Flexible approach is best way to survive

WHEN Lee Johnson was appointed by Oldham in 2013 at the age of 31, he spoke passionately of imposing a philosophy built watching Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

- Chris Dunlavy

“Well, we’ll see,” chuckled his dad Gary, a gnarled veteran of three decades and 1,200 games at the managerial coalface.

“You can have the greatest philosophy in the world, but League One is a hard place. Players are very inconsistent, pitches are very inconsistent. You might want to pass it round 500 times on the edge of the box, but there’s no Messi and Xavi in that league.”

Watching Doncaster toil to a toothless 2-0 defeat against Northampton last weekend was to be reminded that a decade has done nothing to strip those words of relevance.

It was obvious what Donny boss Danny Schofield had told his team. Keep it. Pass it. Build from the back and then up through the lines. Yet it was equally obvious that it wasn’t working. Movements were too indecisive. Pressing actions too sluggish. Passes went all over the Keepmoat.

Doncaster lost the ball more often than a trainee juggler. Dispossessed 15 times, the hosts found a team-mate with just 72 percent of their passes.

Sure, that’s 17 percent more than Northampton. But the Cobblers generally played highrisk balls direct to Louis Appere. Doncaster’s entire strategy was anchored on starving an opponent of possession, but if you continually give them the ball it all falls down.