Closed season so far....

[morty 0]

If it''s mcgovern, that''s really itk stuff mate 😃

[hogesar 9,618]

[quote user="OldRobert"]Jake Keen has just signed for Wednesday a few hours after leaving us by mutual consent.  We are supposedly hard up, Keen is presumably worth a pound or two?  How come we didn''t get a fee for him from Wednesday, while he was still under contract to us, or is that too simplistic?[/quote]

Yeah, I think we all know that''s not actually the case, though.

[Tumbleweed 106]

I''ve felt positive at this time the last few seasons.

I agree that things seem generally to be going OK and the sale of Redmond was pretty predictable. The squad looks on paper pretty good.

Last season my major concern was at CB and nothing was done until Klose in Jan. I had no concerns over our strike force though, so it was a surprise to me that we missed so many last season.

However my big issue is that despite what I thought was a good squad we still got relegated and that was not wholly due to the players that we had available.

I still believe that we were strong enough to have avoided relegation. But the constant chopping and changing and thus lack of a settled line up, some odd tactical and formation decisions and substitutions and our inability to start games quickly all contributed as far as I am concerned more than the quality of player. There were too many no shows in crucial and winnable games, such as Watford away. I just hope that AN has learned from this, we will not get punished as much in this league obviously, and AN has proved himself after t/o from Adams but I do reckon that these less tangible matters need to be addressed if we are to be serious promotion contenders.

So, all Ok so far.I think we still need another CB, but I will be intrigued by how things pan out the first few games and whether AN has, as he has clearly hinted, looked at where he personally can improve as this will in my opinion be of far greater significance.

[can u sit down please 0]

[quote user="morty"]If it''s mcgovern, that''s really itk stuff mate 😃[/quote]

No but the one player we may struggle to keep hold of is.

But then I wouldn''t want to be putting things on here for other clubs to see

[morty 0]

[quote user="can u sit down please"][quote user="morty"]If it''s mcgovern, that''s really itk stuff mate 😃[/quote]

No but the one player we may struggle to keep hold of is.

But then I wouldn''t want to be putting things on here for other clubs to see[/quote][:D][Y]

[lake district canary 4,531]

[quote user="Tumbleweed"] I will be intrigued by how things pan out the first few games and whether AN has, as he has clearly hinted, looked at where he personally can improve as this will in my opinion be of far greater significance.[/quote]

AN appeared to be a single minded manager when he arrived and instantly commanded respect, partly because of that.   So it was a bit of a surprise that he appeared to have a wobble about the way his team should play after the Newcastle  match.   You could say it was pragmatic, you could say he was changing a losing way of playing, but it was a bit disappointing that he abandoned the high pressing attacking principle  - or maybe he was acting on instruction.  When Hughton was in charge, it was clear that McNally demanded we be more attacking in the second season - and that didn''t work for the manager, who was not comfortable doing that.   I wondered at the time of AN''s sudden change, if McNally had laid down the law with AN to tell him to tighten up.   McNally, for all his good points could be a bit of a dictator - remember the famous interview he gave when he said about the Hughton "we have told the manager in no uncertain terms what we expect of him" - and the tone of that says a lot imo.  Whatever, it is encouraging that the manager wants to improve - I hope that he returns to the high pressing game he started with and instills that style in what will increasingly become "his" squad as it develops. 

[Hoola Han Solo 448]

Yeah agree LDC. We changed our style last season to our detriment. It worked so far but when we needed to adopt a more attacking and pressing game we''d been doing the opposite so much that we''d almost forgotten how to. We lost our identity a bit. Think we''d have stayed up had AN tried to change too much. You only have to look at many of the away games including Bournemouth, Villa and Swansea to see that we''d lost our attacking edge. It''s all hindsight now but I think we would have got a few more points had AN stuck to his instincts.

That being said, I''m still fully behind AN and hopefully a season with a clear playing identity and fingers crossed, promotion, would leave us in good stead should we be in the Premier League next season.

[Ernie 0]

That''s 2 down 3 to go (2 strikers, CB). Redmond''s replacement looks to be potentially an excellent signing, not so sure about the GK situation, is Ruddy off and is McGovern really any better than him? We shall see.