Originally Posted by
LaxtonLad
It's a combination of several of the posts above:
Poor selection of pre-season friendlies, easy wins over Sunday pub teams gave us a sense of false security, and hard losses against Championship ones destroyed any building confidence.
Not replacing Ameobi, clearly he was missed as THE target man. We should have replaced him and Stead with one proper centre-
forward and used Hemmings and Dennis to feed off him. Stead was expected to fill the No.9 shirt but he's not 9ft tall, and his leaping days are behind him.
Schofield and Barclay were no improvement on what we already had. If it was thought neccessary to replace Fitz, there are better and more experienced goalkeepers than Schofield around, and there is no difference in quality between Barclay and Brisley.
Not hiring a Director of Football. Nolan's pre-season signings (and lack of them in defence) showed he had no idea of how to assemble a team of League 2 quality footballers. Alan Hardy apparantly had an input here, his obvious delight in being able to sign a Liverpool player (Virtue-Thick) on loan meant Nolan had to play him - and he didn't do a thing.
I could carry on, naming players brought in who should never have been and I'm sure we all have an opinion on who they might be. The fact is though, that their very presence has given us a bloated squad and is upping the wage bill to the point where we might have to get rid of quality (or at least not sign any) to save losses in revenue in the non-league times.