there are a couple of things i would bring up. Firstly Lincoln played reasonably attractive football, when they were good they were very good, but when they weren't at 100% they were liable to get well beaten. Last year they had the 6th worse goals scored in the division, which is despite having some of the best possession stats. In those respects Lincoln are similar to us, when we were good we were very very good, but there were times when we just couldnt put anything together, but still maintained reasonable possession stats. In that light it worries me that MA will come in and do more of the same, we'll have days when we are brilliant and others when we just dont show up, and as we saw last year when the players were low on confidence the team suffered.
The squad we have needs tweaking rather than an overhaul, and it worried me yesterday that MA harped on about re-inforcements - a lot! the squad whilst not having the individual star players that others in the Championship have has a depth where their are always options, but - and i think this is a big but, i dont think Critchley ever really worked out what his best team was nor how to play, apart from demanding possession. I think this might be the typical FA coaching method though - possession at all costs lots and lots of defensive sideways passing which i think is always problematic particularly against a high press, and this was the dichotomy of Critches style lots of defensive passing until there is pressure and then the big hoof to the big man up front, which seems to be the antithesis of possession. In many respects i think we and many other teams in the champs, L1 and L2 and quite a few in the PL as well as England often play possession routines, drilled standards (Why England do it I dont know because they have the players, who can play possession football), and as i think florist showed us it is realtively easy to attack against, mistakes will be made and the more time that the ball is in the defensive third the more likely those errors are going to be very costly.
Our goalscoring last year was too low, and lincoln suffered the same. We missed way too many good opportunities, I think MA needs to fix that and find the right combination up front, with Lavery, Yates, (and what ive seen so far) Beesley, that is three very mobile attackers, who can all score goals. Madine is the blunt instrument who is effective but as much as I like Madine and the way he plays is definitely a Plan B. Midfield King Kenny is for me the lynch pin, but playing a second even more defensive player alongside him is usually detrimental to the whole team. It makes us overly defensive and even when we do break we rarely get more than one player in the box. Again i think that was the innate caution of Critch in his first season in the Championship. MA hasnt managed in the champs either in the last decade, and even though i dont think the standard in actual play is that much different form L1, the speed of thought of the top players and their ability to play on the hoof rather than following set patterns might be a thing MA has to bring himself up to speed with, and quickly adapt.
im surprised from the pod cast last night that certain people think fourth bottom will be a successful season, i thought top ten was achievable last season, and if it hadn't been for the drop off in form in the last few games that was very much on the cards. i would expect the management want to be at least flirting with the play-offs, although again we might be looking at a transition season, I dont think we should be. the squad know one another, although under NC the chopping and changing might have been an issue, and we sometimes saw it with a lack of coherance between players on match day.
If i was SS, my instructions would be to build on the existing qualities, add a couple of additional resources, and fix the issues we had last year - not enough goals, too many defensive errors (caused principally by defensive sideways posession). Keep some consistency going forward.
Im hoping that MA is the kind of conservative left field appointment that might buck some of the current trends
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