Quote Originally Posted by He's here! View Post
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How many fans genuinely understand football tactics? Do you need to be a qualified coach or an ex-player to offer expert opinion on how a team has been set up to play?

I've been thinking about this since the cup final, after which the general consensus among the fans on this forum seemed to be that Jack Ross adopted the same tactics which had failed on three previous occasions against St Johnstone. But is that REALLY what he did? Did he GENUINELY say to his players something along the lines of 'same again lads, I'm pretty sure it will work this time'? What would that say about his abilities as a coach?

Unless Ross were to come out and explain his tactics for the game then I guess we'll never really know, but personally I find it hard to believe an obviously intelligent guy who is clearly a keen student of the game would adopt such an approach. Was there instead an attempt made to deploy a different set of tactics which we, as fans, simply failed to pick up on largely due to the fact they didn't work?

I do sometimes wonder if it's easy for fans/pundits to be wise after the event when it comes to tactics. It's easy to throw around phrases like 'we got our tactics spot on' or 'our tactics were a disaster' after a game, but how many of us are truly capable of casting an expert eye over a game and providing an accurate analysis of the run of play?
Our players are better than St Johnstone's players imo. We went into the final with better last six form than St Johnstone even taking into account they beat us in one of those games. The pitch was in great nick and the weather was good for playing football. The goal was no fluke and they had the best opportunities to score apart from the goal. To me that leaves Tactics and player motivation. Ross has a massive part to play in both of those and his opposite number yet again got the better of him. The players do need to shoulder some of the motivational burden as we simply never looked up for the game with 50/50s only going one way and 2nd balls constantly being won by Saints through either a far better shape or simply more tuned in players. It was up there with one of the worst displays in my 40 odd years watching Hibs. Not because we got beat but because we simply never looked like we wanted to win. Even in that 2012 final the team actually came back into the game before a terrible individual error and some shocking refereeing made us capitulate. I can't point to anything in the final that says we were unlucky or deserved more. We simply were beaten through lack of desire and ill thought through tactics by a team that we dwarf in terms of financial resource and facilities.