I think Bailey nailed it during his little video reaction yesdee

(Too many words, apols.)

This is not a championship winning team. It just isn’t it. The defence isnt solid enough, often ending up out of position, losing their men, failing to get close enough. The midfield is well short of quality and fails to control games or create great chances - generally too slow on the ball. We probably have one of the better strike forces, but it’s not going to matter much with what’s behind it. The squad as a whole makes too many basic mistakes and gifts far too clear cut chances to the opposition, takes too many poor choices when attacking. And the manager (whether through his own fault or as a result of all of those points) doesn’t know his best 11, doesn’t seem to have an established pattern of play, seems to find it hard to influence/change games while they’re in progress and seems unable to get strong performances out of our better players. We’re really inconsistent.

I can only think of one of two games where I think we’ve played well. I can think of a number of games where we’ve played well in patches, but then been really pretty poor around those patches. And I can think of some games where it’s been really quite poor throughout. The better teams in the division look a bit better than us - at least more solid and effective. Even basically s**t teams, with grizzled vets and keen youngsters, that are just well organised and together, give us problems we really struggle to solve, which doesn’t bode well at all. Looking at our results, I think we’re a bit fortunate to have the points we do, although granted Smith would no doubt point to other pivotal moments that could have gone for us.

Given the advantages we have, mainly the resources that come from parachute payments, this is really pretty piss poor. In terms of putting the squad together (Webber et al) and getting the most out of the squad (Smith et al). If any of them got sacked, they’d have no right to suggest it was unfair. There’s plenty of blame to go round. Oh, and the football is mostly crap to watch and boring.

Despite all this, we’re probably still a playoff team, but given the teams piling up around the playoff spots, I wouldn’t rule out that we end up being no more than a top 10 team, I.E. 7-10. Which is probably what I expected going in to the season, even if I hoped for better. Honestly, I’ll be really surprised if this lot gets promoted. If we do, it will speak volumes about how s**t everyone else must be. And we’ll be setting ourselves up for possibly the worst Premier league season yet. Potentially Derby bad. Unless the recruitment department plays a total blinder. Which it won’t.

Personally, I would sack Smith after we get stuffed at Burnley, but I don’t think we will. And I think we will regret not replacing Webber in the summer. That boil needs lancing at some stage, too much bad blood on all sides now.

But my conclusion is that what we’ve seen for weeks now is how it’s going to be. It’s not going to get better, it probably won’t be worse. But far off promotion/championship form. So we’d better get used to it.

Posted By: Under soil heating, Oct 23, 14:10:00