Balham_Green":1gh18mw5 said:
Biggs":1gh18mw5 said:
I read that as pretty optimistic
To score 9 goals in the last four games and still not have our two most creative players really come to the party, indicates that we may well have another gear to shift into... as you say.
Unusually for an Adams team the attack is stronger than defence due to his poor recruitment in the Summer. He may have come to the conclusion that we HAVE to attack because we can't defend. I still fear a long season with thisdefence.
Been busy working away at various projects, so it's time to catch up with some of these comments:
First off, it is quite positive. I can come off as overly negative sometimes because I'm trying to emphasise that just because a side is playing well it doesn't mean it can't play better. A good example would be after Argyle beat Wimbledon but lost to Swindon: there was a thread to the effect of
Songo'o, Fox and O'Keefe were the best midfield trio, Ness, Sarcevic and C. Grant weren't good enough, which I knew was wrong for a number of reasons. Just because Argyle won, doesn't mean that automatically is the best line-up, or the right line-up to face every opponent. So I can sometimes go overboard trying to emphasise that.
At the moment, Argyle have got a good side, one that I think would finish somewhere between 10th-16th, with around 58-65 points if it was used across a whole season. However, there are a series of small improvements that can be made to push them up into the 5th-10th bracket (65-75 points).
We've arrived at the fine-tuning stage in terms of improving performances: small tweaks to increase performance consistency rather than major surgery to stop the rot.
But, don't get too carried away with the 9 goals in four games. The four against Scunthrope was an anomaly; 2-2 would have been the fairest result. Argyle were clinical with their finishing but Scunthorpe created more chances and better chances, which is what I look at when deciding which team performed the better. Across a season, performance levels are far more important than conversion rates.
I don't think that we have a poor defence, nor do I think that Adams recruited poorly (Apart from Wootton. I believe that he has to improve a lot in a short space of time to ensure he remains a Football League player in the next two seasons. Otherwise, he probably needs to play in a three-man defence to fully mask some of his deficiencies).
Like I argued in parts 4 & 5, the defence looked worse because the team was performing poorly, principally because the midfield was performing poorly. Since Adams shifted back towards (but not quite fully to) the style that worked last season, the defence has looked much more secure (save for 5-0 v Chelsea, which was just something else). There are improvements that can still be made to the defence and the midfield to further strengthen the team's defensive strength.
