@furtherback - caught me out there, must be late. @Marko - think you've got a good general point, but look at Snoddy as an example. He doesn't fire on all cylinders ever week. Love him to bits, but he's been erratic this season. We've actually got a large number of players that are seriously inconsistent, and I don't think it's ALL down to quality. Don't know the reason why, but we can't rely on anyone except Lonners.
The Guinness might work for you, but for an old git like me it means getting up for a piss every 90 mins or so. Thirst of an elephant, bladder of a hamster.
It depends if you have the players to work with, imagine Leicester had sacked Sven and got Warnock or O'Neil in, what an abundance of under performing talent to work with. Warnock hasn't got that luxury, he has 4-5 players total that are worthy of a promotion chasing team. Grayson wasn't a terrible manager, he might have lacked in places and like I have said before, now we shall see how good Warnock is because without funding I don't believe we have the quality in the squad for him to turn this around.
The players of any note that he has to work with are: Lonnergan Lees Pugh Snodgrass Brown Clayton Becchio McCormack I don't think White's in that bracket, Thompson's got potential but isn't there yet, Rogers could be but I haven't seen him play yet. So that's a core of eight players at most to work with, plus Somma who will need game time to get up to speed. The rest are nowhere near good enough to get in a play-off challenging team. Warnock would need to use every ounce of his motivational powers to get that lot in the top six. He could surprise me but next season's more likely.
Id already written off this season anyway so not terribly bothered if we don't make the playoffs anyway. We wouldn't have a hope in hell of winning them anyway. Important thing for me is that we hold on to all those players you've mentioned during the summer and back Warnock sufficiently to add five or six players of equal standard. One thing though, please no more loanees. Delph and townsend perfect examples of the fiasco of loanees. They never, never work and haven't done for the past eight seasons for us.
Snodgrass is performing well, he has the odd bad game and McCormack is the divisions second leading scorer so again, I don't see too much of a problem. While I agree with Clayton and Lees I have doubts over Pugh and Brown, actually I would scrub Brown, his age is against him, can you teach an old dog new tricks? I can't see Warnock being able to change Browns style of play. I would imagine Warnocks time on the training ground is spent with Sam, Becchio, Clayton, Lees, White and Thompson - those are the players I feel could improve under his guidance the most, be it confidence or skill factor. If by a miracle Leeds were to get promoted I see McCormack, Snodgrass, Lees and Clayton as being the core of the team. Take those four out and the rest are easily replaceable, yes White and Thompson for the future, the league table doesn't lie and we are a mid table team which reflects on the quality we have on the pitch. Just to add LIE even in your list you only include one defender out of four so even if NW can become a miracle worker we are still going to leak goals. I thought we did well yesterday then I read how Portsmouth were struggling to get a team out with their problems and injuries so I guess it wasn't that great after all.
You're forgetting that Brown was one of Warnock's players when he was at Sheffield United in the Premier League. I'd imagine they know each other and Warnock knows how to get the best out of him.
