Having seen Charlton Shrewsbury and half of Scunthorpe Rotherham, the standard of the top six in league one is to put it mildly - poor. One or two quality glimpses (eg the scunny lad on the right wing skinning the defender and playing him in quick for the equaliser) amongst a lot of dross (many examples but I’ll give Ryan Williams running up a blind alley and losing it to start that move, and the comical way the centre back scored the og) - and many bang average players. I’m encouraged as I strongly feel our squad with a few additions will be hugely competitive - even with a few players inevitably leaving. Kieffer Moore will be immense imo. I’m depressed though as this is what we’ve got to look forward to for at least next season. And these are four of the best six sides.
That right winger was close to signing for us. What makes me more encouraged is we should be able to sign players (to add to our current squad) that are much better than most on display in the play off games shown so far. Stefan Payne, Callum Elder, David Perkins, Ryan Williams, Ivan Toney are just some of our ex players who have been important players for teams either automatically promoted or in the playoffs.
I watched Shrewsbury twice in a week v Lincoln and Bradford and they didn't manage a goal in either game - and they had been top of the league or thereabouts all season!
Get the right manager in, fairly soon so that he has enough time to make the changes he wants, and we are capable of being next season's Blackburn/Wigan. Full away ends every other week because the team are smashing it up. Appoint Mick or someone of his ilk, and we're set.
What I've seen worries me. There has been more heart, fight and desire shown in the last 70 minutes than most of our players managed in a season.
That’s unfair, I think they had fight for the first half of the season. They were crap but had a go. Under morais we had better forwards, retained the ball better, and so had less pressure on the midfield and defence as a result. Didn’t have the same endeavour though, they looked confused, baffled. Stayed as bad despite having a better squad.
Some of them showed fight but even under hecky players like moncur were bone idle, Davies was so negative he was lying on the ball in the first half of games we were drawing to try to waste time and Joe Williams passed the ball backwards every time he touched it
There's no finesse in this game, compared to our team that won the lge 1 play offs. After Radio Sheff had loved Paul Warne recently I expected a team that played football at least. They're ******* rubbish. Scunthorpe aren't yet aware that they need to score.
To be fair though, I reckon our League 1 playoff team was so good that if it was reassembled now it would have a good chance of automatic promotion from the Championship.
I definitely agree that it would be up there in the championship. Even that side needed time to get to grips with league 1 which gives me hope (false hope probably) that our current side can be a solid championship side given time.
There is a diffeence to no fight and not been good enough. I think this season we have shown alot of fight but not enough quality overall that' what cost us. (Not by much mind a few less keeper howlers and we would be ok now)
Davies was time wasting at 2-2 in one of the home games towards the end of the season, maybe sheff Utd. A game we needed to win, he obviously has no football brain. Also don't forget Zeki Fryers. Rumour has it he once passed it forward when he played abroad.
Difference is that side never suffered relegation. What happens if we go back up with virtually the same side, will those players be thinking 'we aren't good enough'? If we'd kept that side together and added 2/3 quality players last summer with the likes of Hourihane, Winnall, Bree, Scowen having had a years experience at that level we'd have been 2nd-6th in my opinion. Better than Cardiff and certainly better than the likes of Millwall and Sheff Utd who were up there challenging.
I can’t argue with that second point. It was a very good squad. Regards to having the squad we have in the championship again, I’d hope that the players would have more confidence in themselves after a successful season and ride the promotion wave to give us an initial boost. This is all very theoretical of course as we’ve got a long, tough season to get through first.