Well...I am not sure we really fully accepted the risks

For every new player in a system, you need to teach them which situations to recognise, and how to react - where to move, where to put your eyes, and what the system wants you to do, but you also need to teach what your team mates will do when they get the same cue so that you know who is going to be where for passing patterns, seeing who is covering you if you move out of position, who is making what run etc.

It's not enough to teach this on paper - they need to do it out of habit which is only going to develop through thousands of repetitions in practice or games. While they are still developing this, they will appear slower and indecisive as they haven't yet formed it as a habit and got confidence in being right.

The you're in a situation like we were with Farke and we had a core who developed that, and then we slotted in a few players here and there, it was like a well oiled machine. Until, that is, it wasn't. Buendia left, Cantwell sulked, and we had an entirely new midfield in the Premier League.

So, in this situation before last season we brought in a new manager with a new system and signed lots of new players - crucially young players from foreign leagues very different to the championship. Due to injuries we had to play them all, but often in various groupings, so it was really difficult to get that understanding.

I would have expected them to develop that understand further this season. However, we fired the manager, brought in another one with another system (for which last year's crop were not bought), and then again purchased a lot of young players from foreign leagues and started them from the beginning.

I said very early that this was a risk - especially the fact that many of them were bought late and didn't even have the preseason to gel - Topic, Mattsson, Diallo, Kvistgaarden and Makama as examples - but then we threw them straight in. Injuries have again thrown that around and we haven't had a settled side all season so far.

I am not making excuses for all the Manning has not done well, but the simple assertion that they should have coached them up perfectly by this point is not fair. I feel the bigger issue is that Knapper, after seeing how hard it was to gel those youngsters last season, did exactly the same again so the coaching staff couldn't even focus on getting last year's crop fully up to speed as they had a new bunch to coach from the very bottom up, and putting them in the first team immediately while the others are still on their learning curve makes it even harder for last season's guys.

I honestly think that can really contribute toward players like Crnac, Schwartau, Cordoba and Wright actually looking worse early this season than they did late last.

Posted By: Legacy Fan on October 6th 2025 at 09:49:20

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