All far too complicated for me.
Football is a simple game complicated by people too often.
Players are not that bright. You could see that on Saturday against Norwich. Fill their head with instructions and they don't know what to do and looked scared on the pitch. Its not natural to them and therefore do not act naturally on the pitch. They are confused and think I will just get the ball away from me so I can then get into the position I need to be in next.
This is what it looked like to me for the first half against Norwich. A tactical genius teaching a bunch of wallies. Our players had no idea what to do. Take away the 'system' and go to 4-4-2 and the faster football came back briefly. Go back to the system and we retracted and lost our confidence again.
Since AVB has joined Spurs I have been a consistent voice about not changing too much too soon. Little steps lead to large leaps. A three year contract means he needs to start well to be able to implement his changes in the long run.
he can do all of the above in the long run but he must do things slowly. he didn't do this at Chelsea and look what happened when he left and they went back to their old way of playing.
AVB has had one season of brilliance. He won the league undefeated and won the Europa League too. Looking at this slightly more closely - he won the league in Portugal with Hulk, Moutinho and mostly Falcao. He won the Europa league because most of the teams (including us) don't take it seriously. He was in the Europa League mainly because of their poor Champions League showing. He lost in the Champs league 5-0 at the Emirates and it could have been a lot more...Porto were a shambles.
Harry may have had his critics but his simple philosophy gained the players trust and enthusiasm. Until the England debacle they wanted to do exactly as he and his coaching team asked. Famously telling Pav just to run around a bit. You may all laugh and say that's just nonsense, but its not. Pav scored, we won and our slump stopped and we went on 3 years of great flowing football.
AVB needs to take a step back and implement his philosophies slowly and bring his players in to do this over time. He does not have the players with the mentality to do this. As JD has said, none of the players have played this way before - which to start a season like this is very, very worrying indeed.
I wish AVB the best and will support him but things need to change and change very very quickly.
Cue the negative rep once again
One of the reason England is a crap football team is that some people think football is just a simple sport where you go out there and do your stuff.
The players do not need a degree in football tactics. They only need to build up their fitness and develop tactical discipline. They did to learn their role in defense, attack in the tactical setup.