A Formula for Tactical Football Management

By Barney Harty

The book content is written straight from my memory, without research, because I developed it, used it, and had success with it. As a reference guide in tactical football, it covers why and how I developed a formula which assists managers tactically in play as well as in training, can be used by most ages to get their players playing as a team very quickly, and continuously, if fully taken up by the manager of any team he will find improvements in his team’s performance and rating, very quickly.

It also gives you a history of the games reasons or playing in team formations, i.e., 4 x 4 x 2 and so on. I have included tips and hints for the manager with a fast way of finding the location of them. There is a full description of players’ skills requirements in each position, and help for the manager in case players drop off form, with formation diagrams, and all the information you need to use them.

Football is a team game, individuals can win the game, but teams win the leagues. I mention this because my aim in writing this book was to share the creative knowledge and feeling I got managing using this formula. I feel if I had the formula when I started I could have gone further and faster in my managerial creativity, so anyone who has thought about becoming or improving his football managerial ability would do well to follow this formula, and create his own methods from the use of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781528929127

Barney Harty

Barney is a lover of all sports, watching one of his nephews playing for a team called, the Harford Tornadoes FC Norwich, after two games, in the third game just at half-time, the team manager walked away. Although Barney was a busy man at work, he felt he had time to spare so he asked the Club Founder if there was now a vacancy for team manager and if so, he would like to volunteer. The founder of the club told him that he would be happy if he took over straight away, which Barney did and nine years later after a highly successful team record, home and abroad, noticing the changes going on in grassroots football, which would reduce the availability of the standard of players he was used to he decided to finish. Harford Tornadoes carried on, but the player’s ability standards had dropped sharply because of the introduction of the Academy System. He had developed a formula for teamwork in teams very quickly, and getting the best out of players, he decided to test it on different standards and ages teams, he tried it out with a men’s lower league Saturday team where it worked a treat then winning the league, and league cup, and runners-up in the County cup. He then tried under 12 team again successes, winning the league, and league cup. Then lastly, he applied and got the job of Manager for a Men’s Senior League football team, although he lost the first six games of the league, due to a shortage of players we finished third, so it was a success all round.

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About the Author

Barney is a lover of all sports, watching one of his nephews playing for a team called, the Harford Tornadoes FC Norwich, after two games, in the third game just at half-time, the team manager walked away. Although Barney was a busy man at work, he felt he had time to spare so he asked the Club Founder if there was now a vacancy for team manager and if so, he would like to volunteer. The founder of the club told him that he would be happy if he took over straight away, which Barney did and nine years later after a highly successful team record, home and abroad, noticing the changes going on in grassroots football, which would reduce the availability of the standard of players he was used to he decided to finish. Harford Tornadoes carried on, but the player’s ability standards had dropped sharply because of the introduction of the Academy System. He had developed a formula for teamwork in teams very quickly, and getting the best out of players, he decided to test it on different standards and ages teams, he tried it out with a men’s lower league Saturday team where it worked a treat then winning the league, and league cup, and runners-up in the County cup. He then tried under 12 team again successes, winning the league, and league cup. Then lastly, he applied and got the job of Manager for a Men’s Senior League football team, although he lost the first six games of the league, due to a shortage of players we finished third, so it was a success all round.

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Barney Harty 2024

The right of Barney Harty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528928977 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528929127 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

If it wasn’t for the following people, I would not be writing this book, some of them passed away a few years ago, namely, Mr Ralph Stone of Norwich, the founder and initial developer of his beloved Harford Tornadoes, his love for football was his life.

Mr William (Bill) Thompson who was the main sponsor for ‘The Harford Tornadoes’, I found him to be a brilliant man and I grew to respect and admire him he too had a love for the game of football, he supported the team solidly for years before I started and through the early days when I managed the team, but sadly died which was a great loss to his family and I missed him as a person.

Fortunately for the Harford Tornadoes, his sons Nicholas and Martin carried on supporting the club for years even after I left, both play for the Harford Tornadoes and I found they were a chip off the old block, which was great to see.

And of course, all the players who played under me whether it was the Harford Tornadoes or any other team which I was involved with you had my respect and you still have my respect.

Foreword

I’ve written this guide on tactical football coaching because in the years of tactical coaching, with ‘The Harford Tornadoes’ of Norwich youth team under 18, I would like to say that the skill standard of the club being very high, and it was a privilege coaching all the boys who passed through my hands. I developed a formula for quickly bringing a bonding to a football team, even if the team can change week by week with new players coming in all seasons.

By the end of the nine years, the formula was developed, so I tried it out on a very low-standard men’s team, it again worked, they won the league and the league cup in that season.

I then tried it out on an under 11 boys’ team it again worked, they won the league and county cup, I then used it with confidence as a senior football club first-team manager, where again it worked, this time not so easy, we lost the first seven games of the season because of lack of players, big clubs signing on more players than they will use in the UK, the surplus players usually come available in January, which took us out of both cups, but we ended up third in the league by the end of the season.

This formula is not the be all end all of how to play football, but what it does is to improve all the team players and get them to play as one, this, in turn, gives each player, their timing and gives them more space because of that, also chance to improve their personal skills within a team structure, training in play, as well as training periods.

I am starting this book with a couple of chapters to explain my thinking and outlay of the formula.

I have written this book as a reference book so that readers can find a reference to any item they wish easily and simply.

On the Table of Contents which gives page numbers with section headings for ease of finding subjects you are interested in.

