Interesting comments above about MM; I'm surprised he was ever doubted, but I only joined the forum recently so haven't read posts from that time. It seemed to me we'd had a terrible run of 'head coaches', Keane and Jewell being most notable. They caused a lot of damage, and Mick saved us from oblivion when he arrived, had we gone down...just look where we are today, sat atop the championship, off to Man U in a cup... As for the points about the team, we all talked about the pros and cons of selling Mings quite a lot in a prior thread and i stressed the value of acquiring motivated, quality players on frees where you put your money into the wages they command rather than the "black hole" of a transfer fee because stats indicate it's an efficient way of building a competitive team when you don't have access to money, such as prem league TV cash, where you can afford to buy talent. It seems we got a very good deal on the players MM brought in, dare I say it, one might even suggest they are a good swap even without the fee. Regardless, we got cash in our bank too and could afford to pay two good players that really strengthened our squad. Same goes for AMN and the contracts for our other leading forwards. So glad we didn't see them walk out the door on a free/piddling fee because we didn't have the cash to keep them under contract. We now have the luxury of more than one good player in most positions, especially attack, and it's this that counts because the championships defences always make mistakes, the trick is having the players that can punish them, which we have from all angles And all sides of the pitch now. If we go up, it'll be a different story; defences are rock solid (remember how fonte had our entire team in his back pocket when soton played us in the cup last year, we barely had a shot all game). That said our defence is starting to transform with Knudsen looking strong, our 3 stalwarts in smith, Berra and chambers...if we get a good RB too even this area will be tight and then you do have the championship in your own hands with a tight defence and goals up front! As for now let's enjoy it; MM has a plan, has the players he likes in a formation he likes and we have a squad with players we can be genuinely excited about. It won't be plain sailing, we're not quite that good or the finished article but we seem to moving in a very positive direction towards being able to compete for promotion.
Nice post Bucky, good to have you contributing I think the majority of supporters are on Mick's side. Many were tested last season due to the style of play but there were others who could see what was going on and knew that slow progress was being made. As somebody said the other day, Mick has been looking for the wingers for his 4-4-2 but has been coming up with duds since his arrival. He had to use what worked last year and that took us to the play offs anyway. We've finally added the threat out wide and the results can be seen by all now.
