The way I see it

we have a young team mostly, and we have chopped and changed that a lot, for all the many reasons outlined.

To me, that relative immaturity and inexperience needs really strong leadership from the experienced players. Not that we need a ton - we saw how that worked out last season, but we could do without it being Kenny who gets sidelined for six matches, or Duffy who gets stuck in traffic - and who then doesn't seem to really take charge on the pitch. It's as if our most experienced players aren't really quite as strong at leadership as we need.

And of course the manager comes into this - but in the first instance, it's that he needs his 'leaders' to follow his direction, so that cascades downwards. So if they're doing as he's asked, and it's not working, straightforward issue with JHT. If they sort of try but don't really know how, we've got the wrong leaders on the pitch.

I do think we've been disjointed in team selections this season, and even allowing for injuries, I believe there has been the opportunity to be more consistent. And that's also applying to subs - we seem to have quite a random set of criteria for who and when to substitute.


Overall then, some of it is on the pitch, some of it is off the pitch, and perhaps the thing we needed was an experienced backroom person to support a young coach. JW may be someone to admire but he's not had to stifle championship opposition from the coaching seats much in his career.

Posted By: camcan, Mar 12, 10:36:11