Originally Posted by
drillerpie
I thought Montague spoke pretty well, although I thought Joe was probably better in getting to the point and saying things of substance, but I suppose he deals in numbers rather than humans, so it's easier for him to be direct.
The plan is pretty much what we thought it was from previous interviews. They are not going to splurge next year to get promoted at all costs. It sounds like the bros are very much here for the long term and are investing heavily behind the scenes, but don't want to 'do a Wrexham' and buy loads of players too good for the league. There is no satisfaction in that for them. In fact it sounds like they would regard that as failure as it becomes unsustainable.
I am generally in favour of what they are doing. We are experiencing a blip, but they won't panic and throw away the long term plan because of that. I didn't get the feeling that they are as stubborn as some make out, just that they want to do things the right way even if it takes time.
One thing I did find slightly worrying about the stats based approach is when Montague spoke at length about how we had a good defence last year and this year something has changed which they can't quite put their finger on to find an explanation from the data.
That seemed to be to be the verbal version of when to avoid kicking it long we pass the ball 25 times in our own half, narrowly avoiding a couple of catastrophes, before hurriedly passing to the keeper to kick it long anyway. Sometimes you can get so bogged down in a system that you can't see the wood for the trees.
The reason our defence is so bad is that we fall over, forget to mark people, give the ball away in dangerous areas, dont stop crosses and don't win enough headers. All this against teams who are much better than last year, with players who have never really proved themselves consistently at this level. No data required IMO.
It sounded very much like the defence will be the focus of the next transfer market though, which was reassuring.