The last few seasons at Town and the contrast with the short term win at any cost mentality of managers like Mick McCarthy that saw us drop to League One prove otherwise.
I feel it’s a bit of that and just the massive step up in quality we’re playing week in, week out. League One and the Championship are much more forgiving leagues than the Premier League, as we’re finding out. The signs of positivity is that we’ve played three teams in last season’s top four and only three home games so far this season. I think it’s our home form that will decide if we go down or stay up. If we do manage to stay up, the hope is we don’t then need another massive recruitment drive to upgrade players we’ve brought in who have struggled. Players like Johnson, Szmodics, and Ogbene look like they’re struggling and unable to put down serious claims for starting games.
The other problem is game time for our newbies. Poor Szmodics, who started well early season, and proved a handful, has only come on when the game is almost lost, and is expected to turn things around.
Yeah, get the impression McKenna doesn’t yet know what attacking line up to trust other than Delap up top. I think Spanish and a couple of others want to see an attacking midfield trio of Clarke on the left, Hutchinson down the right, and Szmodics through the middle. I’d like to see that over the next few matches.
Anyone else think McKenna should change the system and formation for away games - or is that likely to further disrupt new players settling in and change a previously successful style? I do feel we need to be more defensively solid. A back three of Greaves, O’Shea and Woolfenden behind Davis at left wing back and maybe Burns at right wing back should be more solid. It’ll also allow Davis to focus more on attacking - which is his strength - rather than defending. A midfield duo of Morsy and Phillips behind an attacking trio of Hutchinson, Szmodics, and Delap (pace on the break) could work. If we’re chasing games and opt to go long, could always switch to a - can’t believe I’m saying it - two up top with Hirst and Delap, with one central attacking midfielder behind. Fortunately still early days, but we’ve only managed two points out of a possible 12 away from home, including trips to Southampton and West Ham. We played three at the back throughout most of pre-season and although they were friendlies, kept consecutive clean sheets against strong opposition.
Lots of sensible ideas there Nuggets. Or he could go with the regular Championship team, those who are left!
Tuanzebe and Morsy have certainly made the step up. Could be an argument to give Woolfenden, Burgess, Luongo, Chaplin, Burns, and Hirst some more opportunities. From what I’ve seen from them so far this season - which in some cases is relatively little game time - I’m not sure any of them are making overly strong cases. McKenna spent several years managing the Manchester United first team in the Premier League, so he knows the standard. Maybe he’s expecting too much from last year’s group of players? He has trained most of those aforementioned Ipswich players for almost three years now. I do think it’s a case that he knows or strongly suspects those players aren’t ready/quite cut out for regular first time Premier League football.
It wasn't an instant fix when KMc first came in and I remember a few questioned whether he was up to the task of building a winning side from a mostly new squad.We're almost back to that stage again with well over half the side for most games this Season having joined in the Summer. We just need patience and remember the good performances have shown enough to give us hope of surviving this Season and then pushing on.
Think wolfenden can consider himself unlucky not to be playing. For me, he was MOM against Fulham but then has been dropped. Still early days with the team needing to gel but for me, the balance is not right yet. Neither Ogbene or Burns have been impressive down the right and Hutchinson hasn’t looked great in the 10. Think szmodics definitely deserves a game there. Other main concern in the keeper - not sure what to make of him which is a problem as that is 1 area where consistency is very important
Sounds like a similar situation, under Bielsa as it is here under McKenna. I would say McKenna appears to be a bit more of a pragmatist, as we've become more and more direct in his time here. Part of that is also figuring out how to get the best out of individuals and how that fits in with the rest of the team. But that understanding is there at the moment which was there with last years team. So of that might be tactical some of it just because we have different players. In terms of recruitment we maybe didn't need to recruit on quite the scale we did but particularly in full back, midfield and forward positions we didn't have the strength in depth and many of our backup players last season would either be nowhere near good enough for this level or left, so we needed a decent level of recruitment. I'm just surprised at how quickly McKenna has dropped players who did nothing wrong i.e. Walton, Woolfenden, Burgess, Luongo and Chaplin. Whilst I suspected the new players would eventually replace our team from last season I thought it would've been a more gradual process.
I don’t think that’s the answer. We need to fix the problem. Muric hit some unbelievable passes in the first half but inexplicably his nerves go to **** at times. The players are capable. And we won’t survive if we have a ‘win at home, scrape points away’ mentality. We are in a mini league of half a dozen sides and the only way we’ll finish in the top half of that is to pick up wins. The occasional draw away from home won’t be enough.
