The biggest mistake this year

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Bladesman101

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… not replacing Souttar.

Just happened to come across a few highlights from season and our season changed the moment he got injured. He was becoming a massive fans favourite.

We’ve been linked with Dunne at QPR and Darling at Swansea but by looks of it we’re waiting to get them for nowt at the end of the year. We use the Cannon money to get those 2 in then I think we cruise to title.

Worse thing is, most blades fans knew this.
 

We had 38 days from Boxing Day until the close of the window, to find a replacement ‘lead’ central defender. Ideally, it should have been attended to in the first week of January but to not get anyone in until the last minute, and even then it was one who wasn’t ready to play, was incredibly disappointing.

By ‘lead’ central defender, I mean someone in the same mould as Souttar - the sort that brings reassurance to the rest of the defence and the keeper - and not a support or secondary centre-half.

Anel is a classic support centre-half, and Robbo, given that he’s really a left-back by trade, is the same when moved to centre-half.

They both played so much better at the side of Souttar than they do together. It’s just like how Egan was never quite as assured when O’Connell was not there, and further back, how Bromby and Killgallon could both look excellent when either was paired with Morgan, but were easily bullied when they played together.

The failure to find a leader for central defence - particularly as funds appear to have been available - is unfathomable.
 
I don’t think so personally. The biggest issue was continuing with the ‘safety first’ approach despite losing arguably the most important cog in the defensive wheel.

The system should have been tweaked & play to actually attack teams to win games and play to our strengths (which is undoubtably our attacking talent). I’m afraid we threw it away due to stubbornness / lack of ingenuity.
 
Souttar was definitely a massive loss, but who could we have got to replace him at relatively short notice and a notoriously difficult time to attract players? Dunne was offered terms apparently, QPRs manager said as much

Absolute shame it didn't happen, but to label it a mistake?
 
The biggest mistake was bringing in Souttars replacement albeit at the 11th hour and not playing him. Jackie first on the team sheet long throw was considered enough to get us over the line. He wasn't. Holding could and should have had over a dozen first team games under his belt by now. Its ridiculous when the wheels started to fall of at Oxford he wasn't deemed match fit. Automatic promotion was lost starting at Oxford and the 3 game no show. Those 9 points would have us on 98 now still at the top of the league with our fate in our own hands on the last day. They were teams we were more than capable of beating but our weakness in not defending hoof at the back was cruelly exposed. Even after Oxford there was an opportunity to change tack go with 2 up top against the Wall and bring Holding in for Robinson. 6 points from the Wall and Plymouth would have us still in contention on the last day. This is where we fell down and criticism is rightly levelled at the manager for blindly sticking with the same formation and players.

We have the best squad. We have won the most games going into the play offs. Yet we still have the capacity to implode when it comes to team selection. If we play our best players from the start and that is a CB pairing of Holding and Anel and ensure OHare is in the side we have nothing to fear imo. Problem is I don't expect that to happen.
 
Not replacing Souttar in January and instead spending big money on a striker was a really poor decision.

Biggest mistake of the season? Tied with the decision to not play a more attacking style of football. We've only conceded 6 more than Leeds but scored 30 fewer.
 
I knew the moment Souttar stayed down everything had changed

Yet, our points tally remained very impressive after his injury

Even with him in the team, does anyone really think we'd have justified finishing above Leeds and Burnley and been able to do so? I'm not totally convinced. I do think we'd be at least 3 points better off

Wasting that money on Cannon and the deadline day kids instead of sorting the defence was fatal. Not integrating Holding much sooner was a mistake. Not trying a back 3 with him is probably a mistake. Thinking we only had to turn up at Oxford was definitely a mistake
 
He was certainly a miss but the lack of goals scored hamstrung us more than the defensive record in my opinion. We didn't concede a lot of goals at any point really, and a team that was a little more free-scoring would've covered up any deficiencies in that department.

I don't even lay the blame at Cannon - more an inability to get more out of what we had at our disposal.

One to park until after the play-offs anyway I'd suggest...
 

Addison said:
The biggest mistake was bringing in Souttars replacement albeit at the 11th hour and not playing him. Jackie first on the team sheet long throw was considered enough to get us over the line. He wasn't. Holding could and should have had over a dozen first team games under his belt by now. Its ridiculous when the wheels started to fall of at Oxford he wasn't deemed match fit. Automatic promotion was lost starting at Oxford and the 3 game no show. Those 9 points would have us on 98 now still at the top of the league with our fate in our own hands on the last day. They were teams we were more than capable of beating but our weakness in not defending hoof at the back was cruelly exposed. Even after Oxford there was an opportunity to change tack go with 2 up top against the Wall and bring Holding in for Robinson. 6 points from the Wall and Plymouth would have us still in contention on the last day. This is where we fell down and criticism is rightly levelled at the manager for blindly sticking with the same formation and players.

