Let's bring my original thread back again but create a new one because as always my input gets lost in the midst of fog and rain... whilst so-called experts blame everyone and everything, they struggle to work out that it's not JUST one thing to blame. Not to say i'm some sort of Guru, far from it, i'm a fairly average person but I do get annoyed when people over analyse stuff, live In the past (Schumacher and Dewsnip for example, in different times and situations) yet just blame one person for our slight (only slight) demise. I'm annoyed to be proven right. Deary deary me... the loan market is fine to add flourish but when it's to make up a team it's an accident waiting to happen. That said whilst the board / scouts / directors are totally to blame for this mess (see below for my very basic analysis) I do sympathise with them. They had done a great job up to around January 2023. We can't afford to make many mistakes, especially in this league, sadly there are clubs that have far more manoever for mistakes...
I'm going to do a comparison to last season's squad to really make it very very simple for posters. I'm not sure why there are 116 threads not only on pasoti but on twitter as to why we are in a bit of a pickle, and of course the consensus is Foster to blame (laughable assumption), and that we aren't playing attacking football anymore Comical stuff. Even my 7 year old girls understand the basics... So just to re-itterate for the umpteenth time:
Keepers:
We are +1 better... with Hazard
Defenders:
Pleggy / Gibson are better than Wilson / Lonwijk. Not by a million miles but anyway...
So let's give it a +1 compared to last season (including Phillips)
Wing Backs:
Sorinola / Sousa
Probably better than Conor Grant and Gillesphey
So let's give our wing backs +1 (although both of those ex players were versatile, plus we tend to play Mumba and Miller anyway as first choice, both players from last season. BUT i'll give that position a +1 anyway. I'm very generous.
Central Midfield
mmmmm (remember that Everton loanie... ok let's not) So we have injury prone Forshaw for lets say Butcher.... just about a +1 (Butcher currently Wycombe's best player at the moment) otherwise who was the Matete replacement.... mmmm can't think of one... possibly Gyabi but he's back to Leeds... so that's back to a zero for midfield. Not improved AT ALL since the champ days! Deary me.
Attacking Midfielders:
We had Azaz last season.... Callum Wright League 1 was a far better player than C.Wright champ but let's not complicate things....I won't deduct points for that. Devine let's say is Azaz's replacement, perhaps the only "new" player we can blame on Foster. What about Mayor's replacement? Nothing. Never seen him apart from Cundle under Schuey perhaps??? Tyriek Wright a Jan 2023 signing back on loan to Bradford.
So overall we are now -2 for this position compared to last season. Arguably in fact -3 because Azaz was such an important cog to our team. There is an article about how important he was for us. Let's bear in mind that along with Whittaker and Hardie he was our main player along with Cundle in terms of assists, goals and creating chances. Also you can't rely solely on two players for the rest of a campaign, however good the are.
Strikers:
Nothing new in this department for over a year and a half (apart from a youngster called Ben Waine) ... plus more worryingly Ennis and Cosgrove aren't with us anymore. (before people post about those guys not being good enough for us i'm talking about replacing them with better players not with the same guys!!!)
So that's -2. Let's add Bundu in there, even though he isn't a striker at all. So back to -1
So taking everything into account (and i've been very generous to this season's squad...) we are on ZERO DIFFERENCE. So basically the same standard squad to last season although with our main cog Azaz missing i'd argue we are even worse. Deary deary me. Basic rule of any season. Improve the squad, and if we are promoted especially to a league that is far far better than the one we were in then we need to improve the team dramatically. Bearing in mind whilst we somehow achieved over 100 points last campaign we weren't exceptional by any means. About 4 atrocious performances/results AND a lot of our success was down to the squad depth and substitutions. I actually think that winning the league with over 100 points (excellent achievement of course) counted agaisnt us. Fans (and board perhaps) thinking we could just turn up in this league and easily achieve survival. I was worried from last summer when we didn't improve our attacking options, although fair play to the board for bringing in Mumba and Whittaker.
So the overall result is that IF people want to blame anyone it's certainly not foster. The squad isn't any better than last season / being optimistic it's ever so slightly better with Roberts / Freddie available and having hopefully improved.
I'm going to do a comparison to last season's squad to really make it very very simple for posters. I'm not sure why there are 116 threads not only on pasoti but on twitter as to why we are in a bit of a pickle, and of course the consensus is Foster to blame (laughable assumption), and that we aren't playing attacking football anymore Comical stuff. Even my 7 year old girls understand the basics... So just to re-itterate for the umpteenth time:
Keepers:
We are +1 better... with Hazard
Defenders:
Pleggy / Gibson are better than Wilson / Lonwijk. Not by a million miles but anyway...
So let's give it a +1 compared to last season (including Phillips)
Wing Backs:
Sorinola / Sousa
Probably better than Conor Grant and Gillesphey
So let's give our wing backs +1 (although both of those ex players were versatile, plus we tend to play Mumba and Miller anyway as first choice, both players from last season. BUT i'll give that position a +1 anyway. I'm very generous.
Central Midfield
mmmmm (remember that Everton loanie... ok let's not) So we have injury prone Forshaw for lets say Butcher.... just about a +1 (Butcher currently Wycombe's best player at the moment) otherwise who was the Matete replacement.... mmmm can't think of one... possibly Gyabi but he's back to Leeds... so that's back to a zero for midfield. Not improved AT ALL since the champ days! Deary me.
Attacking Midfielders:
We had Azaz last season.... Callum Wright League 1 was a far better player than C.Wright champ but let's not complicate things....I won't deduct points for that. Devine let's say is Azaz's replacement, perhaps the only "new" player we can blame on Foster. What about Mayor's replacement? Nothing. Never seen him apart from Cundle under Schuey perhaps??? Tyriek Wright a Jan 2023 signing back on loan to Bradford.
So overall we are now -2 for this position compared to last season. Arguably in fact -3 because Azaz was such an important cog to our team. There is an article about how important he was for us. Let's bear in mind that along with Whittaker and Hardie he was our main player along with Cundle in terms of assists, goals and creating chances. Also you can't rely solely on two players for the rest of a campaign, however good the are.
Strikers:
Nothing new in this department for over a year and a half (apart from a youngster called Ben Waine) ... plus more worryingly Ennis and Cosgrove aren't with us anymore. (before people post about those guys not being good enough for us i'm talking about replacing them with better players not with the same guys!!!)
So that's -2. Let's add Bundu in there, even though he isn't a striker at all. So back to -1
So taking everything into account (and i've been very generous to this season's squad...) we are on ZERO DIFFERENCE. So basically the same standard squad to last season although with our main cog Azaz missing i'd argue we are even worse. Deary deary me. Basic rule of any season. Improve the squad, and if we are promoted especially to a league that is far far better than the one we were in then we need to improve the team dramatically. Bearing in mind whilst we somehow achieved over 100 points last campaign we weren't exceptional by any means. About 4 atrocious performances/results AND a lot of our success was down to the squad depth and substitutions. I actually think that winning the league with over 100 points (excellent achievement of course) counted agaisnt us. Fans (and board perhaps) thinking we could just turn up in this league and easily achieve survival. I was worried from last summer when we didn't improve our attacking options, although fair play to the board for bringing in Mumba and Whittaker.
So the overall result is that IF people want to blame anyone it's certainly not foster. The squad isn't any better than last season / being optimistic it's ever so slightly better with Roberts / Freddie available and having hopefully improved.
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