Sean Thornton
I say a little prayer….
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2015
- Messages
- 65,797
- Reaction score
- 117,991
You say can’t keep banging that drum but it’s true while we had a fit O’Connell we were highly effective. Teams didnt figure us out. We simply lost a player, failed to adequately replace and weren’t the same. We were like a sparrow with a broken wing. All our play started to come down the right.
The mistake was that summer. I felt we prioritised the wrong targets. We went for Ramsdale because we obsessed over wanting our own keeper and Brewster. In reality we could have loaned a decent keeper for another year and prioritised adding a ball playing left centre back.
Likewise I felt with Lundstram already signalling his intentions we should have pushed him out even if for a low fee and brought in a more committed replacement. We were linked with Grilitch and Camara at the time we signed Berge, maybe another one of those.
So I’d have gone for a LCB and a CM when we went for GK and CF!
If we weren’t adequately replacing O’Connell then we should have gone something like 4-3-2-1 because the whole advantage of 5-3-2 went with JOC.
You're of course entitled to your view and mine won’t change, I just don’t recall while JOC was fit and healthy, thinking this isn’t working anymore, these guys have found a way to stop us. But I do agree it was quite hard to recruit for because of the skills needed but not impossible.
Back to today, it feels like we neither have the maverick players nor a thing either. We need to find one and quick, to make this group click.
JOC was a hugely important member of the team of course. But he would certainly have left for better things. Whatever fee we got for him, it’s highly unlikely we would have “adequately replaced him” with being extremely lucky.
You are bang on re Lundstram however. Why Wilder kept on playing him is one of the bigger selection mysteries.