I would love to agree with you but I can't Rob. By the end of the game we could barely string three passes together, sometimes not even two - it's awful and it is not just singling out one or two players. They are all mostly equally guilty.
That’s a question of form, though, not individual quality. The inability to pass was down to confidence having disappeared (and Luton having tails up) combined with being a player down. That’s not the right time to judge individual quality. What the last few games have shown us, though, is how reliant we have been on Nunes
Iv always been in the camp of "fans need to be louder and sing more", but Smith cant get fans on side because, even when we won we were crap
Following Farke was going to be tough, simply because the new manager wasn't Farke. Feels like half the club still haven't been able to move on.
After watching the wretched, clueless Watford and then Luton games, I'd surmise that relegation is far more probable than any chance of promotion this season. And 9.4 million spaffed on Sara.....pffft
True, but the bigger concern to me is that the club hasn't moved on. We rode our luck earlier in the season until the loss to Preston at home and then Watford revealed that our resilience was paper thin. It's more than moving on from Farke though, it's a need to move on from the assumption that SW's project is working. The 'project' was a gamble which has not come off. The goal was the PL, but after two seasons there we only managed to break even. We started well in 2018 with Pukki, Buendia, Krul and McLean recruited for next to nothing and promotion followed. In 2019 we turned to expensive loans like Fährmann (£4.5m) and Amadou (£4m), neither of whom contributed much and sulked or left halfway through the season as we crashed and burned in the PL. In 2021 as the PL beckoned again and we spent big on Gibson, Rashica, Sargent and Tzolis for around £9m each, Giannoulis (£6m) and Gunn (£5m). We also paid big loan fees for Gilmour, Normann, Kabak and Williams. That again ended in PL humiliation as we were relegated with a whimper. As a club, we haven't acknowledged that. Instead we go on with the acceptance that as a self-financing club that is how it is and so we sent Rashica (relegated twice but still too big for the second tier) and Tzolis out on loan and brought in Núñez and Sara as the latest gamble. It's early days for them but Marcelino's impact has faded and we have yet to see what Sara can do. Sargent's improvement this season is one bright spark and Hayden may yet prove to be our saviour, but 3 losses in a row have burst the bubble and there was little evidence last night that this will improve against Sheffield United and Burnley. What we lack is graft and a fighting spirit like that we had under Lambert. Instead we have technical players who can keep possession with sideways passing in our own half but who are unable to progress the ball through the thirds to our attacking players. One shot on target (Sargent, early in the first half) at home against Luton is pathetic, but it's an indication of how deeply the malaise has seeped in.
Poach Kieran Mckenna from Ipswich, the first time they have looked good in about 20 years Like Lambert
I was totally against the last change, and I'm totally against another. Look at the table. We are in the play off spots. I would have accepted that at the start of the season,
And perhaps it's not just us. Tonight Burnley were held to a 1-1 draw at Birmingham, Sheffield United lost 1-0 at Coventry and Watford lost 3-0 at Millwall. QPR have now moved top of the table after beating Cardiff, who had a player sent off in the 18th minute. It's a crazy season.
Yep. Sheffield United have really fallen off a cliff. It’s still very fixture related at the moment. We have plenty of time. I don’t think the league will really take shape until the 25-30 game mark. Let’s see where we are then.
I basically agree with you Chris, but what is worrying to me is that we have no real structure. We are eleven separate entities with very little purpose. This squad is as good individually as any we have had in a long time, but are failing to perform.
Agreed, whilst "everyone else is crap" is fortunate in that it gives us time to find our feet and figure out a system, it's not an excuse for the failure to look like a team with a plan.
Agreed, we're lucky that both auto spots are still basically up for grabs. Normally at least one team would have laid their towel out on a PL lounger by now. No "Germans" in the Championship this year.
That’s exactly it. I’d be a lot more forgiving if we were losing matches playing well, getting unlucky - exceptional performances from the opposition. But we are not. We have deserved to lose the last three games, despite the squad being better vs all except Watford. And when you look at Watford’s result last night, that tells you all you need to know IMO.
This has come with the PL oriented 'project' approach, moving on from recruiting young and hungry players to what are hoped to be PL quality players like Rashica, Lees-Melou, Normann and Kabak (all of whom would stay for the PL but not to earn their place there now). Now these have been replaced by Sara, Núñez and Hayden. We hope that these will fit in and kick on but we don't yet know. Hayden seems to be another only willing to sign if we return to the PL. It was fitting that we lost to Luton through Morris, one of our ex 'young and hungry players'. Luton grafted; we didn't. They have the rising hungry look; we don't. We used to be called the ManCity of the Championship; now we're more like ManUtd with quality players but little team cohesion. There's the problem for Smith to solve as we sink lower in the form table with the Blades, who lost to second bottom Coventry last night.
We have bought and loaned in expensive players and forced to persevere with them, which hinders the progress of our academy players . Kamara Flynn Clark and Dixon Peters have been excellent Tomkinson isn't far off Springet too . Gibbs the only one getting minutes and he's been thrown in to try and cover the glaring DM hole that we never address. The U21s are doing well in their league but there's not much point having a World class academy if there isn't a route to the first team . £20m worth of flop signings out on loan best part of £10m spent on Sara who looks very ordinary, literally hundreds of millions in the last few seasons from Premier league payments and parachutes and we barely broke even .