I hope very much that you enjoy this and become successful with the use of it.

I know that I am a person who is treading through a minefield of confusing hindsight which is called football in the UK and soccer throughout the world, it’s a minefield because it’s a sport where individuals, some of them players have their own thoughts on how the game should be played as well as supporters with a bias.

For example, if you have a game of football with two teams and officials of the clubs and officials of the match + 200 spectators watching the match then you could say you would have approximately 250 different views on how the game progressed and how it should have been played lots of those thoughts are in hindsight by the way, to be a manager you have to have the answer before each game.

Chapter One

An Explanation of the

Thinking Behind the Formula

The first thing to say about this is that the complete formula is simplicity of the game and logical thought when managing any sports team game. I believe Bill Shankly of Liverpool football club, was credited with the phrase, Football is a simple game. Other people have mentioned, It’s a simple game, which is made complex by the 22 players on the pitch and three officials in the lower level of the game and in top-level football today it’s four/five officials. (I was one of these people who said this.)

Football is a team game and this book is about reinforcing this; of course, players with football skills are helpful in creating a team, the teams with the most quantity of skilled players obviously have more chance of creating a winning team so you would think, but that’s not true in all cases footballers at all levels are individuals who are entitled to and have their own opinions on how good they are; this is a problem for managers in all fields from professionals down to the lowest amateur team.

I have found more skilled they are the harder for some of them it is to work with a team. A manager who is determined that all his players work as a team, of course, you need skilled players, all those skilled players need to remember there are 10 other players on the field who are in the team, if one skilled player decides that he’s going to play his game and the others will have to keep up with him, then any team he plays for will have very little success. In a team game, that means that all players are there to help each other achieve their success.

This formula by using simple and logical methods reduces what I would call the skilled player syndrome.

Let’s say, for instance, a manager is having difficulty communicating when his team is in play, wouldn’t he benefit from a system which controls, with the aid of their acceptance, his players on the field when he likes as many times as he likes and with ease, to assist their play.

I feel a manager would also like to have an ability when the game is in progress to assist a player to correct his game, hoping with either his/her natural ability or refresh their memory on the instructed gameplay.

Wouldn’t all managers want a way of reducing errors, which mainly occur because of player panic or player not reading the game, this system encourages all players to read the game.

Mainly in the amateur leagues wouldn’t it be nice for a manager to be able to sign a player on a Thursday evening and play him in a position in his current team on Saturday/Sunday with reduced disruption to his team game. It could also be nice if he could do this several times in a season again with minimum disruption to his team game.

The formula will give him all this and will allow him extra time to study his new player in the team structure and could correct, assist, and hopefully award the new player with encouragement, all this throughout the game in team will be bonding with this new player and what he/she can offer the team.

Using the formula after you explained it to the players and from that time onwards you would keep reminding them of the system until you no longer need to in the life of this team whether it’s governed by age group as in youth teams or management in more senior teams because the players will notice the improvements in their own game at any level, the system if persisted with can create space and time, using the same methods with new players throughout the season.

The formula also can inform a manager very quickly where the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition are and the strengths and weaknesses of his own team.

All this and more will become clear when I roll out the formula to you in this book. I have one question for all people who love watching the game, if you see a constructive way of attack by a team and a constructive way of defending by team, then this is a managed team. If you see chaotic actions in attack and defence by a team, then one player runs through six players scores a goal, that is not a managed team. It can make a team manager happy in one way, but I would be very unhappy in another.

If a manager puts a digital version of this book which is a reference book as well as an aid, into a Tablet or a Kindle, then he/she will be able to have it to hand at the side of the pitch, when a game is in progress.

All the thinking behind the formula was initially helped because I was lucky enough to have some extremely skilled players going through my hands when I coached The Harford Tornadoes, Norwich, UK.

All the players I had were of county football standard and above, as these players were well coached 16 and above; some came to me rejected by professional bodies, I even had some which came back from the professional game, where they were apprentices in those days this was a reason for some resistance initial, it did take some time for the whole team to participate in working the formula, but even when say only 50% of the players participated fully, team and individual performances improved very rapidly.

The experiments I tried as mentioned in my foreword, with different age groups and standards of skills, were harder work for me, but still successful even if a proportion of players disagreed with it in the first instance because they soon came around when they were on a winning side and the team and individuals’ performance improved.

The Formula creates more time and space at pace, it also improves players’ abilities, lesser skilled players become more skilled and top-skilled players find they have more time to use those skills, but like I said before it needs 50+ per cent of your team players listening to you and obeying the basics, gradually all of them will come round because the games open for them.

If you attempt this and find some resistance if you have some players who will work together, eventually all of them will.

Another thing which helped to create this formula was the knowledge I picked up when taking a Harford Tornadoes team to Europe on the first trip to Germany in the summer of 1982; we were very successful, unbeaten in all games and one of the games the last one was a 1-2 win against the 1981 to 82 German youth champions Monchengladbach, we hit the local headlines and the obvious thing I noticed the local press indicated we won on morale only because their headline stated that we were non-technical in our play.

This was the first time but future trips to Europe would come up with a similar headline in different countries non-technical.

Easter 1983, Harford Tornadoes represented Norwich, UK in the Marck near Calais Tournament, which took place in Calais, which we won, most of my team were well under 18 years old; in fact, my nephew who had only 15-year-old then laying on winning goal won the youngest player of the tournament’s award, the opposition teams were the under 19s of several countries top professional clubs, here again non-technical headline was the result.

This led me to believe