I keep thinking back to that Hecky interview

After the friendly at Rotherham. How down he was about the state of the squad. Mentioning that many of the players we bring in wouldn't be good enough and only some would make the step up.
I think we are now seeing exactly what he was fearful of.

 

3 games ago we were an outside bet for the play offs and now 3 games later were not good enough to compete....

Its a young squad were going to have ups and downs and it's upto hecky to turn it around which I'm sure he will.

Oakwell needs to be a place the players can play with freedom and be backed 100% by the fans.

 

It's no different to most of our tenure at this level since 2006 though to be fair.

This "plan" is just a tweak on what we've always done, which compared to most clubs at this level is make do and mend, beg steal and borrow.

We were scouring the lower leagues for the likes of Dawson, Dagnal, Wiseman, McNulty, Done and Perkins before, only difference now is that the players with no experience at this level are even younger.

Bringing them through and selling them on might be a good business plan, and without investment I don't know what other alternatives are, but it's proving to be hard work at this level.

The crop of players that we lost in and since January benefited from playing together at a more forgiving level, and carried that momentum into last season, but these lads have nowhere to hide when it goes wrong. The championship is a tough place to be experimental.

 

We weren’t good enough then and there has not yet been sufficient improvement. Of the signings made permanently only McCarthy and Lindsay are successs thus far. It was always going to be a very long hard season. If you convinced yourself of anything else that’s on you. The warning signs were there. All we can do is support our young side and Hecky and look to the future. We. Will smash L1 if we go down.

 

No if anything we are doing a lot better than i expected. I worry now that Hecky himself has lost faith in the players. Changing the personnel around as often as he is suggests almost a desperate search for a winning formula.

 

That's where we are as things stand. Solid league one club with realistic expectations of promotion, but championship strugglers when we get here, only capable of the odd good half season.

 

We were never an outside bet for the play offs.

 

That's an important point that a lot of people choose to miss. I can't even imagine how lost the team that lost 8 in a row would have looked playing a division higher. It could seriously have destroyed their careers before they'd started. Scowen, Winnall, Mawson, Roberts, Hourihane, Watkins. The spine of a team that you'd expect to be comfortably top half in the Championship now, if not top six.

 

Why not? We were on a decent run of form and only 6 points off.... An outside chance but not likely so I would say if we could of maintained our form we would of been an outside chance.

 

We may soon find out how they cope with such a run.....

 

because of the five games we've won four are against teams below us. I think three of them were in the bottom three at the time. We were always going to stop winning as soon as we played someone even half decent. Bit shocked that anyone could think otherwise.

 

If we lose 8 in a row in this league we will almost certainly go down.

 

Agreed. We're asking a hell of a lot from these players.

Other clubs don't pay big money in salaries and transfer fees just for the sake of willy waving do they? And even then it's not guaranteed that they'll have success, but for the vast majority it means staying and competing at this level without continually flirting with relegation.

 

Overall we've done better than I expected this season. Unfortunately in recent matches 4 of our most experienced players have been off form, Davies, Yiadom, McDonald & Gardner. If these players are doing badly it's going to affect the less experienced players too. You always build on your defence & at the moment it's looking ropey.