Really pleased as well with Dowell's progress after getting over his injury. Five goals in 12 starts is brilliant and that bodes well for next season in what was our problem position last season.
It's amazing to look at that picture and consider the squad turnover in 24 months. How many key figures from that campaign were key this year? It doesn't feel like we're a side who makes big changes to the squad, this one very much feels like a continuation of the 18/19 squad, and yet there's few who made big impacts in both seasons. Krul, Aarons, Buendia, Pukki....is that it? I doubt anybody else made more than 30 appearances in both seasons. And equally, how many 18/19 players would get into this season's starting XI? I'd probably take 18/19 Stiepermann at CAM but otherwise I'm not sure any player from that team makes it into this one. Every other player from the last title winning season to have had a significant impact this season has improved.
I was thinking about the energy levels earlier and how one of our biggest advantages has been hampered by the introduction of 5 subs due to COVID. Our fitness was what helped us breakdown teams during the last promotion campaign, we weren’t able to make that it was tell so much this year as the opposition were able to replace half the team and often did around the 60min mark.
I think that is why we haven't scored as much this year because the constant movement just wears teams out both physically and mentally
Completely agree. I suspect Farke wouldn’t want to change styles too much, but I’d quite like to see us every now and again play Quintilla with Hugill up front, plus maybe another tall attacking midfielder who can head the ball. It would be a really different style we could employ when we are up against a team not giving us the space to play our passing game.
Pretty sure Xavi was told to keep the ball moving from the wing rather than lump crosses in . Most of the time he cut it back to Skipp
Skipp with a likely broken bone in his foot. That's a terrible turn of events for him. Mulumbu broke his foot in pre-season about 6 years ago. He was never able to make the grade for us after that. Oliver is only 20 y-o, so youth is on his side. Wishing him a quick and full recovery.