I've not said a word about all this yet this season, so excuse me if I have a little(ish) rant...
If we lose our managers, we also lose one of our best defenders, and one of the few people who have actually scored a goal this season.
And that's part of the problem. There are five other strikers at the club, four of which have been brought into the first team by the current management, three of which were available today, and the manager has to resort to bringing himself on to get a goal. Six strikers at the club with the second worst scoring record, yet when we want goals we have to rely on lumping it up to the tall old bloke up front. Call me old fashioned, but I think a manager should aim to get in players who are better than themselves on the pitch.
To be fair, I think there are several decent players in the squad, and I've not seen many games this season, so my comments are only based on what I've seen in a few games and read about elsewhere.
The problems have been with various decisions which just haven't worked out. Persevering with Stones didn't work. I didn't think it would, having seen him score about 10% of his chances last year in the reserves. Yes, he looked a little fitter this year, but his workrate didnt go up, neither did his finishing percentage. I was glad to see Ogden kept on, as I thought he looked good last year, but if they were never going to play him, as presumably he's a bit lightweight, why did we keep him hanging around for so long instead of sending him on load to get match practice, and build himself up a bit?
The hole in midfield pre-season. I was at the Wigan pre-season game. In general it was a good performance, but I remember texting someone at half time saying that Wilkinson was the worst player I'd seen wearing our kit for a while, and if we sign him we might as well quit thinking about promotion. In the 2nd half he didn't get much better (wheras Milnes looked much better in the 2nd half), and what do we hear after the game? Both had been signed. I have no idea what was seen in Wilkinson during that game, but it had nothing to do with what happend on the pitch. Fair enough, it could've been a one-off bad game, but you don't sign people after one of those. It felt like we needed two new midfielders, these were the first two that an agent showed us, so we said yes please without thinking too hard about it.
Today's team sheet was never going to work. So many players who'd never played together, some in interesting new positions, some suprised to just be on the pitch. If you want to send a harsh message out to the team who lost in the FA Cup, then throw the lot of them into the reserves for a midweek game when we've not got a proper midweek tie. Make them train with the reserves and youth team. Buy horrible hats for them all to train in. Do something, anything other than sabotaging your own team during an away game at a team who are in pretty much the same situation as us, and will grasp at any chance to gain the much needed three points. The three points which seem to have been our 2nd objective this afternoon, after shaming some of our usual starting eleven and getting the boots of some fringe players dirty.
I've got no problem with managers learning on the job. As long as they are actually learning. I think Mr Newton might be happy for us to grind out a comfortable mid-table season, building off the pitch again and then slowly on the pitch after most of the talent from last year has moved on. But the question is, are we learning? I think it might be too early to tell. During the two Lee's first game as managers last season away at Solihull they made a substitution which made no sense so me at all. We needed a goal, Solihull were being run ragged by pace, but mopping up all our long balls to Boyes' head. So what did we do? Bring on Danny Davidson, and hoof more balls at his head (I think we all know how futile that is). Hunter was on the bench. Say what want about him, but he had pace. Solihull hated pace. Hunter remained on the bench. The bring-on-Davidson tactic worked in the play off semi last season, and we're still doing the same, albeit with Lee instead of Davidson. Only of course this season it's generally not been working, and we've been in the position of needing a game changer far too often.
A repetition compulsion isn't just Freudian, it also shows a lack of learning from your mistakes. Will it continue? getting new blood in is a good sign, but if we still end up relying on the manager to come on to try to rescue something, then maybe we should look at the way we're playing as the problem. I've no problem with us losing a few games, as long as it looks like we're learning from them. I don't know that we are. But I don't talk to the management team every day, so I don't know what they're thinking. Mr Newton has a better idea than me. If there's one person in the club who I trust in, it's him.
So I'll huff and I'll moan when we lose. I'll cheer if we win. I'm allowed to, because I'm a fan.
Mr Newton is allowed to make his decisions when he wants to, for the good of the team, for the good of the club and for the good of his investment. He's allowed to, because he's the Chairman. He's always made good decisions in the past, and I trust him to continue to do so. Personally, I don't expect any change till at least Christmas. By then it'll either be obvious that nothing will change (I don't think we've reached that point yet, even despite todays drubbing), or he'll have seen the same turn in fortuntes that we had a couple of seasons ago when a few bad results, including an eary FA cup exit marked the turning point in the season.
I think one thing we can all agree on is that the last thing we need is a Tilson-esque knee jerk reaction to bring in someone who makes everything worse. BSN might not be the best league in the world, but it's much nicer than the Evo-Stik!
