The tactical plan is lacking.
The game changing subs aren't at the club.
The creativity is nil, the players aren't in the squad.
The runners in behind aren't at the club, nor are the players to offer an outlet. Barring a 19 year old lad.
The like-for-like subs aren't at the club.
The athleticism in midfield isn't there.
The discernible patterns of play aren't there.
As a result, front foot football, risk and reward football, out run. out fight. out play. Isn't there and couldn't be further away.
That's recruitment AND tactics. Both are to blame. But I place the lion's share of the blame with the former. You cannot sell your best quality and not replace, with some of the qualities above. If the man had the tools needed to do the job, you could make a fairer assessment of where we're at. You could take him more to task in his tactics. As it is, he doesn't have the players at his disposal to put on a competitive performance, or to change it up when needed.
The blame lies with the owners for that.
This point can’t be denied.
I think the concern is only the most blindly optimistic thought we would not be losing Gus and once Brooks dropped out it was clear we would need more creativity.
O’Hare was a disruptive departure. You could align it with when MacDonald left under Weir; the team was geared up to use him and he left.
We didn’t really have a replacement for O’Hare should he get injured anyway. We should really have been looking for 2 players when Gus left; one proper left sided one and an attacking midfielder, because we don’t have any.
When you look at the recruitment, it’s been very defence oriented:
Doherty - right back
Kitching - centre back
Choudhury - defensive mid
Phillips - defensive mid
BBD - Forward
Donovan - Forward
Ironically, 4-3-3 probably suits us if we actually look at who we have.
In fact if we look at some of the history of the players we are well covered. I checked on Campbell earlier. He has a decent scoring and assist record playing out wide; something like 35 goal contributions in 50 odd games. Yet we never try him there.
We were poor away at Cardiff and Baptiste had a nightmare at full back yet he played well alongside McGuinness at centre back and Tanganga has played right back in the top division.
Yet some players have gone and yes we tried 4-4-2 to be more front footed. It didn’t work, we were outplayed 3 times even though we got 4 points.
Just learn. Forget what he gave the forwards, acknowledge what O’Hare gave the midfield. Stick another man in there and make us hard to beat. Stop learning and be stubborn and then we’ll be in trouble.