Well we all knew this run of hard games were going to come and we are and thought I'm sad we got 0 points from Watford, we played decent games against Everton, Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea. If we can continue play at this level second part of season we have all the things needed to survive. I'm actually quite surprised that we got those two draws.
At the paper we are among the worst five teams in the league and I would go even so far to state that we are bottom three in at the level of our invidual players.
I wasn't big fan of AN at the start mostly because he tends to drift more to the side of mental and physical manager and I prefer fluid beautiful football, but if that was what our board wanted there should be no question that we all should back AN even if we would relegate. He clearly knows more or less what he want's from the team, he always has a game plan and not just push players out there to produce something and most of all he seems very passionate what he is doing.
With this team any manager would be in danger to relegate. I'm quite sure AN wasn't the reason we were so inactive during the transfer window and even if we wouldn't fetch any players during the winter window I wouldn't put the blame on our manager. I would go far as giving him 2 seasons in championship to find his squad and style.
We thought could use a spark of hope for saving this season. Players seemed to lose their confidence soon as Lukaku scored and first half against Everton was horrible because of that. Mayby a win from ManU could produce that spark or a finding player that makes other exited.
I also still think players like Howson and O'Neal are great to have in a team. They are versatile and specially Howson has almost no weak point in his game, but at the end he doesn't have anything special in him either. He is like championship level Aaron Ramsey. Lots of running power, decent passing and defending abilities and great attitude on the field. Almost clearly from the model of squad player and squad players just shouldn't be a starters at this level. At premiership comes in the profile players and we have so few of them. They might have flaws as Tettey's ability to turn the game around, but their one or two profilic attributes give managers the choise of tactics, now our roster is almost full of similar players or all arounders and that makes us to easy to play against as Hoolahan, Redmond, Tettey are our only choises that does matter outside of changing our formation drastically. Brady and Jarvis are similar players, Olsson and Brady are similar players and rest of the squad is more or less squad players. Bassong was a profilic player few years back, but seems to get slower and has lost that important leadership ability he had under Hughton. Our attackers are bit different with each other, but at the end lone 9 role is quite much predictable no matter who plays there. Didn't add Mulumbu and VOO as we haven't seen them in real action.
This in my opinion is somewhat dilemma as it is very hard to change our tactics during the game and this is something I hope we find a cure in next two transfer windows.
And don't get me wrong there always should be at least half of the 25 versatile squad players and most of them defending players you can always trust what you get with, but the other half should bring a bit more raw talent, creativity, pure physics, speed etc. This is the reason why we bemoan about AN not knowing his best team as he tries his best to get that spark out of this quite much average talent pool.
Sorry if I offend someone by not rating our team too high. I said after the transfer window that I would be more than happy with 16th place and wouldn't be surprised at all if we would relegate.
