by Stranded »
08 Oct 2018 16:06
NewCorkSeth Certainly some of the chopping and changing is down to injury but there are several examples: the dropping of Ilori for McShane being one despite Ilori being in good form, the swapping of Yiadom to the left to accommodate the equally capable on the left Gunter upon his return from injury, the constant use of Meite as a fill in which I believe will hinder his growth.
Of course I wouldn't expect Meite and McNulty to start when our other options are fit but their failure to work together should have been noted by Clement by half time. Everyone focused on the positivity of our first half performance without noting the glaring issues. A good manager would have changed it up sooner. Once it got to 1-1 there should have been a change. We needed to take the rhythm away from West Brom (something other managers do to us often a successfully).
We had control of midfield, better fitness levels by some distance (I can see West Brom fading this season as half their players looked wrecked) and never looked like scoring despite having 2 up front.
Barrow was not good when he was brought on but should have been brought on much sooner. They had such slow defenders who could easily have been overwhelmed by the sudden introduction of Barrow but again Clement waited.
I don't think PC can do anything about this simply because he doesn't have the ability to. He has no motivation skills from what I can see and is showing time and time again he is too naive on match day.
McShane and Ilori had played well together in the first 2 games, games we really should have taken at least 2 points from if not 4. McShane was then rested for a cup game to allow Moore to be reintroduced after "transfergate" , it was no surprise to see McShane come back in as club captain alongside a now reinstated Moore - it is only the fact McShane went on to have an absolute mare at Blackburn (and to a lesser extent v Bolton) that that now looks a crazier decision than it was. No manager is going to drop his captain if he isn't playing badly. Once he did, he was dropped and Ilori brought back in, Ilori has undoubtedly improved under Clement.
Yiadom was purchased to cover both flanks, he is better at LB than Gunter so it also made sense - your view on whether Gunter should even be in the team withstanding.
Agree, waiting until 3-1 down to make changes was a mistake but as you say we were winning the midfield battle and looked fitter, so is not fair to think that given how well the team did 1st half that the extra fitness may have counted, we were sloppy letting in a 3rd and the game was gone. Would Barrow have made any difference coming on at 2-1, impossible to say but his performance suggests not. We are sadly seeing the other side of Barrow this year.
You can disagree with the decisions but if you look at them in the context of how and when they were made they were OK calls. Subsequent events change the view of them.
Clement has made mistakes (he needs to sort out how we defend corners) but I come back to it time and again, I don't know what can be done to stop this mental fragility - that is the number 1 problem. The team expects to lose and as soon as something goes against them they lose their collective heads. The equaliser was the catalist this weekend, against Norwich it was actually us equalising. God knows what it will be against Millwall but it will be something.
