Smith should just concentrate on hanging around the six yard box at set pieces. When he drops deeper to gain possession thinking he's McCormack it's embarrassing
Try a front three against the Barcodes - Poleon, Smith, & Ross. Stick Diouf one side of midfield and Mowatt the other with Austin (or Brown needs a rest before the more important game next weekend) through the centre of midfield. Would be interesting to see how a premiership defence coped with that formation
Next game you go to just concentrate on watching Varney. You will see exactly what I mean. Lots of clueless running to try and make up for lack of ability. I am convinced he must have a pyramid shaped head, the ball never goes where he intends.
I always admire your positivity boggers, god knows I do or try. This season so far is crap. Dress it up whatever way you want. Our current squad wouldn't hold a candle to the Division 1 squad mentioned earlier
I've never doubted that with service he will score goals, but I see it as pointless to play him without natural wide men playing. I'd give it a good assumption we won't be playing Byram for Newcastle, no point rushing him back for a meaningless game which means we won't get any natural width down that side (as peltier doesn't do very well when forward and Lees/Wootton aren't natural fullbacks anyway). Other side we may continue with white if Warnock is still out, how did White do for anyone that saw? On the radio it sounded like he was getting beat quite easily but was recovering quite well. But what I cannot fathom, is that McD must clearly see that our problems lie in the formation but hasn't changed it. When they have the ball they are doing all the damage from the fullbacks because we have no one there and all our problems going forward is because we have no width. As for the Varney case, I think he has done quite well this season but he just cannot score. We saw the same thing last season so I'm not surprised, he seems almost incapable of putting the ball in the back of the net. Good in the air except for when it comes to shooting with his head, dunno whether it is wise or not to continue with him or just put Smith up there if the only reason Varney is there is to win headers, although Varney does have a fair amount of pace and is better with the ball at his feet. I feel there is a case for every one of our strikers to play upfront but only alongside McCormack, its becoming increasingly obvious to me that we are missing his influence from upfront.
A few comments, Josh(e) ... Smith - he's improved since I last saw him. Someone's been teaching him to attack the ball with momentum. Last time out he was haning in the air & getting knocked off the ball. It wasn't just for the goal either - he was fairly consistent. Byram - think he may well get an hour to build him up. I must say that I was very surprised at Green's perfomance when he took over at RB on Saturday. Thought he was excellent, and I'd suggest he was even better than what we could expect from Peltier! I never really considered him as a RB option, but when I think of it, when we played 442 last season, him & Byram were consistently excellent together on the right, and covered each other really well. White - more of the same, I'm afraid. In his defence though, he was not fed the ball very often, and both he & Byram were pushed right up. We actually played 3-5-2 with only 2 at the back, if you know what I mean. And it worked. Width - I'm not convinced we need wingers to provide this. White & Byram/Green provided excellent width on Saturday. Sadly, White didn't produce much end product, but as I said earlier, he didn't get the service that Byram did. Diouff got most of the balls in from the left. I don't have the stats, but there were plenty of balls whizzing into the middle. To no avail, sadly ... Tells a story in itself. Lastly Varney - I was his biggest critic last season, and he deserved every bit of it. He has improved this season, but IMO he'll never be good enough quality for Leeds United. Unfortunately, and I can't believe I'm saying this, he deserves his place in the team because we don't have anyone better. Sad, but true. Just to chuck something else in - I'm still waiting for Murphy to impress. Don't know why he gets such good press. He was absolutely average on Saturday, as he has been from the start.
I just wrote a huge response to that Whitejock and for some reason Not606 decided to delete it... I can't disagree with much of that whitejock, it all seems fair enough. I've always been a big fan of the Green/Byram partnership as they compliment each other very well. Its a shame we don't have a similar partnership on the otherside but I still think we should go a flat 442. I view partnerships between the fullbacks and wide men as just as important as a centre forward pairing or central defence pairing if utilised well. Maybe even try a White/Pugh partnership if you were looking for a similar style, this is when we saw the best out of White when he played LB with Pugh ahead of him under Grayson. I would personally go with warnock/diouf with Drury as cover for Warnock and maybe White as cover for Diouf at least until we sign a LM on loan (which now must be obvious to McD that we need one). On a seperate note though, we could even try Dawson out on the left at the very least in an attempt to give him game time. He shows a lot of attributes we appear to lack in the team currently that we could use and I do believe he is left footed. It seems the days are gone when we used to ease players into the team by playing them out wide.
I know what you're saying, but I'm not so sure about the White/Dawson combination. Warnock/Dawson, perhaps, but 2 inexperienced players together is a bit of a risk. There's no doubt in my mind that Green was a huge help to Byram last season & brought him on nicely. He anticipated & covered a lot of Byram's mistakes. White couldn't do that for Dawson, or vice versa. At risk of being torn apart by everyone, I think the Pugh/Dawson option might work too. I've always been perfectly happy with Pugh, tbh.
I wasn't saying a White/Dawson partnership, I was saying a Warnock/Dawson one with Drury as cover for Warnock and Diouf/White as cover for Dawson. And on Pugh, I don't rate him as a LB, he's good cover for inexperienced LBs when he plays in front of them but he is a bit sluggish and gets caught out when he is playing there.
can't see us going down Clarky you might be right on Norwich though, must be 50-50 for them, though there are some worse teams I think
