Hodgey

Quite happy with last two matches, good win and competitive against a really good side. Think we’ve all pegged that batting isn’t good enough for this level, and bowling attack does need a mystery spinner, also been unlucky with our overseas bowler (again). Will be touch and go in terms of staying up. Lehman looks like an inspired signing though

Yeah - still not convinced - the casebook against - failed to get Ralph the striker he wanted instead giving him a load of kids who had played little/zero professional football. Forced an assistant manager on him (Selles) and arguably asked him to change tactics (suddenly trying 5 at the back) - Appointed Nathan Jones (with the only other option they considered Juric) - Gave up and appointed Selles - spent £12m on another Man City youngster when went down (yes he’s now starting to look the part, but 2 seasons later - did nothing that season) - Decided that we didn’t need a DOF in the premier league - instead splitting that vital role between 3 people with no football ability - Bought the forward line of the team who just went down miserably, and a load of other clearly not good enough players aside from a gk to keep the score down - waited to long to remove Russ when it was clear that his plan A would never work and total refusal for any plan B - appointed Juric (remember - they had already decided this bloke was worse than Jones) - took a massive gamble in appointing Will Still - Decided that we didn’t need loan players despite literally every recent successful Championship club having them (including us) as they are too expensive to buy after - yes they put money in, but we lost £50m last year and notably the money they have loaned us has interest (most owners give it interest free) Some of the above you can claim is down to learning etc, but for me there are some astonishingly arrogant ‘we know best, look how clever we are’ decisions. Basically our position is totally self inflicted by SR and as others mention they have a way yet just to get to par.

It’s very early days but I think success this year will be staying up - not convinced that squad has the ability to do it, particularly the batting which looks incredibly weak (and the bowling as we see today seems to require favourable conditions - we lack a genuine strike bowler and mystery spin) maybe this new coach can get the talent out of these youngsters more consistently rather than the flashes seen so far

We’ve got a lot of seam bowlers - Wheal / Turner / Currie / Baker / Jack new guy yet they all seem to be way off Abbot standard. Similar with the young batters I guess giving them another year makes sense - or maybe the club/players will go white ball only route.

Interesting line up - are Orr, Albert and Middleton injured or dropped ? assume Weatherly will move back up to open with Lehman ? Surprised Prest is in after his awful season Need the batting to fire this year, poor batting should have seen us relegated last year were it not for Durham’s total collapse.

Can see Wrexham winning both home games - which means any slip ups from us next two will leave us quite a bit to do. I don’t see us winning at Wrexham but we can’t lose, I think we’ll need to rely on Hull or even Borough imploding, Millwall look solid. Hopefully when we play Cov they will have some breathing space and play poorly. Despite the 5-0 we are still not clinical and often switch off for a goal, we’ll need to change that in this next batch of games as we play better teams who won’t let us get away with it.

One thing for sure - we are going to need to keep Fatawu quiet. I’m just hoping that Tonda doesn’t think we need to rotate and go back to ‘no manning land’ against the best winger in this division.

So transfermkt (I know - but I think it’s a good steer) has our yearly transfer activity as 8 players in and 13 players out (excluding loans). Invested £60m in players and sold £145m. So net is 5 players less and £85m banked/owed. Then 9 players out on loan and 3 in. For me this shows where attention was spent - getting players out and reducing expenditure. Obviously this has come at the expense of having a team competing for promotion. But the figures are eye opening and show how much adjusting you need to do when relegated from the top flight (and I think we did similar last time round). For context Leicester banked £57m and Ipswich £30m so you can see the clear correlation of spend and performance. Most championship clubs were flat or c £6m swing either way. So the hope is that the hard work is done this year and we have saved a budget for a promotion challenge next year (more than that £6m). Worryingly you have 3 teams with US backing investing heavily - Wrexham £40m Birmingham £30m Swansea £15m. I see that continuing and unlike this season players will see at least two of those clubs as better bets than us, and of course we’d be behind the 3 relegated teams (Burnley you could argue). In short we are going to need to be much more focussed on acquisitions and punch above our resources in finding the right players. It’s the striker issue that really worries me. When Ipswich’s highly competent manager is quoted as being unable to find anyone better than Hirst for a team gunning for promotion, we are going to have our work cut out (and we’ve not exactly got a great track record here)

