WOULD you like a Tictac?

Or fancy a game of dominoes, perhaps?

Tactics.

Each and every one of us has a chalkboard of players and their best positions within our own imagination. That chalkboard is always picture perfect come 4.55pm on a Saturday afternoon.

Harry Redknapp, that well-known quip-meister refers to such irrelevancies (his words) as ‘Tictacs’. 'It’s not about Tictacs, it’s about players’, said Harry, no doubt angling for a free supply of mints.

Then there was the great Brian Clough. He once said: ‘Players lose you games, not tactics. There’s so much c**p talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes.’

As someone who is useless at dominoes, I can see his point.

And then there was a certain former Albion boss, who, when asked about tactics, would turn his nose up and comment about how ‘people on the periphery of football’ know and understand little about tactics.

Harsh. The best actors don’t make the best movie critics surely?

So what of Roy Hodgson?

The Baggies boss remarked that he’d made a mistake by playing Peter Odemwingie on the right of a three-pronged strike force.

Hodgson sussed that Albion were making not progress with three men in midfield and the same number up front so he reverted back to what he described as a ‘classic 442’.

So where to from there?

Well it’s encouraging that Hodgson pinpointed a potential difficiency and chose to remedy it.