About 8 of our squad are current internationals. Gibson, Duffy, Barnes, Stacey and Giannoulis have been at one time consistent performers in the Premiership. Batth was player of the season last year at Sunderland. We have several promising keen youngsters in the squad. Why, with a squad like that, are we in the bottom half of the table in 13th place, 30 points off the top but only 17 points off the bottom, if it is not down to the Head Coach. Please don't use the injury excuse - all Teams get injuries, our squad is big enough and experienced enough to cope with that if the Head Coach is competent enough to reorganise his resources. Even when the full squad is available we have to produce stats like the last game to scrape an undeserved point in a home game and not drop to 14th in the table. How bad have things got to get before the Board and Management Team accept the bleedin' obvious?
Here we go again picking the stats that suit !! There are only 4 places in the Championship that matter over the course of a season 1) Top 2 for obvious reasons 2) Bottom 3 again for obvious reasons Play off place 3rd to 6th, yet again for obvious reasons. All the other places are pretty much irrelevant. I think with the injuries we've had to so many key players, not being in the top 2 places is not unreasonable. So if we look at the points difference in the areas that actually matter we are 13 points off the relegation zone and only 6 points off a play off place. We are only just over halfway through the season and with key players coming back from injury I see no reason why we can't go on a bit of a run in 2024. Injuries are not an excuse they are a fact of life. We have had a large number of injuries to key players. Could anyone on here identify any team in this league, let alone a team above us that has had a worse injury recorded than us to key players. To say that the full squad was available to Wagner for the Southampton game is deliberately misleading and that before you even factor in those that are just returning from injury. There hasn't been one game this season when Wagner has had anywhere near a fully fit squad to chose from.
I was only quoting points and league positions which you went on to do. Only 4 places that matter - top 2, bottom 3 and 4 play off spots - how is that 4? Most teams have suffered short term injuries of up to a month in key players and we have not had an excessive number of those. As far as I am aware only Hanley, who we knew was long term injured, before the season started and Sargent have not been available for at least 50% of our games and whilst nobody can doubt that Sargent was sorely missed 21 goals in 77 appearances is not a goal machine. Most Coaches could have covered the loss of Hanley with Gibson, Duffy, McLean, Batth and promising youngsters without the defensive shambles we have witnessed this season. The loss of Sargent is not responsible for the fact that experienced defenders did not seem to know who they were supposed to be marking - that responsibility rests with Wagner. We might be only a few points off the play off spots but that is the average nature of the league this year and no achievement on our part. In fact we are one of eleven Clubs within 8 points of the play offs. I feel very strongly that with our squad a decent Coach would have us in the playoff spots at least despite the injury to Sargent.
Gibson has also been injured. Duffy has cover Hanley. McLean is a first team starter anyway. Even with Hanley & Gibson missing we were still doing OK. The problems came with losing our main striker and key player Sergeant, add to that the injury to Gunn, Barnes and others. No doubt its a coincidence that we went downhill so badly when they were all injured. Go on give me the name of another team that had there first choice GK, club Captain and main CB plus there first choice striker all injured at the same time for a significant part of the season.
We knew that Hanley was out long term and signed Duffy and Batth to cover this. Neither of them has been injured. There were only 4 games where Gunn and Gibson were out at the same time and we won 2 of them - a better average than the rest of the season. I agree that Sarge was a miss but with a scoring average of about a goal every 4 games he cannot carry the team.
One further point. Idah is supposedly an International striker - if he can't cover for Sergeant why the hell have we given him a 5 year contract?
It's not the individual injuries it's the cumulative effect of all of them and it's not just about the games, but also time on the training field and constant changes. In the same way as it's not just the goals the striker scores it's the impact he has on the teams overall performance. There's a reason why most successful teams tend to have a core starting 11. Anyway I'm still waiting for the name of the team in this league that's had a worse injury record to key players than us.
That I agree with, however when I said this a few weeks ago, pretty much everyone else said how wonderful he was.
Without searching through the records of every other Team I obviously cannot answer that but I can repeat that we already knew that the Club Captain was going to be out and had signed replacements so he cannot be classed as an unexpected injury and of the other 3 there were only 4 games when they were all unavailable and we won 2 of them. As we allegedly had adequate replacements in the squad for the remaining 2 I cannot see this should have amounted to an overwhelming problem to a competent Coach. A quick check reveals that Middlesborough,for example, currently have 9 injured players in their squad, 7 of which are regular starters and 2 of them are now out for the rest of the season. Need I delve further?
Just watched Moneyball on the plane back starring the Hunky Brad Pitt. Apparently based on a true story of a self funding baseball team trying to compete with their rich franchise owner competitors by crunching stats of misfits & unwanted players on the cheap . Spoiler alert they didn't win anything..
That may be the case currently, but have Boro had anything like the long term injuries to players that we have had to Hanley, Sargent and Sainz? Missing one of those is bad enough, but all three being out has had a very detrimental effect on the first half of the season. Wagner has so far had roughly the equivalent of one full season (46 games) and we are currently 13th. In Farke's first season at City we finished 14th. Should we have sacked him then?
I don't subscribe to the idea that we have been uniquely hard hit. First, as 1950canary has pointed out, we've had Duffy to step into Hanley's boots. He's an experienced, competent replacement and, IMO, Hanley's equal in footballing terms. Second, we are talking about Sainz as though he's an already proven quantity in our side, rather than a newcomer to England and the English language, to English football, to the Championship, to his team mates, and to Wagner's style of play. He clearly still has a lot to learn about the defensive side of the game. Even when he’d recovered from his injury, Wagner held him back as "not yet ready". Having high hopes of him is one thing, making out we’ve been deprived of a pivotal player for half a season is quite another. Which leaves Sargent, whose absence has undoubtedly hurt us, but not to the extent that, with him in the side, we'd almost certainly be firmly established in the top six for example. Our televised match at Hull on Friday is the start of a 20 game mini league. Sargent, Sainz and Hanley are all back and available. The proof of this pudding will come in the eating.
The proof will most certainly be in the pudding, I am hopeful that those returning players mentioned might see an upturn in results. Whilst I agree the Duffy could be classed as an equal to Hanley in footballing terms, their skill sets are very different. Hanley offers significant pace for a CB which Duffy certainly lacks, whilst Duffy provides superior aerial ability both in defence and attack. I think the pace aspect has been a severe miss against several side earlier in the season and it is certainly noticeable to me that we have dropped our defensive line more recently to avoid some of the goals that we conceded, most obviously in the Plymouth game. Sainz is very much still an unknown quantity still but he provides an increased energy and pressing on the likes of Fassnacht and certainly more of a threat and end product than Hernandez, but he is also wasteful at times. As I’ve said before Sargent has been the greatest miss for his all round play which was evident in the Saints game with his pressing and defensive work in turning the ball over several times for us. His hold up play is also the best of any of our strikers in my opinion. Fingers crossed they all stay fit now!
