I'd like to think you were right, but Neil Warnock often says that, at his age, he is not one who plans much for the future and I tend to believe he is doing what he thinks is most likely to get us the results we needed to maintain our position in the table.
I've made it clear in other threads that I go to games these days and the only real pleasure I get from them comes from the results. I whinge about why we can't play like we were doing in August, but, in our manager's defence, it should be said that maybe our most influential player during that period has, generally, fallen some way short of his early season levels since then - I actually thought Mendez-Laing played pretty well on Saturday, but his decline from his early season heights must be a factor in how we have tried to play the game since the early autumn.