Fulham V Deedahs

Barnes was recalled because he was being messed about by Hecky. We drew 1-1 away at Norwich then Barnes was dropped to the bench for the Cardiff City game which he played Thiam and rested Bradshaw too. A game we lost. They guy lost the plot.

 

Brad potts who has been a championship player more or less ever since?
He loaned mowatt out after paying him of position and played gary gardner and joe williams in center mid instead.
He had pinnock behind lindsay, angus mcdonald, adam jackson in a place for center back.
And his football tactic of playing the smallest striker in the division in bradshaw upfront alone and knock the ball long to him was comical.
Hecky was as much responsible for that relegation as morais. But the diffrence is some people would have happily kept signing hes one of our own no matter what he did. Like SD said selective memories.

 

I think they took barnes back as they didnt want him in a relegation fight. His tactic if we went infront or were looking for a point was bring on more defenders, defend deeper.... eventually concede... game over.

 

The key memory they forget was that we didn't drop into the bottom three under Morais. We were already in there. We dropped into the bottom three after the draw with Sheff Wed. Morais actually got us out of the bottom three twice. Once after the win away at Brimingham and than after the win v Brentford.

 

Brad Potts wasn’t & still isn’t a good enough championship player, he found his level in league 1. We recruited poorly thanks to the owners after losing pretty much our spine from January 2017. Hecky wasn’t a miracle worker, but he got it mostly right with what he had at his disposal. I wasn’t too pleased with the tactics at the time, but going gung ho wasn’t the answer, much like this season. Players playing at too high a level.

 

Id have to disagree when pinnock eventually got a chance xmas time dues to injuries and suspensions he was motm v preston, scored the equaliser v reading and the winner at the SOL i was thinking why has angus McDonald and adam jackson been playing before him. There was countless other poor judging of players but for me he had a mare that half a season.

 

TBF, at Sheff Utd he’s watched it all from the Academy for a while, and seen what’s happening and where it’s going wrong. They have a squad capable of a top 2 finish without doubt.

That and he has McCall and Lester as assistants is a big help too.

 

I’ve tried to restrain from replying on this post but there’s a few what in my opinion are mistruths on here.

On Mowatt leaving - He was allowed to leave on deadline day as McBurnie joined the same day & the plan was to play 2 up top & therefore we then had a surplus of central midfielders. No one expected us to then lose McBurnie a couple of days later & be left with just 3 strikers, two of which were useless for 4 months. Let’s not forget Mowatt looked terrible whenever he’d played in the second half of the previous season & there was no outcry when he left on loan. In fact he was pretty dire at Oxford. He wasn’t performing like Kane is now. There was no one saying ‘why did we let him go’. Oxford fans didn’t rate him.

On Bradshaw playing up top alone - what else do you do if your other two strikers are Thiam & Ugbo? Whenever he tried to play two up top they were both useless.

On supposedly not rating Pinnock - Lindsay & Pinnock both came in that summer one from non-league & one from the Scottish premier league & he gave the nod initially to Lindsay who played alongside Jackson who had done well the season previously. They formed a good partnership & I can’t remember anyone on here calling for either to be dropped, it was about the only area of the team people were happy with. When Jackson got injured Pinnock was also injured & Pearson got a go there. That was just unlucky on Pinnock’s part. When he did get in the team he broke his toe. In the long run who knows in what order he ranked his centre backs but I do know that when managers have a centre back partnership that’s doing well they tend to stick with it until something forces their hand. See Klopp & Guardiola over the past few seasons.

On Williams & Gardner - I don’t know why but for some reason there’s a lot of Barnsley fans that say they played together every week under Heckingbottom. Gardner played one game before December (at Preston away) & Williams went back to Everton in January for back surgery. They played less than 10 games together.

On the make up of the squad - It was pretty clear that Hecky & Cryne were at loggerheads with each other for a while. I didn’t personally like Heckingbottom coming out & criticising the club as I liked Cryne but I know why he did it. He knew we were signing a load of kids who weren’t ready for championship football & wanted it known it wasn’t his doing. The Stevie Mallan signing summed the madness up. Hecky spent his previous press conference saying they had too many attacking midfielders (Mowatt, Moncur, Potts, McGeehan) & that we desperately needed a forward. A couple of days later Stevie Mallan signed.

Incidentally the main criticism of Hecky that season was that he wouldn’t play Mallan. No one was mentioning Mowatt or Pinnock at the time it was all Mallan. It gets forgotten because when he did play him he looked way too lightweight & wasn’t good enough.

From my point of view that season was all about getting to January in touch & then signing the strikers we needed to stay up. I thought he did a great job in having us just outside the relegation zone when he left for Leeds as I didn’t think that side was good enough to stay up until we added McBurnie & Moore to it. From then on in my opinion any competent manager would’ve kept us up in the second half of the season with that added firepower to a fairly solid defence & midfield.

 

I agree with all of that, apart from the last bit. Yes we had enough firepower to stay up in the end, but it was probably too late, and the rest of the squad hadn’t performed brilliantly prior either - and then a new manager on too.

Didn’t thingy get sacked too at the same time for brown envelopes?

 

Me and you have had plenty of discussions about this on here i know where you stand and visa versa.
As for lindsay and jackson you mean lindsay and mcdonald started the season as McDonald was the captain back then taking over the armband from roberts? I think your a good contributor on here but we definitely disagree on this subject.

 

Yes you’re right. I’m forgetting the first couple of weeks before Angus got sent off at Brammall Lane. Before his iron deficiency / personal issues

 

I thought Tommy Wright went the previous season when we were doing well & Clapham replaced him but I could be wrong.

I just thought Morais was crackers.

The rotating his full backs one was mind boggling. One of our best players Yiadom was sat watching Sky Sports News on midweek games as Morais had decided he couldn’t play twice a week despite him been a near ever present for us & Barnet & always looking one of the fittest players.

Or the Norwich home game where McBurnie was exhausted & could barely run for a good 15 minutes & fans were screaming for him to be subbed as wave after wave of Norwich attacks came down his side as we defended a lead but he didn’t replace him & we conceded late on & dropped two crucial points.

Most of the time even if I disagree with a manager I can understand his selections but Morais baffled me every week.

 

Yeah that was it angus regained his place after the sending.off at bramall lane and was captain untill he was out of the squad due to disciplinary/personal reasons december. Pinnock didnt get a real run in the side untill xmas with jackson out angus with his issues he got the equaliser v reading motm v preston and the winner at the SOL and broke his toe in training after that unfortunately. I think he was definatly over looked by hecky for limited defenders. The head coach is watching these players train week in week out that defence was poor and heckywas a big fan of jackson who he took to hibs with him.