Redressing the Balance
Dec 8, 2020 23:28:53 GMT
Post by Rosco Bosco on Dec 8, 2020 23:28:53 GMT
So…
I am dismayed by the seeming slide into excessive negativity in calling for Warburton’s head. Short-term memory. Knee-jerk reaction.
Expectations of spinning gold from straw.
Time to draw breath.
Warburton’s remit when he came to the club was to slash the wage budget by dismantling a squad of high earners; rebuild from the bottom up on a relative shoestring; bring in hungry young players and develop from our youth ranks into better players and saleable assets; play more attractive football; and keep us up in the Championship.
ALL of this he achieved to a greater or lesser extent last season. Frankly a near-miracle. We were third favourites to be relegated; we finished comfortably mid-table.
This season we sold our talisman Eze – comfortably worth on his own 12+ points per season. We lose Amos. Manning walks. It’s almost death by a thousand cuts. On paper, we are a bottom 3 club. On the pitch, largely because of Warburton, we are not.
The majority of our young players have improved under Warburton – Chair, BoS, Amos (until injured), Dieng, Kakay are all better players. Did we seriously ever think Hamalainen would get near the team? Willock and Bettache show real promise.
And, being young players. they will make mistakes. Those players who are not young and inexperienced are relatively cheap purchases with known deficiencies – Cameron lucky to last a game, Dickie slow, Barbet erratic. When buying we are forced to shop in the bargain buckets or end-of-season sales, taking a punt on cheap or free/rejected youngsters or players of experience not deemed to be the required Championship standard by teams who have way more money to spend (and waste) than ourselves – which is the majority of Championship teams. Warbs can be called out for tactical mistakes, sure. But individual player mistakes have cost us more than any tactical deficiencies; those sorts of mistakes that only players well beyond our financial reach tend not to make. Warbs cannot be held accountable for individual errors.
Sure, before Millwall, we lost three games in a row. But only one of those – Huddersfield (a club with money we can now only dream of thanks to their continuing parachute payments) – did we deserve to do so.
We were the better side against Bristol City (yup, the side whose top scorer is Nakhi Wells, that bloke who scored one of their goals, yet another quality player we lost because Warbs can’t afford him). But the stats 1v2 don’t lie, I hear you cry. You want stats? We had two-thirds of the possession + way more shots + more shots on target + more corners. Clear evidence of progress and the style that we crave; stats that show individual players are the difference. We deserved at the very least a point from the Brentford game. They should have been a man down for most of the match; and if Sorensen doesn’t take Dykes out, Dykes scores; instead we are left a man down for Kane’s 2 yellows, one of which was questionable. You can’t blame Warbs for the referee’s jaw-dropping incompetence.
I understand frustration. I also understand the exasperation when we concede too often from corners.
But there are way more positives than negatives. We are one and a half seasons into a 5+ season project. There will be dips in the graph of progress, but if the progress overall is upwards – especially given the huge constraints Warbs is operating under – he will continue, not blindly but objectively, to get my support.
He is soundly, and objectively, the best manager we have had since Warnock. For all those eager to see him go, which decent manager would come anywhere near us with our ongoing constraints and ambitious demands? I think we are lucky to have Warburton.
I am dismayed by the seeming slide into excessive negativity in calling for Warburton’s head. Short-term memory. Knee-jerk reaction.
Expectations of spinning gold from straw.
Time to draw breath.
Warburton’s remit when he came to the club was to slash the wage budget by dismantling a squad of high earners; rebuild from the bottom up on a relative shoestring; bring in hungry young players and develop from our youth ranks into better players and saleable assets; play more attractive football; and keep us up in the Championship.
ALL of this he achieved to a greater or lesser extent last season. Frankly a near-miracle. We were third favourites to be relegated; we finished comfortably mid-table.
This season we sold our talisman Eze – comfortably worth on his own 12+ points per season. We lose Amos. Manning walks. It’s almost death by a thousand cuts. On paper, we are a bottom 3 club. On the pitch, largely because of Warburton, we are not.
The majority of our young players have improved under Warburton – Chair, BoS, Amos (until injured), Dieng, Kakay are all better players. Did we seriously ever think Hamalainen would get near the team? Willock and Bettache show real promise.
And, being young players. they will make mistakes. Those players who are not young and inexperienced are relatively cheap purchases with known deficiencies – Cameron lucky to last a game, Dickie slow, Barbet erratic. When buying we are forced to shop in the bargain buckets or end-of-season sales, taking a punt on cheap or free/rejected youngsters or players of experience not deemed to be the required Championship standard by teams who have way more money to spend (and waste) than ourselves – which is the majority of Championship teams. Warbs can be called out for tactical mistakes, sure. But individual player mistakes have cost us more than any tactical deficiencies; those sorts of mistakes that only players well beyond our financial reach tend not to make. Warbs cannot be held accountable for individual errors.
Sure, before Millwall, we lost three games in a row. But only one of those – Huddersfield (a club with money we can now only dream of thanks to their continuing parachute payments) – did we deserve to do so.
We were the better side against Bristol City (yup, the side whose top scorer is Nakhi Wells, that bloke who scored one of their goals, yet another quality player we lost because Warbs can’t afford him). But the stats 1v2 don’t lie, I hear you cry. You want stats? We had two-thirds of the possession + way more shots + more shots on target + more corners. Clear evidence of progress and the style that we crave; stats that show individual players are the difference. We deserved at the very least a point from the Brentford game. They should have been a man down for most of the match; and if Sorensen doesn’t take Dykes out, Dykes scores; instead we are left a man down for Kane’s 2 yellows, one of which was questionable. You can’t blame Warbs for the referee’s jaw-dropping incompetence.
I understand frustration. I also understand the exasperation when we concede too often from corners.
But there are way more positives than negatives. We are one and a half seasons into a 5+ season project. There will be dips in the graph of progress, but if the progress overall is upwards – especially given the huge constraints Warbs is operating under – he will continue, not blindly but objectively, to get my support.
He is soundly, and objectively, the best manager we have had since Warnock. For all those eager to see him go, which decent manager would come anywhere near us with our ongoing constraints and ambitious demands? I think we are lucky to have Warburton.
