I keep reading that with the players we have, we should be capable of delivering much better results than we are doing. However I would be interested to know why people think that. We have a squad of young players who have not yet achieved anything in the game and the manager falls into this category also. I know tactically we seem very suspect this season but I also don't buy the argument that we have the squad to be doing better. The post I saw last week which said something like 'naive young manager leading naive young players ' summed it up for me. The lack of experience in our playing and coaching staff will continue to hurt us until something changes.
I reckon a schoolboy could do better than this guy, I reckon if you were to number the players 1 to 20 and throw darts at a dartboard to pick the team, you couldn't do worse than this guy. Tactics? ask Steve mclaren for those, well at least that's one worse manager than ours.
We have a good squad, but a squad unsuited to this league in my opinion. We do have a collection of good young players who individually have the talent to be near the top of the league. However, as a collective, I feel our squad is unsuited to the realities of the league. It's nice having loads of young players who like to pass the ball around in triangles and look classy, but look at the teams who do well in this league, MK Dons apart, they have strong sides with experience. Players like Tom Pope and Leon Clarke probably wouldn't fit into our recruitment criteria, but my God would they give us some presence up front. Might seem like a short-term view, but hey, we're in League One and sometimes we need to adapt to what's required. Passing the ball around and setting up like we're in the Champs League might make us feel good and superior, but away at Southend it doesn't get results.
Maybe it would be better if we just employed a bunch of cloggers/journeymen a la most of the teams that have beaten us since we dropped down to this division. Our squad and manager may be young but they don't seem very hungry losing to Crewe/Shrewsbury/Rochdale/Southend/Chesterfield/Donny.
We've gone down the road of signing a bunch of young players who've shown some promise rather than going out & signing players who actually fit into a team / system.
We know we have good players at Barnsley Football Club...........because we go to watch Barnsley Football Club Its as simple as that.........if you go to watch two teams play then you can compare. And although I haven't been to all matches this season I would rate our players as the best I've seen. But that doesn't make for a successful team. And I was one of the first, if not the first, to point out that in my opinion, this is because the directors have gone for a policy of bringing in young talented players. Which they have done and they have made a good job of doing that - BUT - those young players need to be playing alongside an older, wiser and louder type of player. A sort of Darren Moore type of player
That's true. We have players with potential who might be good in the future. But too many are overated at this moment. If they were as good as we are lead to believe, we wouldn't be where we are in the league.
Six weeks ago I posted that in my opinion we have the weakest squad since 1976. At the time I was met with large scale disagreement from other posters. I think maybe it is starting to show. Missing Hourihane for a month could well be the nail in LJ's coffin. I hope not, as I can't see another change making much difference. I probably see Hourihane going anyway in January, if the right offer comes in for him. Other loanees are coming to the end of their loan spells soon. Gonna be another long hard season & we could well be looking at another relegation fight. Up to now we've had few injuries, other than O'Sullivan & Rothwell.
We do need to have a plan B & we do need to make sure we're not outfought. Wasn't there yesterday, but sounds like we were roughed up. We couldn't hold a lead & when we lost it, we didn't have the means to wrestle it back. We could do with an Alan Little or David Speedie character at times.
We've got 18 to 20 good players, capable of walking into most teams in this league. I just think we don't have anywhere near the right balance of youth and experience, or strength over speed and flair either. The only players in our side who have the strength required for this league are the 3 centre halves, Scowen, Watkins and probably Michael Smith and Simeon Jackson, the latter 2 have barely featured. If I was to write a list of flair players capable of playing fast attacking football, I'd not be leaving many off the list. We don't have the right balance. But I can't honestly say that any single player in our squad isn't good enough. Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
