Match Day Thread Blades vs Town

Every one of them an abject failure.

 

Edwards shows signs,but I agree,on the whole we traded down,but unfortunately that’s been the Town way for the whole of ME’s tenure.

 

Well that's an easy one - Nolan and Edwards comfortably.

Nsiala and Donacien haven't done a lot wrong and we haven't seen enough of Harrison but he has had some nice touches that indicate there might be something there.

The most resounding abject failures this season - Bart, Knudsen, Chambers, Dozzell, Skuse and Jackson.

So all in all a decent return on our summer business.

Anyone who thought anybody could take the steaming piling of turd of a squad that McCarthy left behind and turn them into world beaters in one window and a few weeks of football was always kidding themselves.

 

I think that's a very optimistic and ambitious conclusion for Nolan and Edwards, who have both played many games and are maddeningly inconsistent, providing a poor return on both goals and assists. Nsiala has struggled in most of the games I have seen this season, and doesn't look cut out for the Championship. Donacien has been frozen out for whatever reason, but was hardly on form when he did start for us (decent debut aside). No argument with our abject failures list - although I'd add Spence, Kenlock, and Roberts to that list too. I don't think any Championship team will come in for our players next season, with the possible exceptions of Bart and Dozzell, and that's based more on their reputations than actual form.

How you can call Hurst's summer signings a decent return on our investment - when the attacking players Edwards, Jackson, Nolan, and Harrison have a paltry 14 goals between them across a combined 116 appearances. It's awful. Truly abject. I'm not excusing the existing players' poor form either, they've been equally as bad, but I struggle to understand how you can look at our summer business and look at their results and performances this season and call it a 'decent return'. The only encouraging thing about it is that we at least look like we've got several players who are well accustomed to League One football and in theory can help us achieve a quick promotion. But that's clutching at straws. If we had a summer window like we had in Mick's last season - buying in Waghorn and Garner, as well as adding quality like Celina and Connolly - we arguably wouldn't be in this position, certainly not bottom of the table in what has been a depressingly ordinary batch of Championship clubs.

As for the 'steaming pile of turd of a squad' that Mick left behind - fair enough, it's your opinion. But that is a squad that finished mid-table last season and it's a squad that was pretty balanced, had plenty of experience, and good firepower up top. Most of us are on record last season, on this forum, arguing that we had the basis of a solid squad that needed some fine-tuning and a few good signings. That's all demonstrable fact. It was a squad that needed some investment in areas, sure, and maybe required us signing the loan player 'talisman' (ala Fraser, Lawrence, Williams, Celina etc) to provide us with a bit of star power, but it wasn't an awful team by any stretch of the imagination. Ripping out the best players in the squad and replacing them with lower-league quality, which is what Evans and Hurst did, made this squad a steaming pile of turd. Not having a goalkeeper coach at the start of the season was poor planning. Running down the morale of your squad is poor management. The issue with Mick's legacy is that we played his turgid style of football for years and players struggled to play any other way. In terms of squad depth and profit he raised by buying in those players we offloaded good players last summer for £8m odd. Players like Waghorn and Webster who are contributing to their new teams' promotion push. Were those players rubbish? Come off it.

 

This Close Season will arguably be THE most crucial in our Club's history and with Evans dismal track record I have very little hope that the right players will be recruited.

 

Much of this I don't disagree with but it's irrelevant.

I don't agree that we had a good squad and that's not hindsight. I thought we had three decent players, one was sold and the other two have been abysmal this season https://www.not606.com/threads/core-of-the-team.362659/

GK Bartosz Białkowski
RB
CB Luke Chambers
CB
LB
RM Martyn Waghorn
CM
CM
LM
ST
ST

Without the benefit of hindsight some forget that if Waghorn and Webster weren't sold we would not have been able to bring in anyone at all (and we had such a **** squad we needed to). Most of us were happy to get £5m for Waghorn and you said yourself "Regarding our profitable playing assets, I agree that bar the World Cup pairing of Bart and Knudsen, we don't have many players that can bring in a fee over £1m."

https://www.not606.com/threads/if-true-sell-before-you-buy.363450/

Form is not the same as ability and unless you sign Ronaldo or Messi then football is not about individuals either.

We were not in a position where we had a good side that we could add a couple of players to. If we had been then nearly all of those players would have comfortably fitted in in the Championship.

What we could have done to improve that is:

- Play Woolfy, Donacien and Knudsen
- Not have sold off Wickham / Murphy / Waghorn in order to balance the books or let McGoldrick / Marriott / Moore go for nothing.

Lambert could not fix everything but he could have made some much smarter decisions than he has, particularly with the defence and the January signings. Hurst could not fix everything either, that's all it boils down to.

 

Forgot Hyam too. His career stagnated under Mick but rate him over Skuse for our holding player all day long.

 

Hampy, my issue isn't so much about the fact we sold Webster, Waghorn, and Garner, it's that their replacements have been so poor. We did very well to get £5m for Waghorn, a fee I didn't think was believable at the start of pre-season, but we've missed his goals and assists. Nobody in the squad has replicated his performances last season. Joey Garner, a player who I don't rate highly as a footballer, has scored more goals last season than Jackson, Harrison, and Nolan combined. Under Mick, we had a fairly solid, dependable squad that was enhanced by two or three exceptional talents in the team. Last season that was Waghorn and Celina, they were players who often looked effective on the ball and had real attacking initiative. We lost those players and good strikers for inexperienced lower league gambles and our loan signings, while generally good in respect for Pennington and Chalobah, have not brought the star quality that a Lawrence, a Celina, or a Fraser would bring our squads of recent seasons. What we were left with is a poor side that looks out of its depth in the Championship and struggles to score and invites far too much pressure on the defence than what it has typically endured. Furthermore, you sell the best defender in the squad in Webster, the only centre-back who would have adapted quickly to Hurst's ideal football, and replace him with Nsiala. It's a sorry state of affairs.

