My only concern regarding the midfield is that we have a lot of players who are decent in possession (which is fair enough for a possession-based team) but out of possession the midfield is completely anonymous. Selling Woods and getting Bird won’t change that, even if Bird is a good player.
You can see how weak we are in midfield out of possession when we face counter-attacking teams or other teams that dominate possession. We do okay defending against teams that sit deep but against the likes of Boro, Sunderland, Norwich away etc. and Burnley at home last season, we got ripped to pieces in midfield. Even against West Brom at home when we won 2-0, West Brom had like 20 shots and 70% possession. We don’t concede as many goals under Rosenior but we still concede too many chances but the keepers and back four bail us out.
It does concern me because we score nowhere near enough goals to offset this big weakness in midfield. Not scoring enough goals means we draw games we should’ve won and not having a midfield that offers protection out of possession means we lose games we maybe could have drew or even won. Rosenior gets a lot of credit for improving us defensively, which he should, but we still dropped a lot of points under him last season. The draws against Sunderland, Blackpool, Huddersfield and Rotherham at home spring to mind and we may have fared better against Sunderland and Boro away if the midfield offered more protection to the back four out of possession. We conceded 7 goals in those games and a lot of them could’ve been prevented by a defensive midfield putting in challenges, winning loose balls etc.