It's been a while but now is the time

[Jim Smith 2,314]

[quote user="morty"][quote user="king canary"]@Cantiaci

I agree there would have been a meltdown if they''d all gone.

This summer though we did spend £15m on 4 players and could have used some of that to address the leadership/mental issues in the team. Instead of £8m on an attacking midfielder we didn''t really need (and Alex Neil doesn''t seem to want to use) we could have bought an experienced leader to play next to Klose. Instead of Canos could we not have put that money towards an experienced defensive midfielder?

The whole spine of this team needed work and we wasted a bunch of money n luxury players we didn''t really need.[/quote]Point being though is that we didn''t know the mental toughness issue, until the wheels fell off. I am pretty sure the players all made the right noises in how much they were up for the fight, in the summer.[/quote]

The mental toughness thing is being overplayed in my book. Its a bit of arrogance amongst both squad and management (leading to them thinkin they can cruise through games like Saturday) but far more than anything else its basic defending that lets us down time and time again. the mental frailty of late comes from the fact that we can''t stop conceding goals because we can''t/don''t defend properly. Once that gets into the players heads then the mental frailty follows.

[morty 0]

Jim, for the love of God, download a new browser.

[Jim Smith 2,314]

I don''t know how to sort the quotes thing. I will just reply without the quotes!

[king canary 7,580]

@Morty

Disagree with that. I think the lack of mental toughness has been pretty clear for some time. As I said earlier, Klose mentioned a lack of leadership after the Liverpool game and the way we went down so meekly and no-showed several key games (Sunderland, Palace, Bournemouth, Villa) in that season showed a real problem in the squad.

@Jim

I don''t think it is overplayed- I agree a better manager would be getting more out of this squad but I think a couple of big leaders in the spine of the team would help us stay organised, focused and motivated to bounce back when things don''t go our way.

[morty 0]

[quote user="king canary"]@Morty

Disagree with that. I think the lack of mental toughness has been pretty clear for some time. As I said earlier, Klose mentioned a lack of leadership after the Liverpool game and the way we went down so meekly and no-showed several key games (Sunderland, Palace, Bournemouth, Villa) in that season showed a real problem in the squad.

@Jim

I don''t think it is overplayed- I agree a better manager would be getting more out of this squad but I think a couple of big leaders in the spine of the team would help us stay organised, focused and motivated to bounce back when things don''t go our way.[/quote]Really there are two levels of mental toughness here though, the toughness to fight hard in the Premiership, and the toughness to pick yourself up and get out of this division. The difference, as I alluded to in an earlier post is £.

[Jim Smith 2,314]

@king - don''t disagree a couple of proper leaders would not go amiss but I also thing that mental toughness comes from belief and belief comes from knowing you can do the basics (i.e. defend) properly and thus always give your self a chance in games.

[morty 0]

[quote user="Jim Smith"]@king - don''t disagree a couple of proper leaders would not go amiss but I also thing that mental toughness comes from belief and belief comes from knowing you can do the basics (i.e. defend) properly and thus always give your self a chance in games.[/quote]The point is though that the lack of mental toughness erodes your self belief, which promotes self doubt.You can''t tell me that defenders, who have likely been doing what they do, have just suddenly realised that they can''t do the basics.

[Jim Smith 2,314]

@Morty - the poor defending has been undermining us all season and it is that which started to erode the belief once we started dropping points because of it.

In my view its to do with how we are coached and set up. Midfielders consistently fail to track their man back, full backs consistently fail to stop crosses coming in and when crosses do come in our defenders are too often the wrong side of the man or marking space. Even when we were getting good results these flaws were costing us goals and making the latter stages of games uncomfortable. ALL of our defenders are capable of doing these basic things (except maybe Martin winning headers as a CB) so the fact they are all seemingly unable to do it in this set up suggests to me that there is a deeper problem then belief.

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,020]

I think it is a combination of Alex Neil losing his way (you know my theory is that he has peaked in his development as a manager) and the players also letting him down. Quality alone is not enough, Rotherham showed that if you have a team (rather than a group of individuals) prepared to work their socks off anything is possible.....

[morty 0]

[quote user="Jim Smith"]@Morty - the poor defending has been undermining us all season and it is that which started to erode the belief once we started dropping points because of it.

In my view its to do with how we are coached and set up. Midfielders consistently fail to track their man back, full backs consistently fail to stop crosses coming in and when crosses do come in our defenders are too often the wrong side of the man or marking space. Even when we were getting good results these flaws were costing us goals and making the latter stages of games uncomfortable. ALL of our defenders are capable of doing these basic things (except maybe Martin winning headers as a CB) so the fact they are all seemingly unable to do it in this set up suggests to me that there is a deeper problem then belief.[/quote]Nah, disagree. Most of these players have played at a higher level than we are at just now, and have proven the fact that they know how to do the basics.They haven''t suddenly had it coached out of them.

[hogesar 9,618]

I think rightly or wrongly it''s not just this squad - pretty much every squad can be seen the same way - players do underperform and get managers the sack and then a new one comes in and it works.

Whilst the players are to blame to a certain extent it obviously gets to the point where we have quite a lot of experienced players who''ve played under much better, more experienced managers than AN and as soon as things stop working I suppose the doubt creeps in, closely followed by full on scepticism that he can set up a team to win.