I think anyone with half a brain knew that this team would take 10-15 games to get up to speed. Problem is, that Fulham game came totally out of the blue and has skewed a lot of people's expectations. This season will be a seriously hard slog but I'm not panicking.
I feel the same. I think there has been some massive overreactions after just four games. We were not clinical enough yesterday and our final ball let us down. We looked really good for the first 15 mins of the second half and their goal went against play. We didn't give the attackers the opportunities they needed to score though. We need to spend slightly longer on the ball rather than hitting stray passes every two minutes. Mowatt had a good game amongst an otherwise underperforming midfield and was our best player IMO. I also loved the aggression, shithousery and commitment shown by Andersen and Diaby and think we will be ok with these too at the back.
I thought we might have 4 points after the first 4 (not in the way we've got them though), but I hoped we'd have 10 after 6 before a tough run of fixtures. It sounds daft to say already, but the next 2 games are huge games against teams that are genuine relegation candidates. What has surprised me is how toothless we look. 3 goals in 5 games. One from a player falling over, a worldie from Cauley and a very good individual goal from Chaplin. But fingers crossed we get a vital 3 points on Saturday. With so much inexperience in the team, I hope we can prevent long runs of defeats that could badly dent their confidence.
Since I apparently have none, please could you use your half brain cell to answer this: is the championship forgiving enough to write off 15 games as a learning period? I look forward to your scholarly thoughts on this matter.
Of course not, but you would expect some of those 15 to go our way, as they have after 4. A new team is going to take time to gel. Even world beaters. The recruitment policy has been discussed on here ad naseum so I won't go into that (I don't agree with parts of it) but this is the hand we have been dealt and we have to manage that now.
The problem with our spreadsheet ethos though is every season, were going to have to 'write off' games due to the squad gelling. I get it, but its hard to take as purely a Barnsley fan. We have to put up with the bad stuff till it gets good, but when it does, the players get flogged. Then its starts again. I understand why (to an extent) but its annoying sometimes.
I'm not worried, thought we would struggle and possibly go down, Still think the same. Agree about the Fulham game, we have 4 points need to grind another 45 or so out. This will be a even harder task due to anyone doing well between now and January being a target for getting sold off. The reason I'm not worried is I've accepted all this going in.
It’ll take us 20+ games to adjust which is the time it’ll take to get to January & bring in a suitable striker to replace Moore. The rest of the team isn’t perfect but it’s also far from been a disaster, there’s promise in most of these players. Apart from the league cup game against Carlisle no ones looked terrible
