It was suicide, but I disagree with the idea that the difference in AVB and MPs high-line is "how-high", but rather the difference is in personnel and how the wider team protects our currently very high line. More often than not we have been playing a line every bit as high as AVB's (and even higher at times) for a long time now. But today we are in a whole new world of personnel and commitment. I just looked up the team that got destroyed by Liverpool before AVB got the sack the back 4 was: Walker-Capoue-Dawson-Naughton. ...(yep Naughton was playing on his wrong foot shows just how little options we had).. Other CBs that season? Vlad slower-than-your-mother Chirches, Aging legs Kaboul - and the CM cover was essentially limited to Dembele and Sandro - fantastic, but who did they have backing them up? Big Tom, Livermore and Sky Captain of Yesteryear Parker. My point here is that if you look at that team's speed of transition compared to our team today, you'lll see that today we are in a different reality and thus playing a similarly high line actually works! Toby, Jan and Dier's turn and sprint capabilities are outstanding for CBs that can also win balls in the air, but that is only half of it, as they are only tested half as often with Wanyama/Dier and Dembele actually competently covering them and having a team fully invested in the press. The amount of times we lose the ball now and get caught out on the counter, compared to back then, equates to a lot less goals conceded.
I hate hijacking a Danny Rose thread... but hear we go... AVB's tactics were at the forefront of the shift to pressing tactics that is already become commonplace - this is why he was hired, and why after he failed, we still went and found another manager with a similar category of football tactics. At the time it was widely agreed by people really into the "Jonanthan Wilson"-style of looking at the history/evolution of tactics that that was the direction football was heading. I am amazed even now to see just how quickly that has become true - the high press, counter-pressing, counter-attacking styles coupled with possession-football became mainstream way faster than other mainstream shifts in tactics that we have seen in the past. But for AVB, the issue he had is he did not have the dressing room or the personnel to carry out his brand of tactics - and he was way too dogmatic (or under too much pressure for success) to go back a few years and build a team needed to carry it out --- I honestly wonder which of the two it was, but either way, certainly his man-management was nowhere near good enough and he always was more likely to fail to reach top 4. MP came into a better situation in terms of an academy that was already a couple of years in transition and maturing - and then he did something that AVB didn't have the balls to do - he cleaned out all the "old hats" that didn't fit his system or didn't want to get on board. Tactically, they are of course differences between the two, MP has been fantastic and has built a team from the back forward - but both are in a similar modern category of football managers that play high pressing style first inspired by Bielsa - one which is clearly evolving to the next level as teams are becoming much better equipped to play it.
