Last season we played to our strengths. Every man had a job and knew 100% their role of it. We played fast counter attacking football, a formation to suit and players playing in their favoured roles with not many square pegs in round holes. Now given the fact we had our best players ripped from our spine of the team in January......we were always not going to finish the season as strong as we started it. The summer couldn't come soon enough to build on top of what we already had. We then lose players who had established themselves in the division in Scowen and Watkins and had to build even more. A thankless task for any manager. I'm a Heckingbottom fan. Always have been but this season we don't seem to have a style.....a formation or know our strongest eleven. Now it's only been 8 games in and we have half the side out injured but the worrying thing for me is that we don't have that identity that we've had the past 2 seasons. The tactics and system seem to have gone out of the window and players to me just seem unfamiliar with their roles. The failure to add another striker with different attributes to what we already have hopefully won't become costly but could end up being a major mistake. Now I believe in our young manager and hope he gets it right but the tinkering and constant change of formation and style are currently baffling me. I'm already praying for January at the present time to address the obvious in that we find a striker. Not glass half empty guy at all. I'm Hoping for the turnaround but consistency is the key. We have a young squad but the capabilities are currently unknown. Maybe a wise head amongst the current crop wouldn't go amiss. I'm a fan....not a coach. This is only an opinion not a fact. I hope we turn it round. I believe we will but the performances and results need to improve. There are 8 or 9 teams that would have turned us over tonight. Especially after that second half. Luckily we had QPR who were wasteful in the 2nd and didn't turn up in the 1st. Onwards and upwards.
People can go on about systems, formations, identities and everything else in between. The unfortunate truth is that the players are not good enough and so far the only one who looks anything like is Lindsay. Might be able to flog him in January.
We don’t know our strongest team because we don’t have one only a least weak one. We have sold all our good players and replaced em with poorer ones that aren’t (yet) up to the job. We needed all our signings to be fit and successful immediately to have a hope of anything other than a season of slog. It hadn’t happened. No amount of tinkering or changing formations is going to hide our decencies.
