You live in Manchester?
That will be the test. During that sticky patch in Jan - March, it wasn't as if we were trying to play a particularly stylish blend of football but luck deserted us. We were largely bollocks. Jack makes such a difference to this team. But for the topflight, I'll feel much more secure when we have a solid, Premier League quality keeper and an energetic defensive midfielder.
Something I've been pondering.We played much more on the front foot under Smith, but largely couldn't get ourselves together effectively or consistently until the defence was balanced, Jack came back and we found a goalkeeper we could rely on.There on, we were miles better in every department than anybody else in the league.Are we expecting more? The prospect of a pre-season with Smith and more of his players can only help. Two attacking full backs, two centre halves who play football. Clearly we're not done yet.But are we expecting the football to be even better after a preseason and a general uptick in quality?
Quote from: Ads on July 10, 2019, 05:40:00 PMSomething I've been pondering.We played much more on the front foot under Smith, but largely couldn't get ourselves together effectively or consistently until the defence was balanced, Jack came back and we found a goalkeeper we could rely on.There on, we were miles better in every department than anybody else in the league.Are we expecting more? The prospect of a pre-season with Smith and more of his players can only help. Two attacking full backs, two centre halves who play football. Clearly we're not done yet.But are we expecting the football to be even better after a preseason and a general uptick in quality?When people talk about the quality of the football and how entertaining it is what entertains me is winning football. The football under BFR and Brian Little was good to watch. The football under SGT was more direct and often involved long balls hit up front for Platt to chase (admittedly a lot of qulity long balls from Sid) and balls hit high and wide to Ormondroyd on the wing when SGT realised most full backs didn't have the height to compete with him in the air. In all of those cases I was happy because we were winning more games than we were losing.
I am sure our style will improve furtherEqually, against at least a third of teams we are not going to be able to play in the way we've been trying to. We need to be able to play more on the back foot and the break
Quote from: cheltenhamlion on June 26, 2019, 07:47:02 PMYou live in Manchester?Yep. About 15 miles north of the city centre.
My only slight doubt about Smith is how slow / unwilling he can can sometimes be in making changes mid-game when we are under pressure. Don't get me wrong, he's miles better than many of his predecessors, and for every example of this there's probably two of him making a positive change (thinking boro away), but it's a niggling doubt that this might be exposed more in the prem. Hope I'm wrong, obviously.