Originally Posted by
MadAmster
I said when he came that this was the type of football his sides play.
I think he did very well last season bringing the young uns on. I was a bit worried on that front as at PSV, most of the young uns he brought on were young players he bought from other clubs as opposed to promoting PSV Academy players. I was worrying for no reason it seems.
The style they WANT the first XI to play isn't the same as they used at PSV. The style they WANT is the one being reasonably successful for the 18s and 23s. As has been said before, the difference being that the young uns have taken to it like a duck to water and it works because they move into space when a teammate has the ball giving that man outlets for a pass. In the opening 3 League games of this season we saw very little movement ahead of the ball and the "back 6" could only pass the ball amongst themselves. The oppo pressed and harried them into mistakes and we lost and deservedly so.
We then changed tack at Norwich and went for a point and came back with three. It was an improved performance that, IMO, deserved the draw but you'd always take a win. How often have you seen Derby do everything but score for 89 minutes and lose.... Watford was another different system and IMO we deserved a draw from that as well. One piece of individual skill aided and abetted by Evans not marking his man on the edge of the box gave them the win. Last night it was another good move, aided and abetted by Wisdom and Davies that saw us lose and I think we ought to have had a draw over the 90 minutes. That's 3 different strategies in 3 games yet some fans are saying same old, same old. It isn't.
I enjoyed the first half performance at Huddersfield despite te crap dead ball situations and a plethora of passes that didn't work. There was energy, effort, movement off the ball and some very good quick passing interchanges from the team. More of that please without the personal errors and we will be in with a shout in games. Sometimes you get pushed into making the right decisions. Might last night's 1st hour be the prelude to us getting served up this quicker style which showed a lot of givafuquedness. I hope so.
It's all about opinions. I think we have reached a moment where the Eurocent has dropped and they have realised what is needed to get on in this League. We struggled lasts easona nd then the Rooney effect kicked in. We will never know what would have happened without Covid but we were the form team of the League at the time..... People seem to forget that.
How much has lack of funds forced their hands in recruitment? Very much IMO.
The defending has improved compared to the 3 openers and we are less worried by being pressed at the back, although that is still a problem.
We saw movement off the ball at last. They need to carry on with what they've been doing the past couple of weeks. performances are improving and the results will come.
After 12 games I'd like to see us at somewhere around a point a game.
The staff are, IMO, to blame for the poor opening of the season. We played too slowly and got completely done by being pressed high by all of our opponents, including Barrow who thoroughly deserved taking us to penalties. That slow play and the lack of movement has declined and has, hopefully, gone away. We shall see.
This staff, after a poor start, got us flying pre lockdown. I see no reason they can't do it again.
This season's poor start is partly down to the injury situation and the lack of funds which they can't do much about. However, IMO, it is also down to the fit players being 2 weeks pre season short of fitness when we played Reading and we have been playing catch up since. THAT is down to the staff starting pre season too late and/or not giving the squad enough to do in the break and/or not making pre season create the necessary fitness levels.
It's not all sweetness and light by a long chalk but things are looking up