze each decision they made throughout a losing hand of poker and then determine what went wrong. And despite what you might think, it rarely has anything to do with luck. They then use this information to improve their skills and up their poker game.

Simple, right? A pretty solid methodology for learning from mistakes right there and it’s super easy to implement. But you wouldn’t think that watching Lys Mousset standing unmarked in the box on Monday night stroking the ball in. Where were the defenders? Have they not learned from their previous mistakes?

It would seem not, but again this is down to the manager. Emery should be coaching these obvious errors in judgment out of his team. When a defender starts losing his aerial duels, he stays behind for extra headers practice. When a midfielder keeps getting shoved off the ball, he puts in the extra work in the gym to build up his mass. These are the simple rules of coaching that I imagine you’d find in one of those ‘coaching for dummies’ books. Unfortunately, none of these methods seem to be in use on the training ground.

Can we turn it around?

Okay, so we’re not quite in the midst of a crisis. We’re within touching distance of second place and we’re in way better shape than the likes of Man United. But there’s still this feeling that we’re seriously underachieving. The talent is there in the team, although perhaps not quite so much in defence, but if we’re good enough in the middle and up front, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Start playing Tierney in defence, bring Ozil in out from the cold (we might as well) and give Pepe a little more time to bed himself in. Take a look at how long it takes Klopp to bed in his players. Fabinho and Robertson didn’t play for months and it worked out well enough for them.

The thing is, we don’t need to turn things around all that much. We just need to start finding some consistency in our performances. We’ve had too many close calls or seemingly undeserved points. It’s time now to learn from our many mistakes of the recent past and start putting together a run of form. This can only be done by identifying the best players in our squad and playing them to their strengths. Something that Unai has either failed, or refused to do on a consistent basis for quite some time now.