In my last blog, I talked about how transfer dealings contributed to the downfall of Steve Cotterill’s reign of Bristol City. In my view, another major error Steve Cotterill made was his stubbornness and failure to change/adapt his tactics and formation to the Championship. I get it – each football manager has a certain set of values and tactical know how which they trust and which gets them employed by football clubs, but when something so clearly isn’t working it needs to change!
The 3-5-2 formation is something that has been incorporated into the modern game, and can be very effective when used correctly. In City’s 2014/15 League 1 campaign, Cotterill used 3-5-2 every week to great success. Wing backs Bryan and Little were able to join into attack at every opportunity, Freeman was given a ‘free’ role and we started with 2 strikers alongside each other. Being the best team in the division, teams were inclined to sit back against us and defend. City almost always has more of the ball than our opposition and by using the 3-5-2, we were able to effectively overload teams with attacking players and easily win matches. Some weeks, our 3 in defence were hardly tested. Aden Flint even managed 15 goals from centre back which shows how constantly attacking we were!
At the start our the 2015/16 campaign, we started with the same tactics. Again, why change something that worked so well last year? City fans including myself had no qualms with continuing as we left off. However, it became quickly evident that 3-5-2 wasn’t working. The higher quality of teams in the Championship were proving harder to break down, and by constantly committing so many players forward in attack, the 3 at the back were getting easily exposed on the counter attack. The wing backs were always so advanced that they offered little to no defensive cover on the wings and opposition wingers were having a field day. Home games such as the 1-4 loss to Fulham, or the 0-2 loss to Reading were early warnings to Cotterill that 3-5-2 needed adjusting if not changing. However, we’ve all discovered that Steve Cotterill is a very stubborn man as he continued to play his way, convinced that the formation would eventually start working. City fans were crying out to play 4 at the back but it never happened.
This is where I noticed confusion amongst our fanbase. Fans seemed to be stuck in two minds whether to criticize Cotterill for his stubbornness, or to trust him after what a fantastic season he’d given us previously. It ended up being a mixture of both which is not a healthy relationship in football. December then came, and a couple of 4-0 losses to Derby and Burnley showed absolutely no signs of progression, in fact showed that City were on the decline and in danger of being relegated straight back to League 1. Cotterill then started to anger fans further by his angry and pathetic post match interviews. After every poor result he would come out and have an excuse, e.g the referees/a penalty decision/the pitch. It was like he had no understanding that his tactics were the reason we were losing matches! Yes, there might have been 1 or 2 dodgy referee decisions along the way, but the fact that he was showing no remorse and showing no attempt to change his own management was fatal.
The final straw for Cotterill was the 1-2 home defeat to Preston. It was a must win game against a team who had finished two places behind us in the previous season. Fans were clearly livid at the result and made their feelings known. This is when Cotterill seemingly lost his head (and his job). Snapchat footage shows Cotterill getting into a verbal spat with one of our supporters, both shouting foul language at each other. This is not only bad internally for the club, it is also very embarrassing as the footage ended up going viral, and puts our club in a very negative light. Unfortunately, in the modern game the majority of football managers get stick off the fans if things aren’t going right, but the way Cotterill reacted showed a man who’d had enough.
Post Cotterill’s sacking as manager, John Pemberton took temporary charge and straight away signed left back Scott Golbourne and started with a back 4. This shows that it was not only the fans who wanted to change the formation, but even Cotterills assistant manager too! Makes me wonder if Cotterill was even ignoring his own staff when continuing to trust his 3-5-2 formation?! Now that Lee Johnson is in charge, we start with a back 4 every week and look much more compact, and our recent results show that we are reaping the rewards of it. I, like many others, was sad to see Cotterill go after what he’d done for us, but unfortunately he made a series of errors upon being promoted to the Championship, and at this level of football it is unforgivable.
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