NOT an interview with Neil Critchley.

Me: The way I see it is this: The team is a tram and you're the driver. What stop do you think we're at at the moment if the plan is to go from Starr Gate to Fleetwood Ferry? 

Critch: Get me Chissy, this lad's a mentalist. 

I was going to post another rant about life, the universe and everything being shit but instead, I stumbled on a brilliant idea: 

I'll do an interview, but one where the interviewee isn't actually present and doesn't answer any questions at all.

What a concept. 

Pass me the press pass. I'm going to the top. Nothing is going to stop this blog being a success. People don't want memes, tactics, informed comment or pithy, succinct well edited content. No, they want interviews, with no replies and digressive rambling.

'It's too long!'

'It's pointless!' 

Yes. Yes it is. Go and watch Emmerdale and take up quilting. Smuggle some high grade peyote in and bang on some Throbbing Gristle and commune with the higher spirits of the universe. Make a frozen pizza. There. You've got options. Read on if you want. Fuck off if you don't.

You can't say I don't take care of you. 

I think it's safe to say we've had a ropy start. There's an argument to say that you can't hurry love, you'll just have to wait and all that. We started terribly in some of our best seasons. In wider football Kendall, Ferguson etc started badly in their jobs. There's a counter argument that Critch is a youth coach, out of his depth and that mentioning him alongside those people is insane. There's a middle ground that just doesn't know. I think that's where I am. I don't know. I'm concerned, quite concerned about some stuff, but I'm ever hopeful. Supporting a football club is a delusion so it makes no difference to me if I'm fooling myself by looking forward to the next game or not. If I stop hoping we'll win then... what's the point? We've been there too recently for me to give up on hoping they'll discover their Tangerine Wizardry on Saturday. Always next week eh? 

Football is weird. You can be complete shite one game and mad brilliant the next. We over analyse it looking for answers, but each side that we play, each variation in selection by ourselves or the opposition plays its part in triggering the sequence of random but interlinked events that make a football match. Of course, there's patterns, but the thrill of the game is when those patterns don't repeat. The one constant joy in football, especially outside the elite level (though tbf, the Premier League is doing it's best to disprove claims of predictability and sterility this year) is that each week, it might be different. It's so rare to feel you will definitely win and equally rare (at least until kick off) that you can't see a flicker of hope that this might be the week it clicks. 

What I'd love to see is a proper interview with Critchley. I'd love to spend an hour with him (or someone else to do it on my behalf more likely) and pick his brains. I'm seeing some stuff I don't understand. I don't know whether some of that is stuff that concerns him too. I'd feel better if I knew more about what is going on in his head. I don't get his thinking sometimes. Is that because he's trying something new to me? I don't watch Liverpool, I watch barely any top level football and therefore, my frame of reference is mostly League 1 and Scottish games. Am I just failing to recognise tactics and plans because I haven't seen them before? 

Critchley is used to working behind the scenes and he's used to working in clubs that have defined philosophies and where the fans understand the 'way' of the club. (a horrible term imo but one I'll use as it seems accepted parlance now.) Working for Klopp, he had probably football's best communicator above him, defining exactly the direction of the club, giving fans insight into the way the team are playing and also, despite his tendancy to go from crazy fun uncle Jurgen to stroppy sulky teenage Jurgen when they lose, also giving really honest explanations when things go wrong. 

That's in no small part down to the media. At Premier League level, managers can't simply say a statement to Chissy and then go home for a glass of wine and Midsommer Murders on catch up with the wife. Klopp has to talk to ten or eleven different outlets on TV alone, all looking for an angle or a take. As controlled as the press is (and it is) at elite level, there's still a level of scrutiny quite unlike our league.

The local paper and radio naturally try to keep a good relationship. Of course they do. We can scream at them to be more incisive but they're reliant on the club in a way national media aren't. If one manager has a hissy fit at them, there's a whole world more to talk to. If Matt Scrafton gets banned from the club, then he's really not got anything else to turn to and to be honest, I think Scrafton does fine and is decent on twitter and all that. 

So I'm not dissing our journos. It is what it is. I'm just observing that I feel like I know very little about Critchley. He's inscrutable, he straight bats things, doing a good impression of giving a really thoughtful answer but he's generally answering questions that are fairly stock deliveries. I'd really like to see how he handles a few googlies, the odd bouncer, deals with a change of pace. Not because I want to knock his head off or bowl him round his legs, but because I want to know who he is. He's in charge of my football club and all I know is he's a twinkly eyed fella who turned up to the first game in a body warmer and he likes 'being on the grass' 

I felt like I knew Steve McMahon inside out. Thinking of Billy Ayre for too long make me nearly as nostalgic as thinking of my grandad. I know it went sour with Ollie but for a while there, we really, really had some magic. Terry McPhillips, I quite admired him, he wasn't everyone's cup of tea but he spoke well, fronted up and said some nice things about football and fans. Larry. Well, Larry. He was like a mate who you go to the pub with, just cos you do. You don't really like each other any more, but you still have a pint. Even dear old Muggers, seemed like an amiable fella who thought he was cruising along in a mid range Ford Mondeo and looked totally shocked when it turned out it was actually a clown car. There was some sort of pitiful charm in watching him pretend it was all ok even though the steering wheel had come away in his hands and he was heading at a lamppost and his big clown shoes were too big to press the breaks.