We have the best squad. We have won the most games going into the play offs. Yet we still have the capacity to implode when it comes to team selection. If we play our best players from the start and that is a CB pairing of Holding and Anel and ensure OHare is in the side we have nothing to fear imo. Problem is I don't expect that to happen.
Click to expand...
Seems he's hell bent on playing Robinson mate, maybe Wilders stubborness, be very surprised if he plays Holding.
 
Bladesman101 said:
We’ve been linked with Dunne at QPR and Darling at Swansea but by looks of it we’re waiting to get them for nowt at the end of the year. We use the Cannon money to get those 2 in then I think we cruise to title.
Click to expand...
RE Cannon: what is worth noting is that when we signed him, both Oné and Brewster had 1 goal each all season (and weren't playing much), Moore was about to go and have surgery and it wasn't clear just when Campbell would be back from that back injury.

Might be wrong but wasn't Campbell's first game back from injury against Hull (came off the bench), which was also Cannons debut for us, if so we got lucky in that Campbell returned at the same time we signed Cannon.

Darling got a red card against us for Swansea so would have been unavailable for a few games anyway, and pretty sure QPR we're messing us around with the price for Dunne, agreed £2m which they then wanted £3m.

We got linked with Tanganga towards the end (that would have been a proper statement signing), but with that rumoured £10m price tag, we weren't going to splash £20m on 2 players in January, and no one else signed Tanganga for that price anyway.

Would we have signed Tanganga if we hadn't signed Cannon, who knows?
 
Addison said:
The biggest mistake was bringing in Souttars replacement albeit at the 11th hour and not playing him. Jackie first on the team sheet long throw was considered enough to get us over the line. He wasn't. Holding could and should have had over a dozen first team games under his belt by now. Its ridiculous when the wheels started to fall of at Oxford he wasn't deemed match fit. Automatic promotion was lost starting at Oxford and the 3 game no show. Those 9 points would have us on 98 now still at the top of the league with our fate in our own hands on the last day. They were teams we were more than capable of beating but our weakness in not defending hoof at the back was cruelly exposed. Even after Oxford there was an opportunity to change tack go with 2 up top against the Wall and bring Holding in for Robinson. 6 points from the Wall and Plymouth would have us still in contention on the last day. This is where we fell down and criticism is rightly levelled at the manager for blindly sticking with the same formation and players.

We have the best squad. We have won the most games going into the play offs. Yet we still have the capacity to implode when it comes to team selection. If we play our best players from the start and that is a CB pairing of Holding and Anel and ensure OHare is in the side we have nothing to fear imo. Problem is I don't expect that to happen.
Click to expand...
Because our fate to gain promotion is no longer in our own hands is it? I honestly despair at the lack of intelligence sometimes...jeez
 
Souttar was a big blow and not bringing someone in was poor judgement and going all season and still not being sure of our best line up or having a system is down to the manager and coaching teams, with play offs approaching we're still hoping to come good, I think we can do it, but going into next season in the premiership we have to come up with something better imo
 
We were top after 39 matches and Souttar only played in 21 of those matches, if he was the reason, we would’ve fell away long before we did.
 
The biggest mistake this season was that week from Oxford to Plymouth where instead of turning up we folded far worse than Leeds did in 19.

I don't blame the Leeds fans for lauding it over us it was laughable, we should have taken minimum 6 points from that lot
 
Souttar fitted us like a glove, we all said in January that we needed more fire power but as shown by Burnley if you don’t score then you don’t lose perhaps the cash injection clouded the eyes or perhaps a suitable replacement wasn’t available at the money we wanted to pay we’ve all heard how agents react but to add in hindsight that’s where it all went wrong imo
 
Letting Leeds and Burnley do the double over us. If we’d have beat them both at home (and still lost away) we’d be top now.
 
Cut the chatter. Oxford, Plymouth & Millwall should’ve been 9 points.

We got 0 points from 2 very poor sides & as stodgy and one dimensional a championship team as you could wish to play.

Those 3 games are what messed the season up. The rest is just noise.

And in Cannon’s case, noise that we’ll be very fortunate to rid ourselves of for a figure close to what we paid.

I suggest that on any given weekend there’s 3 better centre forwards playing park football in South Yorkshire, than what we paid £7m for.
 
raul said:
We were top and buzzing after Cov, so think we overplay the injuries to Oli and Souttar. We just blinked first and hardest when it really mattered.
Click to expand...
True, but I feel we would have been clear with Souttar

On Xmas Day we were top and had conceded 11 goals in 22 games. Souttar got injured the next day on the 2-0 loss to Burnley.

Our gA was 0.56 per game

In the 22 games that have followed we've conceded 22 goals. 1 per game. Pretty much a 100% uplift
 
It wasnt Souttar. It was losing to 3 poor sides in a week. Then losing to Burnley as well. If we beat Oxford, Plymouth and Millwall we can draw with Burnley and go up.
 

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