Quote Originally Posted by Citizen's Nephew View Post
As you know I haven't warmed to the guy and I find it increasingly difficult to stay objective. We've won 3 League matches since he took over at Stoke on 30th October. Four matches in total if you include the FA cup win against Preston. We've had some spectacular draws (can't believe I wrote that) from 3 and 2 nil down. Impressive fightbacks from the players who could have crumbled.

But, and this is a huge 'but', not once do I think he knows his starting eleven (we're January 16th), and after being encouraged by his boldness to play younger players and early substitutions he now looks like a rabbit in the headlights and tactically, I think he's poor. On two occasions we've looked clueless when the opposition has been down to 10.

It's been said that the comments about Isaak Davies were blown up out of all proportion. I believe they were very revealing about him and I'll always regard them as damaging to both him as a manager and to Isaak.

TOBW quite rightly mentioned on a thread about attack v defense that we can't keep coming back from goals down. This is absolutely true of course. Why are we able to kick into gear and pull back those draws after going goals down? What's the mindset of the players from the off? I remember one season when Arsenal under Wenger were terrible in defence but if they let in 3 Arsenal would score 4 or 5. It was end-to-end stuff. We trundle up the park and never, ever, look like a winning side.

Sang, Colwill, Davies, Harris have so much more to offer us and he's wasting them. Worse than that, he's now, IMO damaging them as they're not getting enough minutes.
I don't think there's any way Morison will be leaving in the next few months, so it's not worth getting too worked up about him for now. However, I can't argue with much of what you say and have noticed an increased tendency to stick with the tried, tested and failing this season at least senior pros who I'd say are most responsible for getting us in this mess. Yes, he's brought in one on loan youngster for another at wing back (thereby relegating Bagan back to the bench again) and it seems very likely that we will be signing a twenty year old central midfielder with a big reputation (but no first team starts for Hamburg while on loan there during the first half of the season I note), but will he bar Bowen's way back into first team contention?

Davies for Harris was a typically "safe", typically football Manager type of switch when you consider that the hard working, but under achieving, Collins was getting nowhere in his search for his first home goal nearly six months after his debut. Harris has been scoring goals more regularly and has plenty of experience playing as the attack leader in age group games, he was also doing well yesterday, but when one youngster comes on, it has to be another one that makes way it seems, because that's the way it's always been.

Colwill isn't a Wilson or Tomlin yet, but he's the closest thing we have to one at the moment and yet, Morison is placing less and less faith in him as time goes on it seems as his time on the pitch has declined in recent weeks. Who in yesterday's starting line up was going to provide that x factor, creativity now that we have lost Giles' crossing ability (Drameh did well in the first half in particular, but I saw nothing to suggest that his crossing was up to Giles' standard)?