A half season of two halves is probably the understatement of the century! Sublime for the first couple of months and awful for the last month or so. Having been to most of the games this season, here's my attempt at a balanced view of what's changed and how to recover: 1) The squad is too thin. To state the bleeding obvious, we don't have good enough cover in key positions. Even when you look at teams like West Ham, they have players they can bring in without weakening their first team significantly. 2) We don't create enough. With the exception of a Sunderland side who gave up, we go through games without creating openings at all. West Brom at home, last night, Burnley (bar the penalty) and Arsenal away are games where I think we had less than 3 shots on target. When things don't go our way, we don't rise to the occasion or adopt a plan B 3) Last year we had something going for us which was that we could create chances from turnovers in possession. MoPo's game meant that we often stole the ball high up the pitch and created chances out of nothing. We have games now when we look lethargic without the ball. 4) We are overly reliant on our full backs. If Clyne and Bertrand are pushed back, we lack the subtlety or pace to play through teams. 4) We can play to an exceptionally high level. Tadic, whilst being out of form, has a lot of quality and some of Pelle's hold up play and first time passes are exceptional. Toby looks assured and Fonte has improved big time. Our central midfield of Morgan, Vic and Davis has been exceptional when we've been able to pick all 3 in front of Fonte and Toby. 5) We have J-rod to come back and that will give us some much needed pace, power and goal threat from out wide which we seem to be lacking at the moment. 6) We have a highly likeable manager who players will want to come and play for. We are a more desirable club for players to come to now than we ever have been. In short, there are indeed reasons to be cheerful but there are also reasons to be slightly apprehensive. January is crucial for us, we have a month to bring in a bit more creativity and plenty of money to spend to achieve it. New faces ought to have a positive effect on the squad and might also mean that we can finally put out a strong bench with real options up top. That's the difference between true class and mediocrity. Thoughts? How do other people think we can move past this? Why have we suddenly been found out and how can we combat it?
Basically can be summed up like it could have been summed up last season. We need more then one creative player, last season we only had Lallana this it is only Tadic. When Lallana was under performing or injured we were the same as we are now.
Yeah this season is looking like a carbon copy of last year, not enough depth so ****ed when injuries/suspensions/tiredness occur (always around this time of the season). Just hoping our season isnt done by Feb like last year, thought I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
If only a Saints poster had been saying all season that we'd slide down the table due to the thinness of our squad...
"Genus" might be pushing it. "Extremely intelligent, not to mention devilishly handsome" would be more appropriate.
We have been a bit unlucky with injuries this year, I think. It would be foolish to think that we weren't going to have any, but this year's squad should have been deeper than last year. I would have said the one area where we were okay was midfield, but that's been a problem for us anyway.
We're having a fantastic season in my opinion. Last couple of games have been shocking, but as a whole this season has been brilliant. I'm sick to death of the media saying it, but I'll say it anyway because it's true - half of our first 11 left, so I guess we were always going to struggle for depth at some point. The fact we can still compete for the top half is pretty outstanding. We basically shot our Europe dreams in the foot by selling everyone. Top half should be our target this season IMO.
