- May 8, 2018
- 10,624
Shooting practice is something that has limited effect. If you are a 25 year old player, you've probably been practising shooting for 20 years or so. Another couple of weeks or months is going to do very little difference and I can promise that they shoot a bit in training sessions as it is (although should be said that Potter is a fan of the the modern holistic training methods where everything is put into match like situations, non of that stand-in-a-line, get a pass and get a free shot on goal that nearly never happens in reality).
If you ask a 27 year old striker who recently started scoring a lot of goals they will rarely point to the amount of practice. It happens once in a while, "I stayed for 30 minutes after the training sessions and just practiced shooting", but the far more common reply will be something like "I decided/the coach told me to watch how Marco van Basten moved inside the penalty area" or "striker X told me how to think in this and this situation". Some players may improve from this, some may not, some may not be skilled enough or able to read the game enough to the point where this type of advice matters.
Does this mean its a coaching thing? To some extent maybe yes, there is no way of knowing for sure unless you attend all training sessions and all personal coach-to-manager talks and similar, but surely its possible to speculate. Potter used to play as defender, so did Bruno, Billy Reid was a defender/midfielder. They still probably know a lot of shit about how to develop skills and getting dangerous areas etc. but they may not know a lot about the "striker brain". Would adding a striker coach help? Maybe. But you imagine it would also help to sign experienced strikers, like Welbeck, but its never a guarantee. Just because you are experienced and know how to do things doesnt mean you are good at explaining it to others. A good horse is not always a good rider.
In your opinion, does bringing Murray back to the dressing room to coach and help the forwards in training have any merit?
Murray would need to want to do this rather than realistically play at the end of his career and it would be expensive at £50k a week but any improvement obviously pays for itself.
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