What's happened to this lad He's becoming a liability His first touch and passing is terrible How many times did he pass the ball forward today about 80mph and didn't beat the first defender Needs to book his ideas up Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Like so many others, he's a player with good credentials underperforming for us. Why he and the rest are underperforming I don't know for certain but they need to buck their ideas up.
Strange how a player of the year last season winning every personal accolade, chased by several Championship clubs, starts for us as captain and looks a quality player now 15 games later looks poor. Wonder why !!!
Head coach is to blame to an extent But surely blame has to go to the players also Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Whenever he gets the ball first thing he does is look if Nyatanga is availble....then passes to him without fail. If hes not available its usually a punt up field. Looked a cracking player early doors....and now for me shouldnt be in the team. Maybe the weight of captaining a team in relegation trouble is the problem?
I'm sure confidence will have a lot to do with it, just worrying as going missing and making mistakes is a lot more costly for a defender than a forward. I'd like to see him give more in his role as captain also. We desperately need leadership on the field, and the one occasion today where Davies was receiving treatment and there was a lengthy break in play was telling to me. There was a little bit of talking, but between pairs of players. In that situation, you need your captain to be going around everyone, giving them encouragement, geeing them up, advising them on what they could do more effectively. Or if not a captain then anyone else, but we just don't see it. I really do think inexperience is the cause of a lot of our problems, included in that Mawson's form.
The problem with our formation is we don't have anyone who can drop into the slot in front of the back two and link play through midfield. SCowan, Hourihane and Pearson all do it when we play 5 in midfield. Also we rarely run channels as an outlet. Wingers stop the RB and LB pushing up and making space. Even when Pearson dropped alongside Mawson to pick the ball up, he then had to fire 40yd balls diagonally. We need to be able to link between defence and midfield to attack better. Right now we haven't enough movement and tempo. But I haven't seen this improve so I question what coaching and direction players are getting.
Years ago I played for a decent team in Cornwall and got paid to play, however, the manager had his favorites who couldn't do any wrong, every time i did something wrong I got a bollocking (I even got a bollocking if one of the passes I made was mis-controlled) in the end I looked for the easiest pass square or backwards, lost all confidence and didn't feel part of a team, I couldn't wait to move on. I went and played for the Navy team and scored 44 goals in my first season. I was encouraged by the manager throughout the game and it was a pleasure to play. Not much to do with what's going on at Oakwell, but maybe the situation for some of the players is the same as it was for me.
