Quote Originally Posted by Elite_Pie View Post
And we saw how far that gets you in League 2.

I'm amazed some are still trying to make out that Aborah was a quality player when his career shows he clearly wasn't.
I thought he was a decent footballer, better than Boucaud or Fotheringham but not a patch on Gavin Mahon who all played the holding role.
Aborah was small and slow and was prone to dwelling on the ball making us easy to defend against with slow build up play.
In truth I think the holding midfield role gives a third of the pitch away if you're not careful, Harrogate showed the formations weakness with Doyle playing the role.
I thought it worked best under Martin Allen's 4-1-3-2 where we kept two up front and had full backs that pushed right up to boost the midfield with Mahon playing almost as a third centre back when we were attacking. It helped that he was big too as he cut out aerial threat and he moved the ball forwards quickly. Really rated Mahon.
Doyle is a good footballer no doubt and I'm sure he can jog a marathon but he's slow on the pitch and am hoping that he's used sparingly and not going to play 30 plus games from the start. Bit off topic but part of the problem of judging holding midfielders is the effectiveness of the formation. Big difference between a holding midfielder and a link man.