"Doesn't know his best team yet"

I have talked to a few fellow supporters today and the remark "Collins doesn't know his best team yet" crops up quite a bit. My concern is how many games will it take before he does? For me the cohesion from last season in the build up play is not there as well as the pressing game we used to such effect under M Duff. Now I know we have been missing Luke Connell and Benson featured on Saturday but as an attacking force Cole and Watters just did not click as a partnership. Therefore my point is that after two weeks on the train pitch (due to the international break) surely the head coach should be able to put out a side that play as a team better than on Saturday. Maybe it's the inexperience of coaching staff in the EFLthat may be the cause of the problem because they are unable to get the best out of some talented players.

 

Andersen was key to defence

Connell key to midfield

Norwood key to strikeforce

this is what happens when you let all your spine to get ripped apart

 

Youre acting as though we aren't 3rd. Norwood wanted gone for a 2 year contract, he has almost as many yellow cards as he does goals, meanwhile we're top goalscorers in the league.

Andersen was always going to leave, and he deserved his move to Premier league. We got outstanding money for him, considering his contract had 1 year on it. Both he and kitching are in the top 20 departures for fees from league one, in fact both are in top 5 for defender sales. Not really sure what the club are supposed to do about Connell getting sick.

Fact is, it will be hard for Collins right now. Connell out injured, Mccarthy and Cundy out, Wolfe out. Phillips unavailable for games. Lopata picking up his injury. Now Roberts is injured. Styles has been injured too.

Considering late departures and arrivals to add to that, hardly a preseason, I think Collins is doing a mighty fine job considering we are 3rd.

 

Andersen sold for £4 million to a.premier league club.

Connell affected by a severe illness.

Norwood wanted out and is now a conference player.

 

People need to stop with this "best 11" nonsense. Football is a squad game this days, with sides playing over 50 games a season. You can't keep playing the same team every 3 days with injury, fatigue, illness, form and international football all having to be taken into account.

Each game there'll be 2 or 3 changes to freshen the side up - and when a player does play every single game, you'll find losses of form through fatigue (Cole for example over the last 5 or 6 games).

 

Yep. Play to your squad and work round things.

 

Don’t let facts get in the way of a good moan.

 

Coach doing well to get us to 3rd imho...brand new back 3....midfield with our best player out....and no one to really offer Cole a decent partner so far.

 

I think it’s fair to say that we lack attacking cohesion. Luca is the glue in midfield to control the tempo, Phillips and to an extent Kane are out of form. We have no stand out partner for Cole. We are stilted and slow. We pick Watters but don’t try to utilise his speed.

Despite that in a very poor league we are 3rd so let’s enjoy the lemonade.

 

If he played the same 11 starting there would be just as many saying time to give X a try.
We’re 3rd in the league, with a new coach, lacking key players from last season!and the likely hood that we will only get better, we should really learn to enjoy the ride.

 

As mentioned above, it's a squad game. There will be games where Collins rotates his strikers or back 3 to keep them fresh for a tougher game coming up.

There's a greater level of expectancy this season after last year and much less patience being given to Neill despite his healthy win percentage so far. For me, this season has been little different to how last season started. We didn't play particularly well until November/December time, and even then we were a little goal shy until February-ish. We'd rolled teams over that you'd expect us to, without being spectacular, and generally struggled against the stronger sides in the division (Wednesday and Morecambe aside). As it stands, we're 2 points better off than we were this time last season, and it was at around this time, we had a bit of a wobble. If we can keep the momentum going until January, make a couple of tweaks in the window (like last season) then I think we're in a good position to at least mount a top 2 challenge. It's all dependant of course on us improving, like we did under Duff. But we've a young manager still learning his craft, and a young squad, so you'd fancy us to get better at some point (hopefully).

 

Derby and Plymouth? I'd say we struggled against the well organised sides like Lincoln and Exeter.

 

I'm starting to dislike the manager when he says we've played well and our style of play no press has gone. Watch tonight how often we pass it around the back 3 getting no where, also when we do have the ball edge of their box we end up passing it all the way back again.
Watters is garbage, benson lost, Russell slow and hit n miss, we struggle to find a player when we cross it.

 

We are papering over cracks with these lucky wins. This league is very poor

 

Which of our wins have been lucky?

 

I mainly agree with you but Exeter was a bit flukey

 

We were probably second best, and had it been for better finishing, would probably have lost that one.

I'm not sure any of the other 6 league wins have been lucky though, even if we haven't played particularly brilliant in a few of them.

 

Well summed up sick of hearing about Norwood now- he's GONE!

 

If anyone thinks we should have a ‘best 11’ currently I’d suggest they’ve lost the plot.

We didn’t have a best 11 last season while well into the season & even then it ended up getting changed around with Thomas joining in January & the rotation of strikers.

If you’ve got a best 11 you’ve probably just been really lucky with injuries.

 

Nope I agree with you. Sums it up about right. We have been functional rather than good but functional in those 6 games was enough and we deserved to win on the balance of play. Think we probably edged the Orient game and should have won that. If the Benson chance and 2nd Kane chance had gone to other players we would have.

Also fair to say that the defeats were all deserved. So I’d say overall we are where we deserve to be.