DaveAV1

I know a Rangers fan and when the rumours started linking us he sent me a message, “Hands off”. Which would suggest they like him. He comes with the usual caveat of can he make the switch up? He’s certainly fiery which I like, provided he’s got it more or less under control, which reports suggest that he has. Sent off last week though! I’d say he’s a risk, but I’m not sure there are many signings that aren’t.

An aggressive striker who will bully and harass defenders could transform us. (It would help if he scored a few too). We’re not worrying teams with any threat up front at all, which means they basically have to concentrate on nullifying Jack and can then essentially do what they like. We are an average team that’s going through a bad patch. The length of that bad patch will determine our fate this year. We’ve been scoring from midfield, but they have largely dried up too, which makes the whole team, particularly the defence more nervy. The team lacks aggression and a goal scorer. Finding someone who can bring that can have the added bonus of igniting some belief into the rest of the squad too.

You think that Jack Grealish is a better player than Paul McGrath? Jack is a good player, but he couldn’t lace McGrath’s drinks.

If we swapped Dean Smith for Sam Allardyce I’d be in despair. The club have talked about growing an identity throughout all the teams and have been recruiting with that in mind. If we are to throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble then my faith in those that run the club would be extremely shaken. I doubt Dean will be sacked at this moment in time but if he is I’d hope it would be for a similarly progressive coach that they have been tracking for sometime. We have a plan, as things stand Dean is spearheading that plan and so he should be given time to continue unless we have a genuinely outstanding coach lined up to replace him who can continue in the same vein but offer an improvement. Knee jerk reactions and panic appointments of the same sad old faces will never get us anywhere in the long term and can’t really be guaranteed to be successful in the short term either. Is everything perfect? No of course it isn’t, but after years of weak and pathetic mismanagement we can’t expect everything to be fixed in a few months. Which manager/coach worth his salt would come to a club that would sack the manager after 4 losses on the bounce. I hope our board are stronger than that and aren’t running the club on the same sort of criteria that social media seems to feed on so hungrily.

If we really are a well run club then we should be constantly looking at potential managers. It would be neglect not to. Managers are humans and so subject to irrational decisions, Klopp could suddenly decide he wants to manage Watford or simply step under a bus. I bet Liverpool have a contingency plan even if it isn’t at the forefront of their current thinking. We should always have a back up plan or two, regardless of the manager’s situation.

3 or 4 players we wouldn’t even have filled the squad! We’d be playing a 3-2-3 formation!

There is definitely a problem with recruitment, certainly looking from the outside. We have stated that we are looking to buy players with future value and of course that is a laudable ambition, but it shouldn’t become a rigid policy. Sometimes the system merits breaking in order to look at the bigger picture in the short term. We must never lose sight of the main aim, which is to produce a successful football team. Ron Saunders said he believed that Peter Withe was the final piece in the jigsaw. Under our current policy we wouldn’t have signed him. I’m also concerned with recruitment decision making within the system. If we had signed Benrahma and Maupay instead of Trez and Wesley, both those players would have fitted the recruitment criteria and I’m sure we would be a better team right now. They may have cost a little more but in the long term we would get a much better return on our investment. Particularly if the main return is that we avoid relegation. I’m not privy to the going’s on within transfers and perhaps Brentford or agents were being greedy and we were trying to make a point of not being a soft touch, but looking at the bigger picture I believe it was a mistake not signing them.

Thanks for nudging me back to reality. Our lovely daughter is almost at excitement explosion point and that is all that matters in reality. Have a very lovely Christmas which I’m sure you will!

Agreed. We seem to have got an idea of buying for future profit. Ok there are some merits to that, we live in a commercial world, but that can’t be the driving force and I’m not saying it is, but we must be more flexible. Under this system we wouldn’t have bought Peter Withe for example. On top of that we have to look at the quality of the players signed. If for instance we had signed Maupay instead of Wesley and Benrahma instead of Trez, we may have paid a little more overall, but I’m pretty sure we would be a much better team and both of those players value would be considerably higher than the two we did buy. Dean has to shoulder some of the responsibility for recent performances, but he isn’t to blame for all our woes and none of us know how involved he was with recruitment. Do we trust the recruitment team? It’s easy to sack the manager, but we need to look at the whole picture before we jump to obvious conclusions.

Yeah but when are you going to get your Christmas shopping done??

Thanks Rob a very Merry Christmas to you too. I’m not sure about the keeping you sane bit though!

If you weren’t talking about Smith, who else speaks for the club after games? I do have to agree that he hasn’t changed anything after poor performances though.

When has Smith been anything but honest. Criticism is fine but you’re just making up rubbish now.

That right there is what I have a problem with. Cheap.

Whilst I don’t agree with quite a bit you say, in all honesty I’m afraid I have to agree with this post. Mistakes are inevitable, but making the same ones every week worries me. I hope Smith can turn both this game and the season around. However if we don’t show enough fight I doubt our owners will show their sentimental side. I’m not sure the recruitment team have covered themselves in glory either.

I understand people being disappointed. What I don’t understand is the relish with which some fans rip into our manager and certain players. Where is the support when the chips are down, when it is needed the most? Criticism fine, but some people are obviously so delighted at times like this that I find it as baffling as I find it unhelpful.

We do seem to lack aggression and fight. We need to buy some in January.

As long as they don’t open against us!

I’m on board with this idea and feel we shouldn’t ignore the option of resigning John Carew, Peter Withe or Andy Gray either.

I think you will probably agree TRO, that we are not at the stage in our development as a team, both individually or collectively to compare us with the likes of Leicester. We were promoted via the playoffs with a number of players either on loan or at the end of their contracts/careers. The result is that we have had to assemble a squad over a single summer, which although our new owners have financial clout, we are still under the restrictive challenges of FFP. So putting a squad together that has needed 12 new players was always going to be a challenge, even with £130m spent. If we are still in the PL next season and spend a further £130m on perhaps only 3 or 4 players then you may be able to find the quality of players which I think you are alluding to. But for now we have to be realistic as to where we are given the time scale. Hopefully the players we have are good enough to compete with the bottom half of the PL but we need to be on the very best form to get much out of the upper half. Results up to now seem to bare this out. The team and it’s coaches will improve as they gain experience, however we have to be both realistic and patient.

You’re right. The problem is that football is a glamorous business that attracts all sorts of dreamers and crooks. The dreamers run up debts that they have no chance of repaying unless they hit the jackpot of the PL. EG Tony Xia. The crooks know that if they get close enough to the money they’ll get the chance to skim some of it off. They con a few dreamers into investing then walk away when everything goes pear shaped. EG Tony Xia.

There are very few teams, if any at all, with players that are so rounded and complete that they can play different styles. I’m yet to see Man City under Pepe that sets up defensively. All teams recruit to suit the style that the manager wants. I can’t think of a team that can just switch styles at the click of a switch. I’m not ignoring the fact that good teams, no matter what their general style is, have the ability to grind out results, but that tends to be down to the overall standard of the players in the team. To suggest that we are somehow a poor team because we don’t have varying styles of play is somewhat bizarre. In fact up until Smith arrived one of the problems we have had was that we didn’t actually have an identity.

Additionally isn’t there some sort of leeway for new owners?

I think the fact that Mings didn’t play had a big influence on the way we played from the back. I know he’s out for a few games but I think we will have worked on keeping to our usual game plan with whoever plays in his place.

I hope that isn’t just a generic, we like to keep things close to our chest remark, but a real dig at the pathetic Brum Mail and their copy and paste “journalists”. The worst local rag in history who I have nothing but contempt for.