Having watched another round of games on MOTD, it's increasingly obvious that teams who win games almost always have players who show a significant level of skill, composure and decision making, experience, determination and strength.
Skilful players - whether a defender makes a perfectly-timed tackle, or midfielder skips through challenges to create a chance for a forward, or a striker who takes not just easy chances, but difficult ones too. The teams down the bottom lack defenders with sufficient skill to compete against skilful midfielders and attackers. They lack midfielders who can successfully run at defences and forwards who can take chances when they come along.
Composure and decision making - how many times do we see defenders from bottom teams give up possession far too easily? It could be argued they don't have the skill to do what they're trying to do, whether it's trying to control the ball in the first place, trying to dribble out, or finding a team mate with a simple pass, but composure is also needed. So many players from teams who will struggle in the Prem cannot handle the pressure of being pressed, or sometimes even approached slowly! Composure doesn't necessarily mean creating a piece of magic under pressure to clear the decks when defending, it means having the calmness to asses the situation and act accordingly. That might be to take the ball away from the attacker, it might be a first time pass back to the keeper, it might be to put it into row Z, but the correct choice under pressure needs to be made, and all too often isn't. When attacking, picking out the right pass, taking the shot early...there's loads of examples of where composure is lacking in struggling teams.
Experience - established teams have established Prem players. Rarely do Champ and lower league players take to it instantly. It's faster, stronger and much more difficult to adapt for players not to used to the pace of the game and the level of players they will face.
Determination and strength - Struggling teams get 'bullied' off the ball. Sometimes possession is lost because of a lack of skill, a lack of composure, making the wrong decision, but often players are just knocked of the ball. It honestly seems like it's men against boys, dads v lads, such is the gap. Every week we see big, powerful, athletic, strong skilful players rob the game of it's competitiveness. They have a handicap system in horse racing to try and level things up, but no such thing exists in football, and boty does it show.
Where does this leave us?
In need of too many unaffordable replacements who have the skill, composure, decision making, experience, determination and strength, unless... unless Hecky or someone else can work miracles with our current squad.
I do believe that if we went down, and here's about the only positive having such a gap, that we will have no problem with this squad returning quickly, but to what?!
