THE WAY ….. `FORWARD`

Greetings Kankas and Kankies.

Most of you regular readers are well aware of my attitude to footie tactics, but for those of you who aren’t, then it is quite simple …… saldir saldir …… attack attack !

My Primary School Coach in North Berwick instilled this into us long before it was quoted by the late great Jock Stein.

Jock Stein was manager of Hibs, Celtic and The Scottish National Team and his philosophy was to build a team starting with a good goalkeeper right through to the strikers. Then he was quoted as saying ….. the only successful way to defend is to …… attack !

All well and good if you have the wherewithal to build a `dream team` which unfortunately we don’t have in Ankara. Jock Stein was fortunate in that respect and he built a team at Celtic with Scottish born players that went on to win The European Cup.

The same might be said of the present Hibs manager, Mixu Paatelainen, who in a similar situation to the Ankara teams, also has a limited budget. However, I had to `take my hat off to him` when Hibs travelled through to Glasgow to play Celtic recently and he was quoted as saying …..

“It’s one of those things where if I play a very negative game, with nine men defending and one up front, I would be criticised for being defensive. If however I am positive, and really want to take the game to our opponents, trying to win the game and putting goalscorers out there, have creative midfielders out there, I will be criticised again for only having a three-man midfield. “But this is part of the job, and one thing that will not change is I will remain being positive, I believe that playing negative football takes you nowhere – if you are positive, if you are brave and go to places like Parkhead with a positive frame of mind and have a good go then at the end of the day you win. “We always expect to do well - we have the confidence and belief that we can do well no matter where we are playing. There was much talk about our away form but I think we’ve slightly corrected that and started to produce results away from home. We want to keep that going, it’s all about your mentality and how you approach the game. Do you approach it in the same manner as you would at home? Regardless of who you are playing or where, you have to maintain concentration an focus on doing your job, every individual player needs to concentrate on their own job and collectively they will be fine.”

Not many team in Scotland have `the balls` to play away against Celtic or Rangers with THREE strikers in their line-up !

I’m encouraged that more teams are using this strategy these days in Turkey when they play away from home – Bursa, Kayseri and Sivas spring to mind.

It’s still early days for Unal Karaman of Ankaragucu, but perhaps he might come around to this way of thinking in the future when he finds a `young` midfield general and some `young` strikers to fire the bullets up front !

We Ankaragucu and Genclerbirligi fanatics always live in hope of better times to come !

All the best from Eski Kanka Jim