BUY IN OR SHIP OUT!
ISMAEL DOES IT HIS WAY
AS ‘Eureka’ moments go, perhaps Valerien Ismael could have chosen a better one.
He had just watched his Wolfsburg side lose 2-1 to Werder Bremen after leaving out star striker Mario Gomez.
And then he was sacked.
It was on that drive home early in 2017 when he turned to wife, Karolina, and told her he had discovered the code by which he was going to live his life as a manager.
West Bromwich fans should read on. “I can remember my breakthrough moment,” he said, “I was at Wolfsburg – we’d played a back four, then a back three. But I wasn’t satisfied with the way we were playing. It wasn’t the pressing I wanted.
“I changed the shape, left Gomez on the bench. We lost 2-1 but it was brilliant. We’d had 27 shots and hit the woodwork five times.
“I lost my job that night. But as I drove home, I turned to my wife and said ‘I’ve got it.’ She looked at me and said: ‘What? You’ve lost your job and you’re telling me now you know what to do?’
“It was clear to me. I knew it was going to be OK. It was really strange.”
As the Baggies are finding out – last season’s star Matheus Pereira has been shipped out to the Middle East for £17million – it is Ismael’s way or the highway.
The big Frenchman, at one time Crystal Palace’s record signing, plays three at the back, presses high, does not like backward passes or wingers and demands relentless energy. He implemented his methods at
Barnsley and took a team that pulled off one of the great Championship relegation escape acts in 2020 and turned them into play-off contenders one year later.
And all with a little help from one of the current managerial greats – former Chelsea boss Antonio Conte.
Ismael, whose side won 2-1 at Blackburn yesterday, added: “I studied Conte a lot when he was at Juventus in Italy. Then, when he came over to Chelsea, I watched them all the time.
“That was back in 2013. I watched him and their games – any that I could look at with my analysts over a three or four year period.
Problems
“I always watched teams who played a back three. I believed it was the future.
“And to make sure with that we can solve all of our problems.
“At Wolfsburg, I worked with the second team. We tried everything. We found out what works, what doesn’t.
“In the first team there was a big pressure to get results. So I needed the kind of place where I could work on formation and the intensity I needed to keep that to improve.
“I went to LASK in Austria. That was the result. They played that formation and it worked. I turned up at Barnsley – it worked.”
“There are no grey areas. If you buy in, I will protect you. One hundred percent. I will give everything for those players. They either buy in, or they don’t.”