His record is good, the issue was how long it took him to admit his system had been found out and to go to 4 at the back. He’s also been badly let down by recruitment, Bree clearly our best right back yet we turf him out and fail twice to find anyone better. Also I noted how much fitter and stronger he looked at 90m compared to the rest of them. Whilst it is great we suffer from less injuries, I think he’s listening too much to the analysts. Not much good having uninjured players if they are bullied for last 30m every game - also didn’t we have a massive squad ? Surely this year should have been the one we could risk injuries a bit more.. At least after 4 years looks like they have finally sorted the gk position (still not sorted cf though). in all seriousness, whilst top 6 looks beyond us, if Tonda keeps improving - is willing to make the right changes (quicker), should we give him another season ? - we’ve invested in him learning this….

Give credit to Tonda - he must have hated going to a back 4. The reality is though that the formation change won him that game, the extra midfielder meant we won that battle starving Utd of providing their two forwards with anything. As an added bonus it also stopped the easy ball back or sideways. a big foreward really gives us a different dimension (and frankly us table stakes in this league) and must be priority one for next seasons hopeful promotion push. Thought the keeper looked better than previously - seems a lot calmer and I think is improving following little football l Tonda out ? I’m now wobbling - he’s bought himself a few more games but any more 5 at the back slow sideways shite and he must go.

No-manning-land !. That made me lol - brilliant (and sadly very true), I’m definitely using that one in future

Baz has been fine last few games in terms of shot stopping and it was a very good save yesterday which got us a point, as did his save last game. That needs to be the benchmark though not the exception (ie Rushworth will do a couple of those every game). But credit due to him. Command of the box also needs work - for that Jelert corner I’d like to have seen him be much more aggressive - he needs a ‘in this box anything I say goes’ attitude and take full responsibility - I get the impression he doubts himself a bit so is reluctant to take that full responsibility - as such defenders are taking it for him. Hopefully this comes with confidence. I’ve got no problem with Baz as a number 2 competing for the shirt - which is where he currently is at this level. In the meantime it’s his shirt to lose whilst the new gk gets settled.

Couldn’t agree more on coaching resource. It’s always baffled me why when you pay £50k a week on players you wouldn’t have as many specialists as needed to bring the best out of them. Our coaching set up is extremely light / inexperienced, there is talent there but they’ve been found out by the scores of coaches / analysts most clubs now have and need support. Couldn’t disagree more on the another season in the champ though. We got battered in the Prem as we went into it with no director of football (unbelievably thought we could get away with ‘sharing that out’ to a load of nobodies in the toughest league in the world), cheap and horrendous transfers strategy, and a manager who refused to be pragmatic despite his system clearly needing better players than the opposition. Look at Sunderland if you don’t think staying up from the play offs is achievable - is there any real reason we couldn’t do the same ?? Next season I’d fancy at least 5 teams with parachute payments - 2 of whom likely to be established Prem clubs - next season will be harder to get out of that this - anyone half decent we have will go to the Prem (Jander, Scienza and Charles, maybe Fellows too) no point holding your powder dry - get a gk, get an out and cf, get the coaching team we need early Jan. We just need to get 6th and be on an upward trajectory when we get it.

I think we need to give him a big striker who can hold the ball up. He is a one trick pony, but that trick could be good enough with the talent he has. Where it has fallen apart is when teams press our creative players forcing us to go long to Armstrong who will always lose it. pressure then mounts and we defend deeper and deeper. So whilst a better gk is important, having a striker who can hold the ball up is much more important. Now everyone can see this, and I’ve heard it’s Tondas big ask so let’s see if our board geniuses will give Tonda what they didn’t give (despite them wanting it) Ralph and Still, to maximise what he has.

I mentioned this on the Preston thread who also had handy loans. Seems baffling that we haven’t looked at Prem loans for our weak areas, especially given that was why we went up last time. And it was a deliberate strategy, but completely non-sensical, about the cost of then firming them up. Instead we have loaned a 3rd choice gk we have zero intention of playing and a right back from Turkey we don’t seem to fancy.