There is plenty of valid criticism that can be levelled at our players and management team. To take just today's performance as an example, you could touch on the poor finishing, flaky performances from our (usually solid) centre halves, failure to adapt tactically in the second half, lack of creativity in midfield, subs coming too late. I'm in absolutely no doubt that many on here will find a few more.
However, in the aftermath of the past few games, i've seen some tripe on here that has been missing (for the most part) since October.
Comments along the lines 'Typical Critchley' after the 1-0 loss to Shrewsbury. Typical what? Was the 9 league game period beforehand with one loss, atypical Critchley?
What are you expecting from this season? A squad turnaround involving around 20 players coming in and about the same leaving the club, and a head coach in his first role at this level. By what right do we deserve to be challenging for the playoffs? Critchley hasn't even had a full season yet, thank god that our chairman has the patience that a large section of this message board appear to be lacking.
Ifollow has afforded me the opportunity to watch the vast majority of the games this season; I'll use today's performance as an example again. If i hadn't watched the game and gone off the reaction from some on here, I'd have envisaged a hopeless performance, completely barren of any creativity or desire from the team. Along with an opposition that had us tactically sussed for the entire 90 mins. In reality, while it was no doubt frustrating at times, we creative at least half a dozen clear-cut chances that on another day would've seen us win. The majority of the second half we were very poor, but still dominated in the first 45 and the last 10. In no way are calls for replacing the head coach, or overhauling our tactics, valid based on today's performance.
A lot of this hyperbolic criticism comes from a section fans trying to justify their stance of wanting Critch out before we'd played 10 games. The team and manager will now have knives poking their back for the rest of the season, with these fans jumping on any opportunity to prove that their rash early season criticism was justified. On that note, is Calderwood immune from criticism in this latest dip in form, or is he still considered the second-coming, responsible for everything good on the pitch?
We have every reason to feel unified as a fan base after developments off and (and lets be honest, for the most part) on the pitch, yet if you came on here after a loss, we couldn't appear much more divided.