I think the general consensus is the primary issue is with midfield. This is the area that has been our most successful I believe in past (Maddison, Buendia, Vrancic, Sara, Nunez, Sainz). We have nobody even remotely like this. Nobody with touch and technique and creativity. Theres really only Wright who may do this but I'm not sure he's a creator, he's more of a Leitner. Of our midfield They are of similar limited ability They are of a similar ilk They are not creative They are not particularly athletic They have little personality They are not good in small spaces Our chance to sign this type of player has gone. That time was the Summer but Knapper wanted something different. To know Nunez wanted to leave and not have a similar player lined up is unforgiveable. It makes no sense and tells me there is either no real plan or what they were building towards was so conceptually wrong we now find us where we are.
Well whoever touted that obviously hadn’t watched him play. But they are hardly going to announce a new signing “well, look, he’s not great, so we wouldn’t want him playing too many games, but we needed someone who could play across the midfield and he came cheap”
Knapper has bought a bunch of poor players. Knapper has sacked Thorup and brought in Manning. It is no good sacking Manning and leaving Knapper to pick his replacement so Knapper has to go first. We are in it up to our necks so long term planning has to go out of the window. IMO, and I know others will disagree, we need a Sporting Director who knows the EFL inside out hoping that he can find a Head Coach, like Saunders and Lambert, who can get the squad fit and kick, shove and organise a bunch of mediocre players into a unit capable of getting enough points to stay in this division.
Kick, shove and organise I don't think is the answer. We are generally ok defensively. We've not been smashed 4,5 by anyone. I say defensively ok with the context we are 2nd bottom . Its creativity we are completely lacking and what's put us as low as we are. I was ok with keeping Manning for a few more games but I've now come to the conclusion he has no idea how to create anything. It needs a system (so I suppose it is still essentially organisation), not trying to put it on the players to express themselves and make decisions (they don't have the skillset).
We are terrible defensively! Our defence is has conceded substantially more than under Thorup. But I agree the problem is one of creativity and unpredictability in attack. We have no-one who can do anything surprising.
Gary O'Neil might do it, but why would he come? (He's rumoured to be top of Birmingham's list of possible replacements for Chris Davies if things unravel there.)
No thanks to Gary O'Neil. I don't see what he offers that will help. We need someone who can create chances for Sargent from the players we have. Needs to be a foreign coach IMO who can create a plan and has knowledge of foreign players for January......because we know we can't trust either the scouts or those signing off to sign on the scouts reports.
