Tactical Decision Quotes

I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.

My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.

A masterful retreat is itself a victory.

I purposely lost a fight to Billy Fox because they promised me that I would get a shot to fight for the title if I did.

You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on.

Why shouldn't Harry Kane take corners? If he happens to be the best striker of a ball in the team and gives you the best delivery, why shouldn't he do it?

Being a soccer coach is just like being a general who has the responsibility of guiding his troops into battle. If a coach acts too emotionally on the bench, his players cannot focus on their game on the field.

The next move is always the test.

Sometimes when your coach draws something up, you just kind of go with it.

Chess is a matter of delicate judgement, knowing when to punch and how to duck.

I must have just dreamed that about Liverpool playing 3-4-3. What do people think that was, a bit of luck? A British coach playing 3-4-3? A foreign coach doing that would be a tactical genius. I imagine people think I fell into that system through a stroke of luck or something... it took some thought. I didn't just throw them out there.

Tactically, yelling at Google is unwise.

Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.

Thus the skilful general conducts his army just as though he were leading a single man, willy-nilly, by the hand.

But what I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim. And it is important, in this seat, to make sure that you're making your best judgments based on data, intelligence, the information that's coming from your commanders and folks on the ground and you're not being swayed by politics.

The decision he made with Usama bin Laden was a tactical decision. It wasn't a strategic decision. The strategic decision was made by President Bush to go after him. What President Obama has done on his watch, the issues that have come up while he's been president, he's gotten it wrong strategically every single time.

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or not he is in a position to fight, the result is ruin.

The fate of a battle is the result of a moment, of a thought: the hostile forces advance with various combinations, they attack each other and fight for a certain time; the critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides, and the least reserve accomplishes the object.

I think a lot of success I have had in the past is I have been able to work points, find the right time to come forward.

We have to let our defense dictate our offense.

In order to win, you must play your best golf when you need it most, and play your sloppy stuff when you can afford it. I shall not attempt to explain how you achieve this happy timing.

That's right, kid. Never play an ace if a two will do.

Just as sports teams recognize the potentially game-changing benefit of calling time-outs, failing to do so in matters of warfare is a surefire way to continue losing.

Well we always need brave, capable young men and women who can run a tactical operation and take risks on the battlefield but you should know when we need you to go in there, that if there's any other way to do it, that we could do this without risking your life, we wouldn't ask you to risk your life.