Where has the fight gone?

[Dellas Cowboys]

The fight goes the second you sell the two best players and fail to replace a personality like sharp or a young talent like Doyle. That's four important cogs of the machine gone

As for Wes yeah some of the goals against him have been soft but in the main he's kept scores much lower than they could've been with some top saves

Nail on the head, plus lack of a wild card powerful striker like Mousset.

 

[wavy-blade]

Where has the fight gone?​

America, France , and notts county and some might say Burnley with what’s on the pitch at the moment !

 

[Bell4]

Agree he's not quite PL standard but he's playing his best, giving full effort.....so no complaints from me.
Think he's actually been reasonable so far, could be better but could be worse. As mentioned Wes is the least of our problems.

If Wes is our main problem - we`re staying up comfortably

 

[BobblesBlade]

Give it time. I reckon after we’ve played everyone once then 2nd half of the season will see us rally and get 15 to 20 pts.

 

[CornwallBlade]

Not only that, but movement off the ball.

It's ok having players with composure on the ball, but the next pass is only available when players make moves - giving the player in possession options. Norwood often gets his ping right when there's movement ahead and he can land the ball in the correct areas. At the moment it appears all our options off the ball are either cut down due to better defending and marking or the player on the ball gets closed down quickly. It's not just one player making himself available its multiple players continually moving into space to pull opposition players out of position. It seems an easy fix but you obviously have to have all the players on the same wavelength and unfortunately we don't.

Not sure if that's a coaching thing or that we don't have the quality of players to execute it. Maybe both.

Good points. Unfortunately, I think the answer is that, as you suggest, the standard of defending is way higher in the PL. People are closed down and available space disappears very quickly- we simply don’t have the ability to play at the speed required. As such, we can only rely on rock solid defence and breaking out. We seemed to do that well in the first few games but its gone now.

 

[LS16Blade]

It is as plain as day that, collectively, this set of players are not playing with the attitude, commitment, character and, frankly, heart that we have for the most part been used to over recent seasons.

That essential collective desire and belief that can often make a team into more than the sum of its parts - which we have had for the majority of the time since Wilder arrived - seems to have been lost.

To be fair to Hecky, he knew and knows the huge value of having the right mentality in the dressing room. It can go a long way to bridging a quality gap when you’re in the sort of fight we’re up against. That is why Hecky repeatedly said that he wanted to keep everyone from the promotion squad - and that included Bill and Enda. Their influence on the team - from years of experience through the successful battles of recent seasons - could be measured beyond what their actual output on the pitch. Especially, as we were already unavoidably losing a big personality in JOC.

Instead, aside from sabotaging the season with the sales of Sander and Iliman - who were clearly integral to the collective dressing room attitude too - the Board also failed to meet Hecky’s wishes regarding keeping senior members of the squad.

So many essential elements of what made United‘s team have been stripped away. The new signings - notwithstanding that there are some talented players amongst them - are simply not assimilated yet. That isn’t their fault but it leaves us looking like a team currently without a collective identity. Many of us will have experienced in our own employment how the departure of just one key individual can make a previously brilliant team, fall apart. The loss of Bash is just going to exacerbate it.

I can’t forget the initial media interviews that Egan did on the eve of the season. He was announced as the new captain yet was so uncharacteristically dour in the presser; flat as a pancake. Probably unsurprising given that his best mates Stevens and Sharp - I can’t be the only one who has seen the 3 of them out together in the Peak District - are suddenly no longer around the place. It probably isn’t a coincidence that Egan’s performances at the start of the season were well below his standards, and now the player ‘who never gets injured’ has picked up a long term injury. The mental element is huge.

 

[Bladethebrian]

Buying Sousa instead of Doyle! What an own goal