Just watched the Wigan game and we were terrible in every area of the pitch, Raya earned his corn but the rest were feeble. No lessons learned from the Preston game despite all the big talk.
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Just watched the Wigan game and we were terrible in every area of the pitch, Raya earned his corn but the rest were feeble. No lessons learned from the Preston game despite all the big talk.
Suddenly, the defenders have completely lost confidence. Think about the Derby game, and compare it with this!
It just shows how quickly self-belief can drain away.
For me, one big issue is that we were relying very heavily on Dack's spark, and it has gone out at the moment. TM was able to rely on solid defending, allied to Dack's creativity. Both seem to have disappeared for the time being.
We probably need to shake things up, but it's not as easy as the Telegraph posters would have you believe. If we drop Dack, do we replace him with Armstrong? To be honest, I'm not a big Armstrong fan. He has about one excellent game in four, but contributes very little in the others.
So do we pair Graham and Brereton up front? That would be guesswork, really.
At the back, I thought Bell yet again provided no evidence that he is better than Williams. I was almost glad to hear about Lenihan's injury, because I thought he might do a headless chicken and see red in this game. Unfortunately, Rodwell did a fair impression of that instead. Raya was very good, and Nyambe better than on Saturday. How many changes can we make in the back four, though?
That brings us to midfield. I have always been able to see the reasoning behind the Smallwood-Evans combination, but now we are showing so little creativity in front of them, I think a change to a Reed and Rothwell combination in the middle is a reasonable call - just to see if we can create more chances from that area.
I wouldn't mind seeing Bennett Reed Rothwell Conway across the middle, with just two ahead of them.
We were destined to have a bad run at some point, as all teams do. It now becomes a question of how quickly we can turn it round.
Totally agree with you, Tony has been critical of the performance so let's hope he can sort it out quickly.
My instinct after reading his comments suggest that the squad ‘unity’ is not quite what it was. Of course that will stay ‘in house’, as it should.
He has always said and we all seem to agree that last years squad deserves to be retained and tested at this higher level as ‘reward’ and retention of great unity.
However, it needed embellishing, but carefully as personalities and maybe egos may need massaging.
This is what the manager is paid for ie the moulding of the best squad he can muster into the best that they can collectively be.
This is now the moment TM is going to be really trialled, and in that the worst the support can do is pick holes in it .
Some patience is now going to be needed for the next several games to give him the chance to re energise this squad.
Two poor results. Last night's performance was poor. We will turn it around sooner rather than later.
I think we can, Champs. I certainly hope so. The last thing we need is to give the anti-Mowbray caucus on the Telegraph site any more encouragement. They're in a feeding-frenzy already.Quote:
Originally Posted by champs95
I particularly admire the ones who tell TM to stop "tinkering", and then proceed to suggest wholesale changes to the team!
Some are loving this. What a truly strange set of so called fans we have. You said it last week, some have been waiting a long time for this and never liked TM.Quote:
Originally Posted by AucklandRover
Losing is a part of football. You just have to get on. It will change soon enough.
Again, that's football.
I find it so sad that folk are almost revelling in this.