Your comment on our approach seeming to have changed. We didn't change the way we played against Preston (although I admit we weren't as good without McDonald) and we went on to win the game. Against Wednesday we also played football in the first half and then it all went to pot in the 2nd half, we just panicked and hoofed it.
I think its unfair to say we've changed our approach based on that. It doesn't appear we have IMO but I think we'll have a better idea when we look at the Scunthorpe game.
With McDonald and Doyle we had a classic partnership of one playmaker and one holding midfielder/ball winner.
We then had the option of keeping that set up, by playing Lee Williamson, a very good playmaker at this level, in central midfield. As mentioned in my last post, there were also other options available, that would have seen us maintaining some sort of playmaking/creative distribution, or attacking threat from central midfield.
We are extremely lucky to have a squad that enables us to do that, I don't think any other team in this division have such strong options for this key position.
What we chose instead was to go with two holding midfielders/ball winners, neither of whom carry an attacking threat nor is playmaking/creative distribution their natural game.
We chose to change our approach, making it our priority to have a tenacious, aggressive midfield and hoping we would create from wide.
Sometimes it's enough at this level, we have good quality out wide. But McDonald finding form has added an extra dimension to our play and it has seen us finding more space and often made the opposition chase shadows. I think it's important that we acknowledge that, and try to maintain it, even if McDonald is out.
Sorry, but against Preston North End and Sheffield Wednesday, we chose to prioritise differently.
