by 79Royal »
14 Mar 2009 17:46
Lack of tempo, confidence, leadership on the pitch and urgency when it mattered. A very poor day for us.
However, it's not all over yet. More than ever we need to get behind our team. It's very easy to support a side that is doing well, but I wonder how many will stand up and be counted now. Fair play to those that went today, it sounded like they were doing their best to get behind the team.
Anyone who thought that we would walk this league is seriously deluded and need to re-evaluate their expectations of this team. We were relegated on the last day of the season on goal difference (in case anyone needed reminding), lost some of our best players and have a chairman who quite rightly predicted that the economy was about to hit a rocky patch, so he decided to pump money into the coffers to help ensure longevity of the club. Huge rumours about Hunt, Doyle and Harper moving on. All of which adds up to Coppell needing to effectively re-build this team at the beginning of the season. It was always going to be a hard season for us and quite honestly, I think that we've just about hit our level.
I'm obviously disappointed about today's result, but we have to be realistic. At the beginning of the season, finishing in the playoffs would have been a good achivement for us. The only thing that has changed is that we flirted with the top two for so long.
I can understand everyone on here being frustrated and blaming Coppell, but he has put out a side that should have beaten Ipswich today. He can't legislate for the basic mistakes that have been happening recently and it is EVERY player that is at fault, not just the scape goats we seem to villify on here. Coppell has made changes, it is clearly a mental thing and it doesn't help that every time a mistake is made the fans get on the player's backs. I feel sorry for Coppell, even when we have been doing well this season he's been getting batered on here. He has made changes, tried to get things sparking for us and it hasn't worked. We have one of the best squads in the league on paper and he has every right to trust those players he puts out. They should all know how to do the basics.
I have no doubt that Coppell will walk at the end of the season regardless and it will be a shame that he wont get the respect he deserves. It took us 135 years to get to the position we were in, in 2006. We are on the verge of becoming a medium sized club and as such are still in a transitional period. We are still progressing despite and if you look over the past 10 years, we have had comparably few bad runs. This run will come to an end. The same side were very good before Christmas, so we know they can do it.
Get behind the side, confidence will bring back the performances and we can evalute at the end of the season.