Montgomery brings his Mariners Plan A to Hibs

Edinburgh Evening News

Montgomery brings his Mariners Plan A to Hibs.

Transcript

00:00 Hi folks, welcome back to the Tactics Zone where today we're having a look at Nick Montgomery's

00:05 first game as Hibs manager.

00:06 A 2-2 draw against Kamanak at Rugby Park.

00:12 We kind of thought that Montgomery would go towards the 4-4-2 he'd used at Central Coast

00:17 and that's exactly what he did.

00:19 Made a couple of personnel changes but went with a really solid 4-4-2.

00:25 Really compact without the ball, creating a bit more width, almost a 4-2-4 when they

00:30 had the ball.

00:33 You can see this right from the very start.

00:35 You see the wingers, Ewan and Boyle, who are kind of playing on opposite sides so they

00:38 can cut in.

00:40 Tucking in to make a more compact block.

00:42 They end up stealing the ball right from the kick-off.

00:48 And then I found it interesting what happened next.

00:51 Doidge clearly knew to arc his run and go wide, not because he's going to play as a

00:56 winger suddenly but he wants to drag a defender out of position and create Boyle some space.

01:03 You can see all that space in behind.

01:04 Just to use his pace and go searing right through the middle of the killie defence.

01:10 It was something we'd see repeated again and again.

01:12 Doidge would drift left or drop deep and Boyle would take the space in behind him.

01:16 Nice movement between the front four.

01:21 And you can see, look at this clip, there's not a striker in the picture here.

01:24 It's the two wingers who've switched sides now.

01:26 Ewan and Boyle on a counter-attack.

01:29 But both Doidge and Dylan Venti have played their part by dropping off, creating a little

01:36 bit of movement to create space.

01:38 It was probably the best element of what Hibbs did on Saturday.

01:43 The second goal comes from a throw-in, which is nice, always if you're a coach looking

01:49 for set pieces.

01:51 But you notice Ewan's come all the way across from the right wing.

01:54 This was an element of play that I noticed from watching Montgomery's Mariners.

02:00 Their wingers did not stay wide.

02:01 They went roaming, looking for the danger.

02:04 Lafondrie, who's on for Doidge now, comes short, takes a nice touch into Ewan, into

02:08 Venti and it's a lovely goal.

02:11 So far, so good.

02:13 Now, there's a lot of reasons why Hibbs ended up squandering the two goal lead.

02:20 That the 4-4-2 can be defensively open with your two centre midfielders, and that has

02:25 to do a lot of work.

02:27 I think for the first command goal, if you look at this picture here, maybe being picky,

02:32 I think Rocky Bashiri can be four, maybe five steps to his right in this situation.

02:39 He's been dragged out there initially, but Stevenson's now got the winger covered, Newell's

02:45 offering support.

02:47 If Bashiri goes, say, four steps to his right, he's still in a good cover position if Stevenson

02:52 gets beaten, but he's also making it more difficult for Lyons to run in there and get

02:56 the shot, which is spilled, and then Vassell scores.

03:02 Now we get the, again this is the same with the 4-4-2, sometimes your centre mids can

03:06 get pushed really deep, almost on top of your back four, and it leaves that dangerous space

03:11 there.

03:12 Kennedy got a nice shot away in this instance.

03:14 He lost a goal from a set-piece, I'm not going to go into the details on that, I think everyone

03:20 has to take a bite of the dirt sandwich when you lose a set-piece goal.

03:26 I think more concerning might be this was late on in the game, it just got really frantic

03:30 for Hibbs.

03:31 They were kind of getting dragged in different areas of the park, and maybe they just don't

03:35 have the discipline yet, the positional discipline, to play exactly the way Montgomery wants.

03:40 But they could have been punished here if Dees had taken this chance.

03:46 Conclusion then, well Montgomery's made his intent pretty clear, this is how he wants

03:50 to play.

03:51 The first half in particular, incredibly promising.

03:56 Going to be really interesting to see what he does with another full week on the training

03:59 ground.

04:00 Hope you've enjoyed this, Tactic Zone, if you haven't, find me on Twitter @johnnythegreek

04:06 and tell me exactly where I've gone wrong.

04:09 Otherwise just keep logging on for all your top football coverage.

04:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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