Lief Erickson must be getting on a bit, as he was a Viking a thousand years ago. Must be all that pillaging that keeps him young.
Great day out at Portman Road. Nice to be among the singing fans for once! Can’t wait for the next one. Really good team performance on the whole. Shea Charles is a beast. J-Rob excellent. Great effort from Adarma. He battled so hard despite having a real tough job up top on his own. Quarshie was really bad. Was the only real weak position. Drop him for Wood/Edwards, or preferably switch to two CBs and we’ll be fine. Honestly if we keep Fernandes and Dibling, I don’t think we need to sign anyone. Maybe a RB.
Just got home. Very good point. 4 points is a great return from a very tricky start. Stephens was our best CB again - the other two weren't great at all, particularly Quarshie. Thought our stand out players were Fraser (my MOTM), Downes and Robinson. Thought Fraser was outstanding on the right, work horse all day. Manning should be starting ahead of Welington going forwards. Downes and Charles will be the best CM partnership in the league this season. Great for Robinson to get off the mark.
Wide players I think we’re fine. Fraser’s looked great; Jay an unexpected bonus, and obviously Dibling is class. I guess if Stewart is gone again, then a big striker would be nice.
Home Couple of things I didn't mention earlier: The ref was atrocious, not in one teams favour or anything just wildly inconsistent. We really need to settle on a single song for Robinson rather than the 3 that were heard today. My vote is for here's to you Jay Robinson but I might be biased as I started it
Stewart is ill. Not sure why they'd lie about that. A little bamboozled that you think we are set for wide options as IMO that is an area that we absolutely need to strengthen and Still has even called a lack of wide options as one of the reasons we are playing a back 3. We currently have 3 proper wingers, one of them wants out, one of them is only 18 and this is his first full season as a first teamer and the other is ageing and didn't play at all last season and 2 season ago he was a starter what, half the games at most? It's a long season. Players will get injured, or struggle for form and even that aside, you need options and that is one of those positions that you can really make an impact from the bench. Appreciate that Armstrong will likely be used on the right too when we have some fit and performing number 9's, he may not be a winger but has proven himself from that position and his work rate makes up for his lack of creativity. Regardless of how well Fraser might have played, the fact that we are playing him out of position over our RB options shows that we also need to do business there IMO. Currently a massive drop off from having KWP there previously. We also very much need a GK, you can't go into the season with just 2. And I would argue, even if we keep Fernandes that we need a creative midfielder. Fernandes isn't really that IMO. Think we still need to do quite a bit of business tbh if we want an auto spot.
Oh and also a not obvious area of improvement needed is to stop giving away silly fouls in dangerous areas. Will come back to bite us otherwise. Though we were better at defending set pieces than we were last week.
For me, we have won a game I thought we would draw and drew a game I had as a loss. I was anticipating a slow start to the season. In my opinion, we are ahead of schedule. Far better than I could have anticipated and in a position of achieving this befire Will has put his stamp on the team . I am reallyvpleased so far .
