Did today unlock 4-42 for us?

Jackson has been out for a while as well.

 

Good point I'd forgot about him. Was playing well too. Can't really say we have any key players though. Our squad is just average all the way through. When we make changes it's normally no better or worse.

 

My point was about being able to pick the same settled team from one week to the next, not that key individual players had been sidelined for long periods, although that is true for Jackson and Isgrove. Looking through our squad, the following players have had injuries of varying degrees of seriousness and length of absence:-

Defenders
Angus McDonald, Andy Yiadom, Adam Jackson, Dimitri Cavare, Zeki Fryers
Midfield
Cameron McGeehan, LLoyd Isgrove, Gary Gardner, Ryan Hedges
Forwards
None

When the manager cannot take the learning experience forward from one week to the next, it affects continuity. The same players do not have the chance to carry forward what they learned from one week to the next. They have to start again with one, two, three or even four changes. When you are making so many changes from week to week, it affects the balance of the side and the combined knowledge and experience. It also affects confidence when you do not know how a new colleague will react to a situation, but you do know how an old colleague would have dealt with it. The team is a dynamic situation. That dynamic changes with every new addition or subtraction. That is why settled teams perform better than those in constant flux. That is why settled teams with less individual talent can sometimes out perform those in flux, but with greater individual talent. The team dynamic cannot be over-valued.

 

Wouldn't argue with any of that. I certainly also think Hecky has been guilty of changing it too much. I feel he is just desperately searching for a winning formula. He certainly has changed it a lot more than he has actually needed to.

Which comes back round to the same thing. More than any injuries we have had most of the chopping and changing has been a result of players not performing. Then others come in have a chance and also don't perform and the cycle continues.

Would you say then we would be better off sticking with a more settled side even if we are not doing well?

 

For me up to just this season Hecky has left out Hedges, Bradshaw and McCarthy when all three were playing well and to my knowledge none of them were injured, although McCarthy was on 4 yellows and close to a suspension.

 

I do not want to get into the blame game because I hate it when others do it. Hecky is a very able coach and he has done things without benefit of hindsight. He would have had very good reasons for taking the decisions he took, but every decision has its risks and potential rewards. The season we were promoted to the Premier League, we had incredible luck with injuries. The team had just a few additions from the previous season and the new players gelled immediately, but I think we used only 17 players during the whole of the season.

Many of the contributors on here offer a far different opinion than I do for a substitution and a player being left out of the team. Clearly, it can be loss of form/injury, but equally it can be because the manager wants to play in a different way and believes that one player is superior to another in the revised system of play. I do not like the blame game and I do not like to see individual players written off and dismissed by the fans, because it ruins their confidence, it kills their motivation and we might need a motivated and confident player later on. For example, Gardner is generally poorly regarded by the fans, who judge players on what they do when the team is attacking. However, Garder is being picked because of his reading of the game and positional sense defensively. Hecky has decided that it is more important to make us more difficult to beat. We would all prefer to see a team that is entertaining and that scores plenty of goals, but that is not going to happen for a while. The question is, are we prepared to put up with being bored rigid if it gets results, or are we going to pick on certain individuals and hold them to be to blame for everything that goes wrong. Because that is what happens and I do not want to play along with the blame game.

Hecky is trying to meet lots of conflicting demands. It is not easy, but the run of 5 losses has simplified it for him, because now he needs a result and he will do what he has to in order to get one. Whether it is better in the long term to keep a settled team is a decision that has been taken out of his hands by changed circumstances. Looking forward, life will be much simpler.

 

Personally I think non of the decisions Hecky has made would ultimately have made much difference. We have in the context of this league a bang average squad.