What has gone wrong? ......there’s a few reasons
1: Lack of pre-season preparation due to covid. I appreciate it effects every club...but if every club has ZERO preparation then you would expect those clubs with the best individual most talented players to perform better. Preparation of team structure and tactics...means weaker players can produce a well drilled team.
2: Lack of pre-season fitness training due to covid: again this effects every team but our team relies more on fitness than almost any other team.
We’re playing more matches with less rest...so strength of squad becomes more important as players are more likely to become fatigued or injured.
3: Injury to Jack O’Connell. When he didn’t play in the Championship we almost always lost.
Maybe O’Connell is our version of Virgil Van Dyke....Jack is probably our most important player but he’s not played a single game this year.
4: Over achieved last season. When even a team achieves something then the danger is they slightly lose their hunger.
Some players were given new contracts and pay rises. Our lower division players had finally made it to the big time and become established PL players.
5: Poor start. Confidence always plays a big part regards performance.
We started with a string of defeats....confidence must be at rock bottom...it’s difficult to regain it.
Next season in the Championship we need to get off to a good start...if we want instant promotion.
6: No home or away crowd. Again it’s the same for everyone but without a crowd the higher quality players should perform better.
I remember McBurnie being interviewed on Talksport about April time last season. He said he enjoys the banter coming from the stands
and thinks he performs much better on match days with a crowd compared to playing behind closed doors in training
7: Our previously better/ consistent players are all 1 year older.....and more past their prime....like Norwood, McGoldrick and Sharp.
8: Our new signings haven’t adapted as well as expected.
We still haven’t sorted how Berge slots into the team. He’s a technically excellent player but he doesn’t naturally slot in to the previously successful team framework.
Brewster has struggled more than expected..probably because he’s in a struggling team low on confidence.
9: Last season our main tactic for creating chances was using O’Connell and Basham to over load the wings and put in crosses.
Eventhough opposition teams knew our tactics they would still struggle to pick up O’Connell on the left and Basham on the right.
O’Connell has been out injured all season. and his replacement can’t do that role any where near as well. We‘ve lost one of our main weapons.
Conclusion: We haven’t become a bad team over night....we‘ve dropped our standards/ lost that edge just 10% to 20%
Last season we were winning 1-0 and 2-1 every week.....this slight drop in standards now means that this season we are losing 0-1 and 1-2 every week.
So 'everything apart from the obvious', then?
1a. Extremely poor scouting and acquisition, resulting in a surfeit of non-scoring strikers who are underserviced by an incompatible and incapable midfield/wingback system
1b. As above, resulting in signing players who we see little of, or who are seemingly taking the fucking piss now with regard availability
2. The existence of a woefully underequipped midfield replete with three main, available options, all of whom have individual fragilities and playing shortcomings
3. Wingbacks who don't (and in one case can't) wingback any more, mainly because:
4. A badly provisioned back three - badly provisioned because the symbiosis and understanding build in the past few seasons has been shattered by just one injury (now three) and the replacement options are simply not capable and if anything several positions lower in capacity
5. Insistence and stubbornness in playing exactly the same positional system every single match, only to change it radically when we go behind, usually with baffling substitutions to nil effect
6. Insistence and stubbornness on relying on the same, now-defeatable tactic of 'Wilderball', in that the main attacking fronts are based on progress up the flanks to a crossing zone, whereby oppositions now have a worked solution, only for the ball to be recycled up the other wing, and back ad nauseum, until we finally lose possession and collapse in defending the counter attack
7. Failure to retain at all costs an athletic, highly capable and popular with the fans goalkeeper, instead signing a questionable option from a relegated club, who has frail confidence and has visually, mentally and physically crumbled under a barrage of opposition chances
pommpey
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