He's no god. But we didn't have a meaningful attack until they made their changes,.so I'm not seeing a huge difference in attacking intent at the moment. Maybe we passed backwards over the halfway line as opposed to in our own half but there was sod all increase in meaningful attacking intent for the most part tonight, nor at Fenerbache, nor at Donny. I have seen us let in some truly ridiculous goals though. Quite a few in fact.
It was a practice match with a squad of about 7 players that can probably do it and the rest still way off. I wouldn't worry about what you're seeing tonight. It's also pretty difficult to do it for 90 mins against a side from one of Europe's top leagues. Give it time, he has literally had 4 weeks and 4 or 5 games with them.
Yup, that's the hope. But I ain't gonna come on and say I've seen something I haven't. I'll give Walterball the same time as I'd argue anyone else needs though. I'll come to a settled view after the second international break.
I love Jones but I've said for ages we've been wrestling with a Catch 22 of sorts where almost our entire Back 4 + GK was the same as won us League One, and were still competitive enough to justify their spot but not good enough for a promotion side. But it's hard to upgrade/improve upon your defence when they aren't the glaring weakness. Maybe we're finally biting the bullet.
I do appreciate the 'give it time' narrative but this underlines how tough this season will be to achieve anything, and despite Acun wanting to aim for promotion, shows that a proper challenge for the Top 6/2 is likely 12 months off. Who knows though, if we do get these signings through the door we could get it together early enough to do something depending on how unsettled the top of the table is. I'm sure it'll be a lot more competitive/tight than last season which may help give us a bit of time.
Agree with this, to a point. We saw Cov and Boro doing major restructures last season and it hurt their start for them to get towards the fringes in the end last season. They look fairly well set to challenge this year though. Only difference with them is it was more of a squad restructure alone, as opposed to a near complete clearing of the coaching structure as well as the playing squad. They at least still had set foundations. It might well take us longer. If it doesn't, I'll have a good deal of respect for Walter making it work.
It's called nuance. People with emotional intelligence tend to see the shades of grey, not just consider everything in black and white. Though saying that with Syd it's pretty much anyone's guess.
Players coming and going aside, this is the exact same pre season stuff we saw under Rosenior. Players that have confidence in their ability to beat a man (Giles, Omur, Drameh) try to do so and aren’t afraid to fail. Those that don’t (Jacob, Jones, Slater) invariably end up going backward because they’re afraid to lose the ball and be at fault. We need 11 of the former by August 31st and ideally at least the majority of the squad on opening day needs to be of that quality. Don’t get me wrong, I think Slater is great but he doesn’t always seem to back himself when he is faced up and he invariably turns backwards when he gets the ball. It’s not that the players we have would be in a relegation scrap, but the system that the manager wants to play demands that our players need to be of a certain quality. We can’t plug in the players we have into this system and expect it to work. If we just played 4231 we’d be towards the bottom of the middle pack. Acun has brought in a manager who plays a very unique system and that requires very specific players. It’s now obvious why TW has turned down so many signings and it perhaps shows up Acun’s expectation because he thinks anybody he signs could just play it. It’s certainly not as simple as “he’s a left winger, so he’ll suit us if we just plonk him on the left.” No, they have to have a very specific playing style that suits our system because if it doesn’t, it quickly goes to ****. Tonight Giles had to nag at Jacob because the latter kept halting his runs and not overlapping, with the ball just turning over. Drameh and Omur didn’t have that problem, they already look like they compliment each other well. Simons seems more confident, but that ball rarely made it to our central midfielders, at times it looked like 5-0-5 with how wide our midfield was, and we still got done down the left multiple times. I trust the club to bring in the players that best suit this system because I firmly believe that if we master it, it’ll be difficult for most Championship teams to stop, given that they’ll lack the technical ability and wherewithal to analyse it properly.
Slater kept trying some lovely flicks around the corner tonight. Some didn't come off early doors but he kept at it. His link up play was as good as anyone's from what I saw tonight. Honestly thought he'd had a better game than Omur until the freekick. Created more end product than him on Saturday also.
He also played a belter of a through ball that Giles got onto for the cross that was a dead cert Oscar goal if not for the CB
I think some of this is down to a Rosenior hangover effect as well. We played his system well enough to get 7th last season and the focus was on keeping the ball and biding our time for chances to happen. We didn't force the issue of creating chances enough over the season to take our league position further, yet this new system almost demands we gamble at every opportunity with space being created by the sheer amount of movement and rotating. It'll take some getting used to for some of the players, especially when their instinct will still be to turn back and play the safe ball. As time passes our success will be determined on how long it takes for that transformation to happen and exactly who we bring in as well. It's a whole new mentality and way of thinking, not just tactics.
Jones is a very good player, let’s not get carried away saying he’s not good enough based on the back of a few meaningless friendlies. In the same way we shouldn’t get too excited when a youngster has a couple of good pre season games.
Whilst those flicks are great, I think 2 played McLoughlin in down the left wing. I don't see the point when McLoughlin moves like a tractor. They inevitably led to nothing.
If he only did it twice for McLoughlin then you might have a point, but it was more frequent than that iirc. And ultimately, those rotations are exactly how the manager wants to play. Macca played well tonight for me. Could easily have had the winner.
Sorry if I’ve missed it in multiple pages tonight - any actual names as to who the GK is that’s on trial?
Walter confirmed that it's a young player who isn't on trial to be signed realistically, he's just making up the numbers in training.
