THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

As much as I support DMs appointment, he does have a point. I'd rather play scrappy football and stay up than try to play a 'better' style of football and risk relegation. Everyone keeps saying we've got the players to do it, but I still need to see more on the pitch before I'm convinced, we need to get some wins fast.

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22/23 APL Prediction League champion
22/23 APL Hall of Fame champion
22/23 How crap? Winner's league 3rd place

I'm being realistic, unlike those who appear to be convinced that DM is the bearer of the true, pure Robbo torch of attractive football. Robinson's style brought us to the brink of two relegations in successive years and to believe that doing a time warp and recreating some sort of Golden Age by appointing a rookie manager with a John Gorman like senior consigliere and playing pretty football is going to solve our problems is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Our players aren't up to it and until we get some who ARE we ought to go back to some sort of sensible basics. Play a 4-4-2 and get an experienced manager in who knows what he's doing would be my remedy for this and I'm not the only one who thinks so!

Agree. AND (totally) incoherently.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

Robinson's style alsogot us promotion.

The guy has been in the job for 3 games, and yes there have been problems, but the teams confidence was shot and the morale was non-existant so he can't fix that in a few weeks.

Im not convinced style of play has a lot to do with winning in the end. I think that playing the way you need to in order to beat the opponents in front of you is all that matter. Some of the greatest teams ever assembled had the ability to play the pretty stuff but also do the ugly stuff when it was needed. Think Liverpool in the 70's and 80's, Utd in the 90's and 00's and in the last 10 years Barca. In my opinion, rose tinted specs are often employed when recalling the exploits of those teams, Barca in particular. They had an extraordinarily high workrate and roughed it up when needed.

For me, our issues stem from low confidence leading to a higher percentage of mistakes than we would like to see and a lack of a natural goal scorer.

At this level, I believe more than ever that the game is about who makes the fewest mistakes and right now, that isnt us

What DM has brought though is football that is more enjoyable to watch and hopefully more enjoyable to play. With that comes confidence and with confidence comes fewer mistakes. Hopefully anyway!

Good post.

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

yeah, i would agree with that, Arsenal had huge success under George Graham grinding out 1-0 wins just about everywhere, not pretty to watch but highly effective. I suppose you could put up with watching ugly football if you were winning most of your games.

I like Dan`s approach to how he is setting the team up, its a fresh looking team who appear to be adapting quite well and seem much more at ease in what they are being asked to do

All valid points, but there is a wider picture to consider here... The long terms development of the club.

As a third division football club with relatively limted resources for the foreseeable future we are going to be reliant upon two major factors to ensure that we survive financially and put a competitive team out on the pitch (for whatever level we're competing at):

Developing young players from our Academy to sell on.

Securing the best quality loanee's that we can get

As one of those advocating "pretty football", to me it runs far deeper than what we see on a Saturday at 3pm.

In order to sell on those Academy players, they, not only have to have the technical and physical* attributes for the big teams to be interested, but they also need to come into a first team environment where they're nurtured, not scared to make mistakes and can go out and express themselves. That's how they'll catch the eye, not playing in a metaphorical straight-jacket. For instance, would Dele have caught the eye the way he did if he'd been in a Neilson team where he was stopped from joining the attacks? I've seen Spurs fans say it's incredible that we essentially played him as a defensive midfielder! That shows how much freedom he had in our system.

*that's more about pace and physiology rather than just strength, I should add.

Similarly, loanee's are going to play a huge part in our growth, as they do for just about every club in the EFL. Despite the myopic view that "we have too many loanee's", it's worth pointing out that a large percentage of clubs in the football league use their full quota. Most clubs have, like us, come to the conclusion that that level of quality just isn't available on the open market or within our their own squads, and with the risk attached in terms of how they develop, it's something that even if we had the money, I'd want to avoid taking that risk. I'd hate to think we'd be the sort of club who'd paid £5M for Aaron Tshibola!

Now in order to attract the best ones, it's important that a Prem team can see their fledglings working in that same environment I mentioned for our own Academy graduates. Given who we have at the helm now, I'd hope that that trust is even stronger that young loanee's are going to leave us as better players than they were before they arrived. That's obviously the ultimate aim of these loans from their perspective.

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Philosophically, I agree with pretty much all of that and feel its in the DNA of this football club. With our origins as they are, I feel we are almost compelled to follow this path.

Loanees are a red herring for me. As you say, pretty much all clubs outside the prem couldnt manage without them and thats just a fact of the system we have where the money is so focussed in one area.

I am no statto but I would be interested to know what the outurn is for an academy such as our. I appreciate the numerous youth teams outside the full academy are 'pay to play' but I wonder how much resale value we really get in net spend? Running an academy must be a significant financial commitment and players who realise value like Dele are pretty thin on the ground. Even then, the fees commanded are modest in comparison to the overall debt we run at. Most academy graduates who have been 'sold on' go for low six figure sums.

without wanting to sound trite, I think it’s because we are legitimately bad.

part of the upturn some managers experience is because a team isn’t as bad as the results leading to the sacking of the previous manager have depicted. you can go on winning and losing runs in the short term that are driven partially by luck.

that wasn’t the case with us under neilson. all the indicators - such as expected goals, which measures the quality of chances in games rather than just goals (which again, can be tilted by luck) - say we are exactly where we should be.

there’s no quick fixes here, which is why we’re in genuine trouble. even if micciche can deliver improvement quite quickly, we have a horrible run of games starting in march.