I said I couldn’t comment yesterday. Like many I suspect, I was genuinely upset by the performance and didn't want to speak in that state. On the other hand. I do want to get it out of my brain.
I’m not sure I know what to say anyway. How can we have gone for 90 minutes without creating a single worthwhile chance against a Preston team that don’t really impress?
I can’t blame the players for lack of effort and given that they were clapped off by many if not all, I’m not the only one who feels that way. I thought Joe Edwards was an absolute hero yesterday, leading by example.
Nevertheless, if there were options on the bench, I suspect neither Whittaker or Hardie would have lasted the 90 minutes. The pair of them of have played pretty much every minute for which they’ve been available and this is a tough league. Tougher physically I think than the Premier League, which I watch a lot of. There, the game is more cerebral . The defences form up tactically and the opposition probe and retreat, probe and retreat until they find a gap when there’s a short but intense burst of high- speed activity. The Championship is a pitched battle with tackles flying for 90 minutes. To be honest, it’s exhausting to watch, never mind play in. Where is Callum Wright? He may not be the most polished player but he doesn’t half get around the pitch and would be an unwelcome problem to give tired defenders for the last 15 minutes.
We had a small squad in the first place and lost quality where it counts in the January window. Financial fair play is forcing clubs to cash in where they can and that makes the loan market inherently more risky than it was only a year ago. Where that leaves our recruitment model, I don’t know.
What’s also clear is that whatever the background of Neil Dewsnip and Ian Foster, you can’t succeed with just kids, to paraphrase Alan Hansen. Perhaps if the kids include Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville and David Beckham you can, but not ordinarily. We need a backbone of experienced players and competent replacements.
Maybe the biggest recruitment mistake of all was ending up with a Director of Football and a Head Coach from the same unusual background. A meeting of minds can be useful but so can a bit of creative tension. It’ll be intriguing to see where Dewsnip was yesterday. The summariser on the Blackburn game said that the appointment of a first team coach two days previously would allow Dewsnip “to return to his place in the grandstand”. Has he? Because he was in fact in the dugout against Blackburn, at least for part of the game: I saw him on Argyle TV.
Saying “how can Foster have reduced us to this” is not entirely fair. He doesn’t have the squad Schumacher did. Nevertheless, make no mistake, unless he finds a way to play that works, we will go down playing like this. There are no signs of it yet.
The summariser on the Blackburn game mentioned playing Hardie and Bundu as a pair, with Whittaker as a single number 10 behind them. Perhaps that would make Whittaker harder to mark and Hardie could run off Bundu’s strength.
Maybe now’s the time to give Issaka a chance even if it’s a bit too soon for him personally. Having said that, he’s consistently in the Welsh youth teams and is only 11 months younger than Ashley Phillips, who’s playing at CB where mistakes are often fatal. He’s in the same Under 19’s international cohort as Lino Sousa. One thing’s for sure, the crowd would back Freddie to the hilt however he plays so he’s nothing to fear, not that he looks as if he knows what fear is anyway. As they sing to Michael Cooper and Adam Randell, he’s own of our own.
Other than that, we’re buggered as far as I can see, but then, it’s not my job or yours, it’s Ian Foster’s.