Except it's almost word for word what he said in the press conference before the Hull game: "I'm not stupid. I'm not blind. I know we can't smash it long to Cam because that's just not what suits him. We need to find players either in between or outside that can thread it and are capable of picking up and playing forward and looking forward because his movement's good." I don't think we're playing his preferred system yet. We certainly aren't playing the formation he's said he wants to play (the formation that the players we've signed would suit). My view is that Still likes to give his players a lot of freedom to make decisions and it seems fairly clear he currently has a problem in that our squad struggles to do that, partly because the players who've been here more than a few weeks have all had their play heavily micromanaged in recent times - Still has also spoken about stopping training, asking a player where the space is and getting the response "Am I allowed to pass there?" I think in the short term he needs to give the players more detailed instructions on what he wants them to do and then give them more freedom to make decisions as time passes and (hopefully) their confidence and familiarity with each other builds up. He may find that a challenge because I suspect he's also used to the opposition attacking his teams and likely needs to adapt to managing a team that are seen as a relatively big fish, with lots of teams primarily looking to sit back and defend against us.
You see, that's one of the things I really do like about him. He always says, pretty much, what everyone else can see, rather than putting on some kind of performance for camera.
Very different to some of the strange Blackmore-Martin ding dongs where Adam was just saying what everyone else at St Mary's could see/was thinking for themselves and Martin would get really prickly and uppity with Blackmore over it
I'm not sure anyone has said Downs hasn't been bad? I'm just not writing off a player whose young, new to the league/country. Mane was bad for a good 6 months of his first season with us...
Mane did show flashes though; I remember his debut away at Arsenal in the league cup (would've been late september) and he was outstanding. Whilst I don't want to write someone off so early, you can often tell whether someone has the real raw talents to make it here or not. Mane was inconsistent, yes, and downright poor at times early on, but you could see he had something. I don't get that vibe with Downs.
I know what you mean, and I'm not saying that Downs will go onto be the player Mane was, but he could still turn out to be more than useful for us this season and beyond.
