Some of us old gits aren’t as data driven as you and Christian Nourry seem to be, you young whippersnappers. We rely on experience, poorly remembered history and folklore, to say nothing of bias, prejudice and pure ignorance. I know you haven’t been to many games this season because you have an actual life, but honestly it’s been horrible for much of the time, a total lack of ambition coupled with fear of losing and a huge reliance on Cook. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the first half against Oxford.
Fair. I suspect it is a lot easier for me to see the upsides given I'm not putting myself through the pain of going. I've managed to watch a lot of the recent games thanks to the streams posted on here (thanks @Steelmonkey) and the number of sky games. Definitely hard to watch at times - which is made harder given the flashes of good play we see - like the second half against Oxford, PNE or Norwich at home. But...enough progress to have hope.
We have had the same/more shots than the oppo in 15 out of 24 games this season, not so bad as some are making out under MC?
For me, nothing this season compares to the wretched times in the Premier League when we were watching the total lack of ambition and basic competence served up by Harry Redknapp and Mark Hughes' respective mercenaries. I still remember vividly the three trips to St James' Park to see us have precisely one attempt on goal, yet lose each by one-nil to be proclaimed as some sort of triumph - presumably because we kept the score respectable Yet each defeat was greeted by those managers as vindication of their demand for more millions to be squandered. The old "what do you expect me to achieve when you won't give me the funds I need to build my team to play the way I want".
Part of the problem for many is expectations, our strong finish last season plus several summer signings had the 'Expectometer' in overdrive as it was when Warburton had his best finish to a season and subsequently Beale had us top of the league. Last Saturday showed that we're still a long way from being anything other than what we are, a bottom half of the Championship team and likely to remain so for as long as we can avoid the drop. Since relegation we have only finished above halfway 3 times with 9th being the high point. Our average points per season is 57.5 and our average place is 15th. Every season with our financial straightjacket it is becoming more difficult to maintain even that unimpressive record whilst the Premier League dropouts with their massive spending power have such a huge advantage and as Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton are proving the chasm above them to the lower half of the Premier League is just as big ours to the Top 3 or 4 in our league. Hopefully we'll be ok this season and perhaps in the summer there'll be a few players that have been scouted properly that may prove a better fit in this league, if other teams can do it why can't we?...
I thought we were at least as good as Leicester 1st half and we beat them up there last season. Our poor defending on the right side of our defence from new and reserve players highlighted our lack of depth and ability to finance a larger squad. I think that is the main difference between mid-table Championship at our best and the yo-yo teams above us.
Don't think there was much wrong with the scouting- 2 who haven't shone yet out of how many, 8 or 9? The depth of the squad is a problem as injuries have decimated us this season but some of the dead wood needs to be cut adrift to make room for better players.
