Couple of disclaimers first. I know not everyone is worrying and this is NOT a complaint thread. I'm not having a go at Eddie, the players or the club-social media, of which we a part, is awash with folk having meltdowns arguing with fans thinking there's nothing wrong at all and genuine debate seems to be lost.
I think arguments on both sides can be valid at the same time...so let's get into it.
The case for not worrying:
We're without our best CB and haven't been able to play a settled defence for months
Some of our players haven't had much of a break due to international commitments
We have a new management team trying to bed in
PSR is designed to fuck clubs like ours over and has done so spectacularly well in our case.
We've not lost this season and won despite being down to 10 men for an hour and we came back from a losing position today
It's only two games in
We've made a huge bid for a CB-the sort of bid some clubs could only imagine making-and one which we would have been incapable of (well, unwilling!) only 3 years ago.
We kept our star players
We played poorly but didn't lose
The case for worrying...even just a bit...which, tbh, I am
We've had almost 3 months and haven't improved the first team
We've sold two very promising players and had to do so on the last day possible
Staveley and Ghodoussi left in a very unexpected way-were they sacked because of the PSR/Ashworth thing?
Harvey Barnes has been complaining about not starting
Gordon was throwing his arms up today-he must be pissed off that we were prepared to flog him and he's played these last two games like his head isn't totally right
Ditto Tripps-his off the field antics have surely had a negative impact on his performances
We're still starting players like Murphy, Longstaff and Krafth-yes, you need a squad, but in the second game of the season?? That tells a story.
Most importantly for me, our high press and high intensity attacking play is nowhere to be seen and we're clearly sisceptible to teams doing the high press to us-if a newly promoted team and Bournemouth can cause us massive trouble then better teams will have a field day.
I'm sure I've missed stuff in both sections so feel free to add
Thoughts?