Nightmare On Main Street (part 2)
The answer was synchronisation. All his players would do the same moves, all the time, and at the same time. Their play had to be simultaneous. That way, if any of them forgot a particular move, he could just look around the field and draw inspiration from his team-mates. Synchronised total movement! The idea was both brilliant and simple. No-one had ever played like this before. Not even the great Dutch teams of the 1970s.
Norvik had worked out how his team should play. The next thing was to work out what moves they should do – what strategy they should follow. This had to be different for home and away games. Some managers didn’t agree, of course – Steve Norwood-Junction, of crack Romford side Dougal Dog Zebedee, advocated the same approach in all games, home or away. However, his style was considered lacking in variety.
For home games, in the Rovers’ all-white strip, an attacking formation was needed. Norvik decided he would play four across the front to provide some width. The left and right defenders would work together in a central pairing, flanked by a couple of jumpers to head off anything aimed at the goal. His most powerful player would sit behind the defence as libero, in front of the keeper. Norvik knew his keeper needed protection because if he was injured there were no replacements on the bench. Finally, a couple of towering figures would patrol the flanks on either side.
In contrast, for away games (in the all-black change strip), the team had to be more cautious. Research had shown that the home team tended to win the toss and choose to kick off in more games than one would expect. The best strategy for the away team was to neutralise the pressure and look for counterplay on the break. Accordingly his players would maintain a compact formation in their own third of the field. They would puncture the attacking flow in the manner of a hedgehog. His team would aim to control the game from afar, with for example some defenders positioned near the corner of the pitch and ready to make diagonal runs into the centre.
Norvik wrote down his thoughts as the basis for a team talk and smiled quietly at his own strategic concepts. Originality was a rare quality in a manager. Nowadays the focus was completely on delivering results – the how and when, rather than the why. Performance was judged on whether you hit the target. It was no coincidence that Norvik’s favourite manager was a fellow-Scandinavian, Ariel Nomsblink. The greatest pre-war manager never to lift a major trophy.
Norvik was awoken from his reverie by the sound of voices outside his room and a persistent tapping on the door. What the…? he said to himself. It was well past midnight. He wasn’t expecting visitors – none of his foreign girlfriends were speaking to him at the moment. As he walked across the room, the handle slowly turned and the door swung open. Norvik gasped when he saw who had come to see him…