Another good goal, great free kick from Young and good header from Greaves, who looks very impressive again today.
Not a great game at all, we don't look fluid yet. Defensively we did ok, our attacking play lacked quickness and cohesiveness. Defence The CBs were pretty solid throughout, the hesitancy from Palmer to come and collect the ball at the feet of O'Shea in the first half was worrying. Johnson offers nothing of note either defensively or offensively, would rather Clarke play, who actually makes overlapping runs and contributes positively when playing. Townsend was decent. Young was pretty static, without making any real lung busting runs, the ball for Greaves' goal was excellent though! Midfield McK is trying to make Taylor a defensive mid, he's not up to it. He lacks the necessary tackling skills but is doing the best he can. Matusiwa takes up good defensive positions and wins the ball back a lot but he gave possession away far too often for my liking. I like that he is trying to make creative forward passes, but today's game saw many of his attempts cut out. Hopefully the understanding of the passes he can play will be learned by his teammates and the completion rate increases. Attack Still not convinced about Philogene, just doesn't look happy in this team. Clarke on the other hand had a very good performance. Committed players with forward runs and skillful ball control and more obvious was his tracking back and forward pressing effort. Clarke has been with us longer and is now understanding the effort McK expects, hopefully Jaden buys into it too. Szmodics and Hirst stayed busy up top, shame Hirst didn't play Szmods in to give him a chance on goal in the second half. Subs Broadhead still doesn't really convince me he's worth keeping. He has some wonderful moments, sadly they don't come consistently enough. Ogbene, I said it when he started playing for us last year and I haven't changed my mind. He's not a ball carrier, like Clarke or Jaden, he wants the give and go to get around his full back. If his teammates understand this, he'll be effective. If they give him the ball in front of his full back and expect him to get passed his marker to get a cross in then he'll look terrible. Al Hamadi has scored a couple of goals in the build up games but looks bloody miserable when he does. Not sure what's going on there but it looks like he knows he's not really wanted, there's a deal for him somewhere else waiting and we're not letting him go until we've got a replacement. Cam looked ok coming on and Barbrook is really staking a claim for first team inclusion. If we bring in more midfielders, we need to get him on a season long loan in League One with a January recall option to help his development. If he stays in the building, he has to get first team minutes this season to continue his progression. He hasn't looked out of place or overwhelmed in any of the pre season games I've watched. I've seen all the available pre season matches except the one I really wanted to see which was the Charlton game as it was the only English team around our level that we faced. We've got good results throughout which will be good for confidence going into the season, but our forward play hasn't been particularly smooth at any point. The familiarity of where to be when, and the slickness of interchange just isn't there yet, and this stems back to last season too. At this point in time, we're not getting top two in the league. Still plenty of time to add to the squad. TWTD has been driving me crazy with so many comments about us not signing many players and the season starting next week! There's still a full month of the transfer window to go. A lot of major movement is still to come, with some deals only possible once other deals are done. It's crappy for the EFL teams that the window is still open for so long after the season has started but it is what it is and there is still a long time to make additions and sell players. Is it ideal that we don't have our squad completed before the first ball is kicked? Obviously, no, but that's how it is, and the ones on TWTD going on about the season starting soon and where are the new players just do my box in. I'll do my season prediction on Nuggets' thread soon, but from what I've seen so far, we're not automatic promotion contenders. Still time for that to change.
Good summary SD, and agree about Johnson. Clarke will surely start, with Young an able, experienced defender who can play in several positions apparently. We do still need a midfielder, rumours abound about Cajuste, and a striker. But as you say, still a month to go. Unsurprised that Omari didnt feature, his head isnt in the right place. Strong case for players to self ban all social media, forums etc June, July and take hols away from it all. But that wont happen. I still have a hunch that we will be too good for most teams, once we settle down. Davis return soon is pretty important, especially in his new role.
Agree with your assessment SD. Convincing scoreline but not a convincing performance but it is pre season and I'm not sure how much you can take from pre season performances. All I'll say is we look better than we did at this stage last season. But agree with your summary, I think we can expect a promotion chasing season but I'm not convinced we've got enough about us at the moment to make an autos challenge. The converse of that is we definitely have a higher quality of player than we were last in the Champ but that team had heart and chemistry and patterns of play which this one I'm not convinced does at the moment. For me the only area of the pitch which looked convincing was the CBs and we lack the creativity from the back we had last time we were here in my view all players we had in the back line line were better on the ball last time we were in the Champ which is important given how much they have the ball. Midfield obviously needs strengthen and as you say SD I'm whilst we have some good players in the front line there's no chemistry there, no real passing and movement or patterns of play. Plus from looking our strongest area of the pitch with lots of options now we could look light there with Hutchinson's head turned, Philogene injured, Broadhead off. Where we looked good was in the transitions, we look like we are doing to teams what they did to us last season, making the most of moments. We still look weak in areas that we have historically been under McKenna, always short of a striker, too easy to get down the flanks and if teams beat our press we look really open and threadbare in midfield
PTC, to be honest, you say our best area was forwards and mention Omari, Philogene and Broady but last season I thought all 3 looked very poor, Broady less so but Omari was way too lightweight and Philogene hardly featured and when he did, he looked out of his depth. I'm very happy with O'Shea and Greaves, think they look a very good cb pairing and I have no issues with their distribution, personally I would swap them for any other championship cb pair.
