Shaun Maloney - Style of play
One thing that has been mentioned a lot is Maloney’s style of play and attacking philosophy and how it will differ from Ross.
I find it very interesting that he says when he was a player he was always interested in how the top teams play and knew there must be a certain way which is then what he learned under Martinez with “positional play” which opened his eyes.
Positional play is passed down from Cruyff etc which interestingly enough is where he done part of his coaching qualifications, I think it’s fair to say he will try and implement this at Hibs. Pep is the current one that uses this all the time but many too coaches use this.
For those that haven’t heard of it I strongly recommend reading up about it/watching videos as if he can get us doing it it has the potential to be brilliant. It will also help understand what we’re doing differently and why, it will hopefully make some be patient as they’ll understand what he is doing and how difficult it is.
Essentially it breaks the football pitch down into zones. There should never be more than three teammates on any horizontal plane, and never more than two on any vertical plane - this means that when the ball is in a certain zone players know where to move so that the person on the ball had more options. It should be instinctive for them, for example if Porteous has the ball everyone in our team will know where to be, as soon as he passes it to McGinn there’s a change with players moving into different zones. This might see some players popping up in positions you wouldn’t expect.
It enables the team to either overload the opposition or isolate players for 1 v 1 scenarios. One thing we’ll probably see a lot more of us decoy runs, players coming short and being missed out, only for them to spin and get it off of the person the ball was initially passed to.
That type of football is more for when we have the ball but it normally comes with the defensive side being a high line and winning possession back sharply by pressing the opposition quick and giving them little space.
For me it’s this type of football that we, and Scotland in general, are missing. Rarely do coaches in this county have much more of a game plan than playing at a high tempo, getting it wide or sitting back.
Ange uses this to a certain degree and is a big reason why they have so much possession of the ball and dominate. One of the full backs going into the centre of the park allows the rest of the team to go higher up the field and retain the ball in more dangers areas.
One thing under Ross when we had the ball I got frustrated at how it always seemed to need to go from front to back at 100mph. We would rarely play possession in meaningful areas and work the opposition defensively, we were nice at it along the back 4 but it done nothing.
If Maloney can pull this off it will mean we get our attacking players on the ball a lot more regularly and in better positions. We will attack with pace but I imagine we’ll pin teams back a lot more.
Do people think this is feasible in Scotland? Will our current players have the football IQ for this? There obviously a difference in what he’s coached with at Belgium compared to here.
What’s everyone’s thoughts?