That's the worst I've seen Clarke, who on the whole I've been impressed with and is the players I do think looks a major upgrade on that side...although I do think Broadhead is a classy player who could still have a role to play for us either on that left hand side or centrally. I've generally been impressed with Burns at this level but do not think we're using him well enough, he's making runs and not being found and also there isn't quite the same movement for him to have space (from the other forwards and our RB) He's still taking up good positions though and generally doing enough to pin the opposition LB back. I haven't seen really anything from Ogbene yet that makes me think he should be getting in on the right but maybe that is for the same Greaves has generally impressed but reminds me a little of Delaney who we had many years ago who often gets so tight to his marker he gets pulled out of the back line easily which leaves gaps and sometimes makes others look like they've made a mistake. Burgess is as slow as they come but positionally the past couple of years he's been outstanding so much so no one has noticed how slow he is. Agree with you in regards to O'Shea generally thought he had a decent game, who's clearly quicker and stronger than Woolfenden, also pretty good on the longer balls. But Woolfenden was outstanding against Fulham and we haven't seen him since and I do think we miss him on the ball drawing the press. The partnership he has with Morsy is so important to breaking the press and also important to support Morsy start to dominate the midfield as we saw against Fulham in the second half. Without him and Hladky in the team we're struggling to beat the press and tend to bypass Morsy more often or when we do as we say with Murics pass yesterday do so completely inappropriately. People are saying we're passing it out far too much at the back, I'd disagree, we're actually going far more direct than we have been sometimes to good effect but we don't seem to be trying to beat the press by short passing and movement anywhere near as much. Under both Walton and Hladky we rarely kicked it long at all, we had set patterns of play. What Muric is doing not inviting the press and just making bad decisions, in my mind it's nothing to do with passing it out too much at the back.
Fair enough. I do think one of key strengths last season was how our playing style was so flexible and unpredictable. We were equally comfortable playing out from the back and also launching accurate direct balls into the channels. Burgess, in particular, was great at those long diagonal balls upfield. Sadly, he’s not been able to showcase that ability at this level. In the Premier League, we’re playing much faster, tactically aware defences. Burns is a case in point. In the Championship and League One, he had the space to take his man on, knock the ball past him, and usually beat him for pace. Against Liverpool and West Ham, when he started the match, he’s been unable to do that because the opposition’s left back is much faster making the recovering run and the left sided centre back was quicker getting over the cover. So when Burns get past his man, he’s usually out wide with two defenders crowding him out. If we played somebody like Hutchinson out on the right, he has the skill to potentially cut inside or pick out a pass (he should be encouraged to pass more often, this season he gives off the impression he has to do everything himself, which is costing him). The goals we’ve scored so far this season seem to have either been through some great build up play or knock downs from set pieces. Playing out from the back is fine if you can do it well. I agree in Muric we have what looks to be a strong shot stopper, but is a bit erratic when it comes to distribution. Some of the short balls he played out yesterday were to guys that had West Ham attackers pressing up high. I don’t think we’re quite there in being able to reliably play through the Premier League press.
If we want an element of unpredictability, and I agree that we do, all we need to do is rotate the three players behind Delap - and arguably the midfield position next to Morsy too. None of Jack Clarke, Hutchinson, Burns have earned the right to start. Hutch in particular I think would benefit from a bit less responsibility too.
I agree in regards to passing it out the back. We've been superb at breaking the press by passing it around at the back the past couple of seasons...that came with a risk but we were very good at it. Since Muric and O'Shea have come in we're not trying it anywhere near as much. The mistakes Muric has made have just been awful decisions...he's clearly looks like an upgrade on both Walton and Hladky in terms of shot stopping but sounding old fashioned is he one of these players who has superb stats because of that but that masks some of his faults, for me Walton is a superbly rounded sweeper keeper who takes a lot of pressure of his defence and his distribution is actually decent, in many ways he reminds me of Richard Wright in both how he comes off his line and distribution. As someone who played in defence he'd be the keeper who'd make me feel most relaxed. Hladky was a half decent keeper who was just outstanding with his feet, he got caught a couple of times but on the whole his decision making in that regard was superb. Murics clearly got a lot of raw potential but consistency just isn't there at the moment.
I think it'd be interesting to see that but I also worry about bit with the balance and width. You would have the 2 wide players want to come inside alot which could over crowd the center and would require the full backs to overlap and we don't have that especially on the right atm. You will also have 4 players who like to dribble and even when they're effective lose the ball quite regularly. We certainly need to look at getting the balance right. You could see the spaces opening up at bit more yesterday when Hirst and Chaplin because they know where the spaces are and Davis also knew the runs they'd make.
