Hodgey

I think that batting looks really weak - I know they are waiting for Stubbs but too many nurdlers in that line up when you need rope clearers. The way 20/20 is played nowadays you have no room for the likes of Weatherly and Prest - unless they could be genuine anchors, which they can’t.

This is a really tough one - and actually sums up a lot - when the stakes are so high it’s almost as if any advantage should be taken. The reality is that there will be huge pressure to take advantage you can if the stakes are so high like they are in football. Let’s be honest - the behaviour we have shown hasn’t been anything to be proud of. Ends justifies the means of course, I guess my point is that if the stakes are so ridiculously high you may do or say things you would never normally do.

Think most of us saw this coming, aside from a brief glimmer we look woefully inadequate. Getting a solid first innings score is crucial, this is the third season in a row we have been criminally bad at it, but this time we don’t have Abbot/Barker/Abbas bailing us out (for the first two often with bat as well) I’m not sure we can describe all our young players as ‘non-league’, they’ve all shown huge talent in periods, but none have gone on and this season appears to have gone backwards. Whether that is bad coaching/management or simply being found out technically I’m not sure - but the fact Middleton / Prest / Albert / Currie and Turner all now look out of their depth is worrying (with Jack and even Mayes seemingly following suit) Maybe it’s simply that they don’t see a future in red ball and are waiting for the slog fests where the money is at (eg last year the latter 3 were all succesful in short form) As for this year - we look light in all departments, maybe Brown/Fuller/Dawson/ Gubbins / Abbott / Lehman can all fire at the same time for a few wins to keep ys competitive - or we’ll quickly be like last years saints……

The big issue here is precedent and deterrent. Sensibly two things need to happen here 1) The EFL need to declare a punishment on spying now - and it needs to be big. If its say £500k that’s not enough as I’d be happy to try and spy on an opposition knowing the risk is £500k vs potential reward of £200m. I would not be surprised if that’s a -6 (or higher) immediate point deduction (plus obviously a big wedge of cash for their coffers - this is the totally corrupt world of football after all). 2) They would then need to rule on us - do they have enough evidence to prove guilt ? How long are they going to need to legally build a bulletproof case ?. I assume this will take too long and will be too complicated to implement so I’d expect if found guilty our points punishment will be deterred to next season or when we find ourselves back in the epl (whichever is sooner) Of course the above remains unfair on other teams (especially Boro) in this instance if we clearly cheated (provable) as we’d have a delayed punishment. But realistically what would be the alternative ? - even if they wanted to go over the top with a 10p ban they can’t go back in time.

Fair point - but let’s see how we do in short overs. What I would say is that many of these players in the 5 day will do limited and morale / form will be horrendous.

Our batting continuing to disappoint. Can’t believe us getting zero batting points when an ordinary Glamorgan were on their way to 600 is on the cards.

Not sure even if we go full strength we win this as they are knackered, we may actually do better with reserve players - not having a decent 2nd string keeper is a problem but we cannot afford any injuries to Bree, Azaz, THB, Larin or Peretz so I’d go: Long Jelert-Wood-Quarshie-Wellington Charles-Bragg Edozie-Matsuki-Archer Stewart id also have the kids on the bench - Dibaga, Williams, Obrian-Whitmarsh, Oyenkunle

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.

For me this game showed where we are - top two teams are utterly ruthless with opportunities, we aren’t. I do think we have enough in us to be top 6 though - and frankly it doesn’t really matter if that is 3rd or 6th. The game reinforced what we already know. Whilst Baz actually had a decent game, if you swap those two keepers the result is different - we put some really testing corners in and their keeper responded every time. Also we still have no out and out striker - even the commentators were baffled why we put Fellows on when we never put players in the box when he crossed. Archer needs to go in Jan too. There is a player there but he’s completely wrong for our tactics. Best for all to part ways.

Aside from Millwall that was the first real test for Eckert. WBA changed their tactics in the second half and we had no answer, it was a bit of a battering, subs were irrelevant as it started from 45m In the end he won the game, so you could argue it was a conscious choice not to change and believe we would hit them on the break and score again, but frankly that didn’t look likely. We have a weakness against teams who cross balls into big forwards as our cbs are not commanding in the air. Tonda saw this coming and played Quarshie who is too raw, Edward’s and Stephen’s are even worse in the air - in Jan we need a Ben Mee type experienced thug. Agree we need a good def left back too as Manning gets tired and when Leo goes off he loses protection. He also needs a new set piece coach in his team. Get a specialist in as every WBA corner was basically a header at goal.

I genuinely think he is improving last few games. I’d still rank him as a lower half Championship keeper, but previously he was a league one gk. Still worries me with his positioning and he’s way too quiet. I’ve seen defenders call for him to get the ball and he should be bellowing at them and claiming it or telling them to stfu as it’s his call. Hopefully this comes with confidence