If only we'd elasticated. 

Critchley? I don't know the fella at all. I want to. 

So, here's my questions: 

(It might help to imagine I've met Neil in a coffee shop in Cheshire Oaks shopping centre. I've never met Critchley or been to Cheshire Oaks for that matter, but I imagine he quite likes a coffee there sometimes and a browse of the sports shops whilst being dragged reluctantly to look at Laura Ashley for some new curtains for the bungalow.

I also have no idea where he lives, but I imagine he lives in a dormer bungalow somewhere near Warrington on a street full of caravans, prefers white wine to red and has a dog, cream carpets and a CD player in his car with some middle of the road compilation CDs on rotation as he's not a fan of bluetooth.  Anyway, that aside, Neil's got a large flat white and is ready to chew the fat.

(Actually, he's clearly not, as I've just remembered, I'm not actually interviewing him and you'll have to imagine his responses. Phew! for a minute there, I lost myself...) 

What's so good about 433? Why is it such a popular formation in the present day? 

Do you think 433 is the best formation to get the best out of our current squad? Would (for example) Gary Madine not be better suited to playing as either a pivot for deeper lying players or next to another player in a two? 

Why do you think we've not turned possession into a meaningful threat in most competitive games? What part does confidence play in this and what part is it a tactical question? 

If you could sign one player in the world to plug a perceived weakness in this side, who would it be? 

Who do you see as leaders in the squad? Which players have the potential to become captains, if not for us, but in their later careers? 

What's the biggest difference you've discovered between coaching at u23 level and managing at senior level? 

Has it been a surprise how tactically active opposition managers are? I've rarely watched u23 football but is that similar or is the purpose more to train the lads in the dominant way of playing at a particular club? 

Do you have self doubt? If so, what about? Has that emerged since taking the job or was it a question before you took the job? 

As someone new in your role, what question would you ask of an experienced manager to find an answer to something that has challenged you? 

What's the difference between players at the level you were working at and players at this level? How have you adapted your coaching to adjust to those differences? Are they technical or mental differences in the main? 

Do you see the players taking enough responsibility? Where's the line between creativity and risk taking and how do you encourage these players to take the risks we need to take to score more goals without endangering confidence? 

Do you think you'd have made any different decisions had you had the games at the end of the season to work with players you inherited? 

As a coach with a strong track record of working with young players (and presumably, working within the limits of players other people identified as worthy of a contract) - why have Antwi, Shaw, Howe and Thorniley barely featured, despite them playing well in either preseason or Carabao cup games? What do those players lack or need to do? 

Are players less adaptable at this level to new positions/jobs on the pitch? 

Who are your footballing heroes? Who are your footballing villains? 

Neil didn't answer any of these questions. Nor did I thank him for his time and share a couple of bits of personal information in a way that humanised him and made me feel touched he should see me as an equal human before showing his down to earth qualities by collecting my cup and carrying the tray back himself to the clearing station.

That's because he wasn't there, and I don't expect him to be either. This is a shitty fan blog typed up in my spare time in lieu of being able to go anywhere and do anything at the moment and cos I'm an oddball on the internet. It would be really interesting to hear him speak though. He's essentially Jurgen now, not just backroom Neil and whilst I think he speaks in a measured way, I don't think we get much insight into what's going on in his head as he's rarely asked much about it. This creates a sense of a vacuum where all we can do is comment on what we see on the pitch and frankly, that's not been the ideal conversational fodder if you want to cheer yourself up right at this point. 

I've got a mate in the football media who speaks very highly of him. Says he's a genuine man who gives his time and treats people decently. I really want to be right behind him. I want to feel a sense of loyalty. We've been pissed about, from pillar to post with shitty managers, shitty owners and false, fake dawns and I'm more than happy just to get behind someone who is trying their best, working hard and has a plan. It seems forever and a day since I felt like a manager was 'ours' - At the moment, Critch is still just a fella in generic sportswear who looks a bit like (credit to @tangerineknights for spotting the resemblance) Daniel Craig but if Daniel Craig had been shrunk in a washing machine. 

I don't need success today, I just want to know a bit more about where we're going, who is taking us there and how he plans to get through the road works, round the diversions and cope with the breakdowns that will inevitably come. He's made some incredibly bold decisions so far and I just want a bit more than 'we'll just keep doing what we're doing' and references to 'the group' - I want to hear what he's actually thinking sometimes. 

I think the journey has started with us stuck on a bus, which might have some top of the range features, but we seem to have a few flat tires and the view out of the window isn't very salubrious. I'm a pragmatist, I'm a reasonable man, most of us are. Shit happens. People are human. Nothing's perfect. We'll listen, we'll wait for the open road and the glorious views if we can see the route map, we'll show some patience if we're talked to properly. We want to succeed. We're in this together. 

Roll on Saturday. 

utmp



 
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