Our form is indefensible.
It’s a red herring blaming injuries. Our style of play away from home is unrecognisable. Today the back four hit it long at the first opportunity. Not direct play, aimless play.
Windass and Garner started to form some understanding against Villa with nice link-up play. But Cook continues to shake things up and we end up looking like strangers on the field. Windass and Vaughan never once looked to play each other in, they operated like lone strikers, chasing down long-balls, isolated.
Same can be said for midfield, not that they had much to do today, with the ball flying over their heads. Morsy and Evans should always be paired up. Ideally allowing the former to drive upto the edge of the box and help out in attack. On the right Byrne is wasted, outmuscled, and lacks guile. Stick him in his familiar right-back role and push James into midfield. At least when Pilkington and Massey are unavailable.
This long-ball crap away from home has been going on since October. No one can explain why Cook persists with it. Well, some try, but our points return says it all. And for those hanging onto that 6pt gap to the relegation spots. Let’s focus on ourselves and up expectations. I want us as a club to fulfill our potential and not target one place better than the three worst sides in the division. We all know many clubs in this division have greater resources. But 2pts from 39, away from home, shows we are massively underperforming.
I agree with that but then I guess it comes down to opinion as to what you see as us achieving our potential. Personally I think surviving as this level with the clubs in the division and the amount of money being thrown around is us overachieving. Maybe that is a defeatist attitude but the value of each squad probably puts us on the bottom 2 or 3.
Injuries are a factor whether you see it as an excuse or not. Take Salah, Firmino, Mane and AN Other out the Liverpool team and see how they do. Even City struggled over Christmas with injuries.
In most games this season we have been missing our LB and entire front 4 so we haven’t been able to play the same style of football as we played at the start of the season because the players we have in are different types of players and also not as good as those missing. Yes we could have picked different sides but that is down to Cook and the medical staff.
I think we will stay up this season and despite our away form, poor performances etc is all that we set out to do. More money then comes into the club and then hopefully we can build and have a decent crack at it like Bristol City say.
Oh, and Nathan Byrne is actually a winger and out of position at right back so technically his more familiar role is on the right ;)[/quote]
We couldnt have played any worse playing our same style of football or the style Cooky once favoured. We just wouldnt have been as good at it. Certainly we could not possibly have been in a position much worse.
I thought this what squads are for.
