I agree, but why?
We've gone from 'Mentality Monsters' last season to fucking Take That in the space of a few months.
Time to get nasty, Chris. Back to 'Murder Tuesday', raw meat for tea, and treat them like men with regular bollockings and accountability.
And for God's sake, get rid of fucking McBurnie. A steaming pile of metrosexual shit who can't run, head, or hit a barn door with a banjo. He epitomizes everything that's wrong with us at the moment IMO).
UTB
Firstly, I don't agree with you about McBurnie. He was the best striker on the pitch yesterday and last week.
As to why we've got no confidence....
Ever since CW/AK arrived at the club, apart from the first few days, we've not really had (apart from the first few games) a prolonged bad run, where we've both played badly and got poor results. Since the end of first lockdown, we've looked poor, with a few bright moment and big performances against big teams. We changed from playing like we've nothing to lose and having a go at teams to thinking we might qualify for Europe and so started to play it safe. We started taking less risks and started trying to play percentage football.
This season, we've had a couple of injuries and thrown new players in. Which has basically meant that as a unit we're much less cohesive and therefore less successful. We were vastly better than the sum of our part for the first half of last season. We look more like a group of individuals this season. Especially when it comes to going forward. Watching our attempts to press yesterday, they felt mechanical more than determined. Man City were playing some crazily dangerous game around their own box but we never looked like we thought we'd turn it over. We didn't press as a team. There was always an easy pass out, as long as they didn't make a mistake. Our best attacks were started by them giving the ball away further up the pitch.
Off the pitch, we frankly look clueless. All CW/AK keep doing is the same thing over and over again because it worked previously. They may change the personnel but we're playing pretty much exactly the same formation. It's percentage football which relies on player playing over and above their own ability. Without fans and, more importantly, the lack of momentum we've had since League 1 days, we've looked flat. We're not giving everything to win the second ball. We're not straining every sinew to get to a ball first. As a result, we're finding playing against players who are more athletic and technically gifted than us a struggle. We were mentally tough but without crowds or the same level of pressure, it's easier for footballers to play without fear. That's what we're coming up against every week. Better players who have nothing to fear.
We have no driving force in the team. No captain. Previously, we've relied on the way we've played as a team so everyone was a captain. They played for each other. They'd break their neck to help a colleague out. That's gone. Well and truly. Who do we rely on to drive us forward? The only player who does this now is Bash and he's beginning to look his age tbqf.
Our formation has been found out. Teams know how to counter it. As soon as they started standing on Norwood, we began to struggle. As soon as they realised that if they push our wingbacks back then we have little coming forward, we were in trouble. The fact teams have known how to counter our formation has previously not necessarily meant that they could. We've overcome it through sheer strength of desire. We've done nothing to address this. Nothing to try and play differently. We set up the same way every week. We may play a number 10 instead of a striker but that's merely a tweak. When we need to score, we take Bash off and put a striker on. This is our plan a and plan b and every single club now knows it.
We're never going to be able to afford to buy better players than most of our opponents so we need to be a better team. Of course the players have low morale. They've been playing badly consistently for almost half a season. They've been consistently getting bad results for half a season. We've been unlucky and the technology has been largely against us but we seem to be sulking. Both on and off the pitch. I'm hearing nothing from Chris which gives me confidence that we'll snap out of it. Nothing that we have ideas to improve. Our tactic seems to be to keep doing the same thing and hope we get our mojo back.
For me, we need to look at the players we have, our strengths and weaknesses and look to try something new. It's not a case of merely bringing in more players. We're buying doer uppers, because we largely have to and have limited global scouting. They're investments and quite rightly we need to think about the future.
This is CW and AK 's biggest test. They need to find a way. Find a way for us to start getting results. In a way we're fortunate that there are at least 3 other teams who seem equally as bad. Something needs to change though. We can't just keep hoping for the best, we need to change things around. Offer teams a much bigger challenge. If not, we're in for a long hard season.