Nothings really changed has it? The draws against West Brom and Swansea didn't herald a new beginning. They didn't really prove that the Stendel sacking was the correct thing to do.Neither did they prove that 3 at the back is going to improve things going forward under a new wonder caretaker. They were just 2 more games that we didn't win. The real 'one off' was Preston away, and judging everything against that is bound to make things look better - so we shouldn't do it because it was our heaviest beating of the season, against a very good team on the day. Diabi is back, Dougal is back, but things are exactly 'as you were'. Still starting brightly, still not taking chances, still conceding soft goals - sometimes during the oppositions first meaningful attack on our goal. The only difference I noted yesterday was after the battle was lost. Our coach replaced the words 'experience' with 'tired'. He obviously wants the job.
Fair comments mate. We're simply not a good enough team to put performances and results together often enough, the last time I felt as apathetic was when we were relegated under Flitcroft/Wilson. We'd had the great escape but that seemed to gloss over what was a pretty poor season, and we only just scraped over the line. After surviving, we let Stephen Foster go, isolated Hassell from the squad, and whilst we still had plenty of experience in the side, we were just a poor team (IMHO). Old habits remain, teams don't have to play well or create a host of chances against us, they just need to be patient and we will give them a clear cut opening which they usually take, and then it's game over. There's a post in another thread that I agree with around the loss of not just our "star" players such as your Hourihane's, Mawson's, which to an extent I can live with, but the greater loss to us as a football club is losing the quietly consistent players such as the Scowen's, Watkins, Roberts, and then arguably Moore, Pinnock and Lindsay from last seasons squad. We've got to get some sort of balance back between sustainability, again which I think the majority accept, and the value of having a half decent football team. Reduced player turnover, I think, gives us a better chance of longer term survival in the Championship by allowing a team to be built on a rolling basis, whereas what we have at the moment is a bi-annual rebuild. I'm of the normally optimistic and happy clapping clan as you know, but as much as I hope I'm wrong, I can't see anything other than relegation, and us entering league 1 with a poorer overall squad than we left it with.