Time to start making some tough decisions.
The experiment with playing Devitt as a false nine should now be well and truly over. Despite his goal he was wasted upfront on Saturday, he looked twice the player when facing forward instead of chasing lost causes and trying to play with his back to goal. Today he was largely on the left before his (unjustified in my view) red card but still peripheral.
Let’s be honest, despite two shameful refereeing performances we’re struggling to find any fluency as a team right now. We’re going round in circles tactically and it very much feels like we’re mistakenly and stubbornly trying to fit our players into a tactical formation devised to get the best out of Yates and Nadesan (with Sowerby pulling the strings in midfield). These players have gone now and it’s really unwise to try to keep playing the same way.
The composition of our squad has changed and we must adapt and change tactically to match this. It’s up to the manager now to have the courage of his convictions and to make his mark on the way we play.
Some of the lessons we’ve learned over the past two seasons we have to, frustratingly, wait for a new manager to learn all over again. Hope is not a central striker, he should only be played cutting in from the left (a position he’s made his own so why move him away from it?). Slater and Miller combined for a defensive horror show on the season’s opening day against Exeter – they were at it again today for the first Crewe goal. Slater was horribly out of position and left Miller hopelessly exposed.
We have a plethora of talented midfielders but an obvious and chronic lack of genuine forwards. Cullen is unfit (and may yet come good – I quite like his attitude), Simpson has vanished without a trace after winning the game at Port Vale and then there’s nobody. It’s more of a criticism of Holdsworth in the transfer window we failed to bring a striker in – but it’s the manager’s job to find a tactical blend to compensate for this. 4-3-3 with our current squad is obviously not the way. It’s time to stop banging our head against the brick wall.
3-5-2 might work, but this would mean dropping Grainger (on today’s display, no loss) or risking playing him in midfield. With so many talented midfielders on the books I’d be tempted to try a revolutionary 3-6-1, a back three of Liddle, Gerrard and Parkes with Etuhu holding in front of a back three, Scougall, Devitt and O’Hare in central midfield, Thomas and Hope on the flanks and one of our two strikers upfront.
Whatever, Pressley needs to have the courage to change tactically and to do so quickly.
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