POYA ASBAGHI PREVIEWS PRESTON CLASH Interviews The Head Coach looks ahead to Saturday's trip to Deepdale. Continue reading on the official site...
We want to stay in the division but there are 23 teams better than us. So instead we're building a team with an identity that will be suitable for League 1.
Doesn't seem that his ultimate remit is to keep us up . For me that's the priority our " identity" needs to develop hand in hand with our Championship status.
It's very similar to what the CEO said. Create an identity (tippy tappy, possession based) so that the players can flourish (sell for mega bucks). Relegation is no problem.
To be fair he has come in with a fairly impossible task to carry out to keep us up, unless we have some signings in January. I reckon he knows signings will only come from sales & they would be our better players going to fund them & he will have limited say on arrivals. Huddersfield was better as I saw it, admittedly as Morris is looking fit again, but our shape looked somewhat more structured. I'm fairly accepting of us going down now. We made poor signings in the summer & had a bit of bad luck losing Mads & Morris due to injury. Let's give the guy a chance & maybe a miracle will happen? Only thing on Saturday was why Cole wasn't brought on over Victor for me.
"By developing as a player and as a team we can then achieve our aim of staying in the league"From Poyas pre match interview.
Which makes total sense. If the player and the team improve/develop, then we’ll do better. We’ve a good enough squad, just shafted by a poor manager who appeared clueless. So now we’re playing catch up. Our season starts now…..
Yeah that was the important word for me. The word 'but' is usually used before an excuse. In this case finding an identity being the greater good.
I like Poya, I think he comes across well. But I think a flaw in this thinking - if identity over league status is taking a precedence here - is that if we are confined to league 1 identity goes out the window anyway, because of the inevitable departure of key players. To hold onto our identity we need to stay in the league, or retain the majority of our players. Who will be on a downer after going down so their identity could be skewed anyway. Having said that, I like Poya and he speaks highly of supporters, which can only be a good thing.
We can all do that. Along with health crises, political scandals & pretty much any given subject, come to think of it.
Attack v defence in the Championship, apart from last season, has always been the same the more you do one then the weaker we are at the other. The number of times over the years we have been the better side only to get picked off when the opportunity falls to the opponents. Nowt new just another guy having a shot at doing it. Perrsonally we defend better when the ball is nowhere near our defence.
The squad is good enough in all areas except midfield. It's woefully lacking there, barely even L1 standard. Until we address that problem we'll continue to struggle.