After many years I struggle to find excuses for why we consistently fail to meet the criteria for the improvement we are always promised. Twine, Mayulu and Armstrong are the targets on my radar especially after all of the hype surrounding the must have transfer in Twine, after which he has essentially done nothing. Someone should have checked out the QPR not606 site and read the lousy reviews on there to see the opinions of the supporters who said he needs 20 shots to score a goal and can't beat a goalie one on one if his life depended on it. Mayulu looked real good in his first outing but has clearly earned a spot on the naughty step for some reason or another but still may earn a place. Twine looked really good during his time here last season but for some inexplicable reason has gone walk about and needs to up his game to be a regular as we thought he would be from his play last campaign. I was shocked to see we didn't offload Cornick and some others but perhaps no-one wanted them based on their lack of good performances for us. The summer transfer window did very little, or even nothing, to boost our squad particularly in the scoring department and here we are again close enough to the top six but failing at just about every hurdle put in front of us at the most opportune moments. Sheff Utd and Burnley were classic cases of us not meeting the remit and since we haven't won a home game since September you don't need to look any further to find the issues keeping us in the mire. Our home record over several years has not been what it should be to even consider ourselves a contender and with our continual failure in attracting the right players I can't see things changing any time soon. I really can't see Liam getting any extra money in January to boost the squad, unless there are major departures, and so what we have has to take us to the end of the season and possibly beyond. Maybe one of these years we will get it right.
I said that about Armstrong from the off Trouble is, by and large, when you recruit average players you get an an average team, and that’s exactly what we are Mid table obscurity
Football is not an exact science and some interesting things happen. When I played I considered myself ‘average’ at best. Some of my most successful games came when I was paired with another particular player who himself was also ‘average’. However, somehow we seemed to gel and instinctively knew where and when to pass the ball between us. We scored absolutely loads of goals when partnered - which confounded our team-mates because we were far behind some of them in raw skill and ability. Sometimes bang average players can find that magic which makes them far better than the sum of their parts. Even now I can’t explain why or how it happened - I don’t know if it can be coached - it just ‘happened’.
Like when people said Aaron Wilbraham why would we want him. Look how that turned out. Some kick on some don’t.
Aaron Wilbraham proved me wrong I must admit. It took me about 20 mins after seeing him to understand why we brought him her. He didn’t exactly kick on though, he was in the twilight of his career, it was his know how and attitude that made all the difference. Love the guy.
He scored the goal in the final seconds of the last game of the season which kept Bolton in the league I seem to remember.
