Quote Originally Posted by Bobby Dandruff View Post
Ok, well firstly this team (or a similar one at least) was good enough to finish mid table last year.

Secondly they were good enough to go on a mini run of decent results as soon as Bulut left.

Thirdly, so many Championship teams that I have seen this year are absolutely terrible, with worse players than ours.

And fourthly, we have got rid of the real rubbish (see Kanga for Salech etc). Whereas we still have some passenger (I’ll leave that to you to decide who) we have a starting XI easily capable of mid table.

Whereas the players aren’t world beaters there are enough players who are good enough for mid table but the manager isn’t and directionless leadership is responsible for not maximising the potential of the players.

The players of course are culpable too but I think that ignoring the fact that we have a very inexperienced manager who has regularly made poor in game decisions that most people can spot straight away is akin to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

There you go.
1. You're using your opinion as if you're qioting facts and so I'll do the same and say that last season was a freak in which the stats show us as consistently one of the weakest squads in the division - albeit a weak squad which was able to keep clean sheets, unlike this one.

2. Every side in the Championship goes on a mini run of good results at some time in the season - we've had two decent runs of results followed by the inevitable fall from grace because you cannot expect to have any concerted success when you only keep two clean sheets in twenty seven games.

3. That's your opinion about how poor other teams are. Mine is that we were lucky to beat Millwall, Norwich and Hull while I struggle to think of many we haven't won that we might have - maybe Stoke and Watford.

4. How can we have possibly have a starting eleven "easily capable of mid table?' when we can only keep two clean sheets every twenty seven games? These players aren't as good as you think they are.

In my opinion, Riza made a really big mistake in his third game in charge (Bristol City) and the worst thing about that is there's been few signs that he learned from it. As I mentioned we've had two decent to good spells this season, but, having started so poorly, they've both been followed by bad spells where the same old mistakes are repeated. Riza has made mistakes, but he's not been helped by a squad that keeps on repeating the sort of defensive mistakes I don't believe you can blame managers or coaches for when they keep on happening so regularly (always assuming the coaching staff have tried to sort things out on the training ground).

Having watched us defend for eight months now, it cannot be denied that we're hopeless at it. I also look at this team's character and they wilt too easily, they don't strike me as having the street wise credentials that are needed in this division and they are weak when it comes to basics like set pieces - I think most managers currently in this division would not be able to keep our current squad out of the bottom six.