I still maintain we should’ve tried to get Nuri Şahin when he was still at Antalyaspor. The fact he’s since gone on to be assistant coach and now head coach at Dortmund shows what a talented, young coach he is. A major complaint of Walter and Rosenior is that they are too stubborn and rigid to their ‘philosophy’. Well, Şahin is a possession-oriented coach who likes his teams to play out from the back but his tactical flexibility and adaptability is why he’s such an interesting coach. He actually will change his build-up approach depending on who he has available and who the opposition is. Against a high-pressing team, he has a 3-2-5 build-up with the left-back tucking in as an extra centre-half with two holding mids in front and the right-back bombing forward almost like a second right-winger. Against teams that sit deep, he uses a 2-3-5 build-up with the left-back inverting as an extra midfielder. Recently, he’s even opted for a 3-1-6 build-up with a single holding mid instead of two. This rigid and stubborn approach of ‘Plan B is to make Plan A better’ that Walter, Rosenior, Russell Martin and others have is shooting themselves in the foot. It’s why I rate Şahin, Hürzeler etc. because of how flexible and adaptable they are to come up with solutions instead of just doing the same thing over and over even when it’s not working.
I think you called it first, Ben. For me, Oxford was the final straw. I wonder to what extent over-training contributed to Millar and Belloumi injuries.
If TW is to be gone this week Dawson might be our only choice for a while. Last time he had a go, between Shota and Rosie, out of 8 I think he won 3, lost 5.
Even with the current injury situation, I think we’ve got a better overall squad now than we had at that point but anyone is going to struggle with the striker options until January at least.
To be serious I take no pleasure in that, if true. I genuinely wanted it to work, it sounded so good. I just observed no cohesion in the match day teams, from the friendlies. Every game they played like a fresh group of strangers. There was nothing, especially progress. We had decent players from last season who suddenly looked inept. That’s not on them, it’s the leadership they’re following, If he has indeed gone, I hope we can fully get behind the new boss & team without dwelling on what’s happening now.
