Danny Focuses on Strong Foundations

With yesterday’s Ladbrokes League 2 match against Peterhead being postponed, Danny Lennon took the time to give some general thoughts on his first few weeks in the role of Clyde manager.

The Clyde boss started by detailing one case study from the World of football that he has paid particular attention to:-

“Johan Cruyff’s ten years as a manager are remembered mostly for winning four European trophies and being the first manager to play the ‘tiki-taka’ style of quality football that is now synonymous with Barcelona. He was also one of the first managers to use statistics to shape his views on how his teams should play and what coaching his teams needed. 

“He once said, ‘it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball for three minutes on average … so, the most important thing is what do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball. That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not, and whether the team is successful or not’.”

Danny explained how he has related that model to The Bully Wee so far:-

“This has been my starting point at Clyde as we look to turn around a disappointing start to the season and look to turn it into a season of progress. You can’t change everything at once. After 12 league games, we had by far the worst defensive record in the league. We have looked to improve what we do out of possession in order to improve us defensively and make us hard to beat.

“The lads have responded tremendously and have grafted at putting into practice what we are preaching on the training ground and in the dressing room. The reward for their tremendous efforts so far has been keeping two clean sheets on the bounce, being undefeated and picking up points. This is a good start to the revolution we want to create here in terms of our fortunes on the pitch.”

To conclude, Danny looked further ahead and with a bigger vision:-

“We all want to see beautiful football played by our team, together with positive results that will take us up the leagues. That is my ambition, my dream, my goal and my strategy in the long term. 

“We need to bed this into our play and start to improve our quality in possession, week by week. Rome wasn’t built in a day. The change we want to see will take time. Anything that is to stand the test of time must have strong foundations and that has been our focus in the past couple of matches.”