Looking for the main ones though. Was the atmosphere at home a main reason for poor performance or just ‘didn’t really help’.
Striker and fullbacks for me. Could easily add Walter to the mix but its impossible to say what he could have done if we brought in decent fullbacks and a striker. Quality fullbacks are essential for the way most teams play and we've been seriously lacking in this area for too long, id go as far back as Robertson & Odubajo. This season the Giles transfer was a disaster and having Coyle and McLoughlin hasnt been great either. Not knocking their effort or workrate... but compared to what many championship teams have, we're well below par.
Top 3 so far… Failure to bring in a striker Appointing Walter Injuries Top 2 are on the owner and recruitment team. Not much shade cast on Selles. We’ve saved them a job here.
If Acun was an option, I suspect he'd be high on the list as a 'main reason' Shame really as the guy as an owner has his heart in exactly the right place, but execution of a plan or leaving football to his right hand men appears to not be his strong points.
In a vacuum, the appointment of Walter wasn't a problem. He joined the team, and tried to push them to play his preferred play style, but that only works when you have the players that can effectively play that, and we just didn't. Now, you can make the argument that we should have adjusted at that point, and I'd argue that after the dicking by Norwich, we did. The centre backs marauding into midfield stopped, and we set up more solidly. Unfortunately in doing so, we lost some urgency and created fewer chances, which coupled with the loss of Millar and Belloumi for the season meant we had absolutely no cutting edge, and picked up 2 points from 4 games against struggling Oxford, Luton, Portsmouth and Derby who all sat deep and easily absorbed everything we threw at them. Walter needed to go at that point otherwise we'd have sleepwalked into relegation, but I'm not without sympathy. He seemed just as frustrated as the fans when the fullbacks would turn and play the ball backwards rather than down the line, which let the defence get set when they could have been stretched. Maybe if Walter would have had longer with many of his players in pre-season, we'd have had more of a chance to bed in his ideas, but many of them arrived with the season already underway. Only Giles and Drameh were signed before the end of July, with the season kicking off on August the 10th. We opened the season with a midfield 5 of Simons, Slater and Mehlem, with Giles and Omur out wide, and 5 academy kids on the bench to fill the seats. The transfer delays meant that we were desperate to fill the squad, which resulted in us buying a mish-mash of players, even if they didn't fit the system. Bedia was a tall striker, but he wasn't good enough in the air to win many of the 30 crosses a game we were pumping in to the opposition box. Finley Burns was signed and barely played. Raccioppi was signed as competition for Pandur, then we also signed Rushworth. For me, the injuries were the biggest problem. With a pair of direct, attacking wingers playing all season, there is no way you'd convince me that we wouldn't finished 5 places higher.
The problem with Walter was that he was also a bit of an arsehole. He couldn’t be arsed communicating with half the players, fans or media. So, regardless of his philosophy and player injuries, I think he was ultimately doomed to failure.
I'd like an 'all of the above EXCEPT appointing Ruben Selles' option, because it certainly isn't his fault. He was, and remains, a very good appointment.
I think injuries are an easy excuse. Yes we were ravaged by injuries to our best players in one specific area of the pitch, but it wasn't great even before then, and every team gets injuries, and even with our best wingers missing we shouldn't have been worse than most of the dross in the bottom half of this division. I think the shambolic summer from sacking Rosenior onwards was the one key problem. And waiting those extra few weeks to sack Walter after he was clearly done and we were losing every game before it kicked off was another costly mistake.
37% actually. The problem is, he only got 30.6% of our points across those games. 15pts at 0.88ppg, which compares to Selles' 1.26. I used to think you were always obviously trolling about Selles, but now either the troll has carried on for so long it looks like you've convinced yourself you mean it. We only had back to back defeats under Selles once in 27 games. We had 3 instances of consecutive defeats under Walter in 17 games (and one of those was 4 straight losses) Under Selles we never failed to score in consecutive games. Again, under Walter, we did this 3 times. Walter was fired on a winless streak of 9. Selles never went more than 3 matches without a win. Walter's record was 3/6/9 - Selles record was 9/8/10.
