Big questions for next season ..

I hope that at some point when the anger has died down and the hughton got us relegated bile stops we stop and try and reflect on what properly went wrong.
The players just weren't good enough?
We have pointed the finger firmly at RVW and co all season and clearly there has been problems with form and confidence or else we wouldn't have been relegated. But are they poor players? RVW bashed goals away for fun in the past and no one person thought that hooper was a bad signing. So why did they not work this season ? When a team comes up from the championship it is full of players who might be down on skill but will be full of confidence and the team will have momentum. Chucking championship players into the premiership has one advantage. Expectation is very low. Every point is a bonus and they love every game like its their first and fight like its their last. Stay up and your a hero.. Go down and you've been plucky. In our second premiership season we still only signed championship players and we were expected to be the 4th worst team in the prem at best. Everything else was a bonus. Then we changed .. We splashed the cash on numerous players of pedigree .. With bassong, Ollsen, RVW, Redmond and hooper in the team every pundit was predicting we would be comfortably mid table.
The problem wasn't with the quality of the players. The error was with the system. We had half a team based from the championship playing above their level and half believing that they were quality internationals. There was no specific system that the players were following. It was like a team in transition, waiting to become a quality team. There was no ethos, no team plan, we weren't attacking and we weren't really defensive either. There was no stability in the squad selections almost seeming like the whole season, the manager didn't really know his best team. It wasn't tiki taka or hoofball. Last season we had the hughton team identity. Built on a budget and defensive. Boring but reliable .
Essentially what went wrong was untill this season we bought players to fit into a system.. This season we bought players because they were good and thought that would evolve the system.
If we think this was hughton alone that messed this up we are naive. It was the board who agreed the purchases, the scouts who picked the players and coaches who failed to agree on one way to play and what type of player we needed to play that way.

Posted By: hairyolaf, May 8, 18:37:16