brucie wrote:Are the players of really greater quality though - if they are why cannot we win games?
With all due respect to Stockley and Marquis they both lack much experience. Stockley may have been on loan to Orient but I don't think he played much. Loan spells at Accrington and Woking wouldn't necessarily fill me with any great enthusiasm to be honest.
I am pleased that he has been brought in as I do think we need another forward but is Knill realy going to drop Benyon after playing well and scoring against Plymouth? - that would look like really muddled thinking to me. Benyon has been there and done it at this level and in my view remains the forward who is must likely to dig us out of the sh*t.
Yes O'Connor,Pearce and Downes are good players but Pearce cannot get in the team - that looks another dubious decision by the manager. Play all three with O'Connor at right back.
I havn't seen Mozika yet but agreed he should get stronger the more he plays. The imminent return of Bodin makes us stronger although I am not sure what has happened to Harding - he was supposed to be back from injury about three weeks ago.
Well yeah, there's so much more to winning a game of football than merely having higher quality players than either last year or the other side. The players, individually, are all (for Hector's benefit, this is one of those times we discussed, where you might feel the need to use the word "almost") better than their equivalents from last year. There's something else missing or at odds which is preventing us from winning matches. I certainly don't think the quality in the squad could possibly be blamed.
You're a big fan of suggesting that players don't have experience, and it's usually accurate up to a point, but I think you invest too much stock in it. Players these days play football endlessly from the age of about 5. By the time they're 14, they're basically doing nothing else for 6 hours a day. A 20 year old today has probably played more minutes of football than a 30 year old from 25 years ago.
Knill suffers with the opposite thing from Ling, in that he over thinks problems. Ling had one plan, one single way of playing. If that works, great, if not, we're ****. Knill tries to micro-manage every game, changing formation and personnel to nullify the opposition and attack their identified weaknesses. If he thinks that two big guys up front will beat Scunthorpe, then Bennerz will miss out regardless of his midweek showing.
We lambasted Buckle for playing guys out of position. If O'Connor isn't a right back, he shouldn't be wedged into the team at RB just to get him on the pitch. Tongue hasn't been too bad this year and is a specialist in the position, that's got to be preferable to mashing a random in there simply because he's better all round player. A brain surgeon may well be highly talented, but I want a heart surgeon doing my bypass surgery.
Harding is recovering slowly from his foot injury. He's in a protective boot all week to help it along.
Overall, yeah, we're a much better side this year than we were at any time last year. Is this side as good as the best XI we had available on the first day of two seasons ago? No, certainly not. So, we're not anywhere near as good as the side which finished 5th and we're better than the side which finished 21st (or whatever). 16th place, anyone?
Matt.