I honestly struggle to think how you can defend the summer's transfer business, Hampy, especially when the consensus rightly acknowledges that the new signings have been generally poor and that the quality of the squad has gone downhill from last season's team. Do you honestly believe we have better players now than we did this time last season? If you do, I think you're flying in the face of facts, but there you go.

 

If we were just replacing like for like there would have been no point selling them but I’m not sure we had any choose and we needed players all over the park - let’s also not forget that most of those funds were not reinvested last summer - we took about £10m and spent about £5m if I’m not mistaken.

I don’t think the squad is significantly worse or better than last season, I think we have all the same problems to address as we did then. Had any of Sears, Harrison, Keane, Lankester, Walters stayed fit - or had Edwards and Nolan featured more - I’m sure we would have scored significantly more goals than we have. No guarantee that Waghorn wouldn’t have got injured and where would that leave us? We shouldn’t be running a club this way.

The consensus as far as I’m hearing is that the likes of Chambers and Skuse are not even up to the task in League One.

It tells you all you need to know that in spite of relegation I am still very much glad to see the back of McCarthy.

 

That's where my sympathy for Hurst kicks in slightly, he clearly wasn't given much of the proceeds to spend, when it was really required. Looking back, it was probably best Hurst didn't have any more money to spend! Not signing Curtis Tilt, when we apparently only needed to spend another £200k to wrap up the deal, was disappointing. Particularly as we went into that first game against Blackburn with only one recognised centre-back. Another instance of Evans dropping the ball in a transfer window. I do wonder if the involvement of a Director of Football, as well as a clear idea and playing philosophy, would have strengthened Hurst's hand and also helped identify some Championship experience that was sorely missing from the summer recruits. Hurst doesn't seem the type that would work under that arrangement, similar to Mick, so probably wouldn't have happened. Either way, the mis-steps and mistakes in the transfer market, as well as the strange inability to play Hurst's preferred playing style and then the direct football we reverted to, would have been better mitigated with someone overlooking the squad over a period of time.

I still think it's a stretch to say this squad we've got now, marooned and adrift at the bottom of the table, is better or as good as the squad we had last season. So let's agree to disagree there.

Chambers and Skuse are no longer Championship quality players, or if they are then they are having a hell of a slump. Both would serve as squad players next season, I believe, but should not be guaranteed starters. Do you think Lambert will have the strength of character and confidence to remove them from the side? They weirdly appear to have a hold on a succession of managers now and have done little to justify their first team status over the past couple of seasons. Moving them out of the first team picture, and allowing more technically proficient players to take their spot, will make this team more dynamic and forward-thinking, which is absolutely imperative heading into League One next season.

 

I think the assessment would have to be that we’ve sold our two best players, which has been going on for the entire Evans era, but this time those two best players were not that much of a loss as the likes of Cresswell and Murphy. Apart from that these signings and Alan Judge are all better than we already had.

Touching on the Curtis Tilt deal, Mick has said that he wanted to sign Nathan Collins in 2017 but nothing happened most likely because we didn’t want to pay the wages or fees. As a 15 year old then it wouldn’t have been a lot. McCarthy, Hurst and Lambert - none of them are idiots but their hands are tied. I think Hurst would have welcomed anything that was going to help the club including a Director of Football but not the one we have ended up with who has no credentials whatsoever.

I think out of necessity Skuse and Chambers will feature unless we so happen upon a free transfer that Lambert likes the look of. Players are apparently taking a 50% reduction of wages so don’t expect an influx of top talent this summer. We will be relying on a drop of quality in our opposition to be competitive.

 

Skuse played most of Saturday’s game as sweeper.I hope Lambert doesn’t see that as the way forward

 

I think it is sometimes easy to forget that Hurst was appointed on a mandate to refresh the squad. Start a new era. His Mandate was not to build on the foundations on the old. That therefore guided his, and the club's, transfer policy over the summer. McGoldrick, Waghorn, Garner, Webster were all to some extent replaced because of that in mind. Out with the old in with new. Only in our most blindly optimistic states were we thinking maybe top 6 was acheivable. In reality we must have always known we would likely see a drop down the table before we saw any fruits.

Maybe if we were to rerun the summer the old that would be replaced would be Bart, Knudsen and Chambers, and we would have kept the goalscorers. But there is a certain logic behind retaining two world cup players (1 of which was twice player of the season - which tells it's own story) and the club captain and trusting the new to do the attacking.

Maybe the new era was always going to get us relegated but I think everyone panicked and it was that more than the transfer policy in of itself that ultimately Doomed Hurst.

Then appointing someone who wanted to change the recipe when the ingredients were already half baked only exacerbated the situation.

 

Let's not forget Hurst himself was panicking. He was very emotional and sounded defeated at times. Ultimately nobody, myself included, really believed in how he was setting us up and he lost me altogether when he sent Woolfy out on loan, which I still believe was the biggest single factor in our relegation. But I felt more that some things were not clicking and that would eventually come by giving him time to make mistakes and try different approaches on the basis that there was always a hell of a lot of work to do.

 

I thought that's where Mick mainly played him