It was fantastic to win the Championship last season and reach the Premier league, but one of the great statistics of the season was the fact we had the best defensive record in the whole Football league! Many could argue why should a team change its back four after such a magnificent campaign. If we had for example a striker, who bagged 20 plus goals, one would think he would be getting a crack at the Premier league, so why not our defence? Many could argue that the standard of the Premier league will be a much tougher test for our lads, many may think that the difference between the bottom 6/7 teams of last seasons Premiership and the top 3/4 of the Championship was not a great difference at all! Hill lacks pace and you wouldnt fancy him against a Lennon or a Walcott. Orr lacks pace also but was there before and after Kyle Walkers superb appearances Connoly looked fragile at times and a Drogba or Rooney may make him more vunerable Gorkks was sometimes lacking in positioning and a Berbatov or Tevez might use their experience to counter that. My point really, is that we have just arrived in this league and are not there to win it but to survive and build for future campaigns like the Stokes and Wigans. Whoever we sign as defensive players would struggle against the above named opposition players. I agree with a previous post about needing 2 new fullbacks but maybe as part of the squad for options during the long season ahead. We need to change the squad but not so much the team to realise our targets.
I agree that there is not too much point worrying about what Drogba or Rooney will do to our defence, those aren't the games we need to be wining (as yet!!!). However, most of the teams will have quick players, any of them could make us look silly. What we do know from last season, is that even when our defenders are beaten, we have others who will throw themselves in front of the ball. I thought last year that we had so many clean sheets not because we had the best defence, but we had the best scrambling defence. However, the Premier League strikers won't need as many chances to score. We need to try to retain possession for as long as possible. One of the few sensible things that Claridge (remember him?) said last season was that our defence wasn’t under long spells of pressure because we were good at holding onto the ball. More of the same and Bothroyd wearing his shooting boots will do nicely.
Agree particularly with your point about retaining possession, Roller. I watched the first leg of the Tri-nations Italian cup, and while we took our goal well, the rest of the time we were chasing the ball, and frankly looked outplayed. The Italian finishing was woeful otherwise we would have been soundly beaten. It sounds from the reports that I've read of the first half of the Luton game ( I disregard the second half for these purposes, since it wasn't our first team) that the same thing was happening - passes were going astray, we were giving the ball away cheaply etc.. I know it takes a newly built team time to gel but NW needs to get onto this quick because when Premiership teams have the ball, they do something with it - we can't let them have 70-80% possession.
I've thought since we came up that a commanding centre-back plus two full-backs were needed to establish ourselves in the PL. I think Roger Johnson would've been ideal, as would Kyle Naughton on loan along with Nat Clyne. I suppose we would now be looking at Bertrand on loan and possibly Upson. Warnock is no mug, he'll see from pre-season where our main weaknesses are and as he said after the Luton match there are two or three targets we may land before the deadline.
