Everyone seems to think this squad is awful. I genuinely don’t think it’s that bad. There’s certainly a lot more depth to it now than we’ve had in previous years.
I’m unfortunately old enough to remember the 1990/91 season, when our back four consisted of John Humphrey, Andy Thorn, Eric Young and Richard Shaw, with Geoff Thomas and Andy Gray in midfield.
Everyone remembers Wright and Bright, but here’s the interesting thing. We scored just 50 league goals that season, conceded 41 and finished third in the First Division.
Why? Because we were an exceptionally well-drilled, organised outfit. Every player knew his job, understood the (simple) system and did what was expected of him.
Fast forward to Tony Pulis. Again, we weren’t blessed with an extraordinary squad, but we were organised, disciplined and bloody difficult to beat. The same with Roy.
That’s my fundamental problem with Sage. I actually think we’ve got a fairly decent squad, but I don’t think he’s capable of organising it. And increasingly, I think he’s been found out.
When opposition teams continually exploit the same weakness, particularly balls delivered to the back post, you do something about it. You change the marking, you adjust the defensive shape, you coach the players. That’s literally what a manager is paid to do.
Every opposition team seems to have worked out how to exploit us, yet somehow our own coaching staff haven’t worked out how to stop it.
And if the argument is that we’ve got a limited squad, then surely the manager’s job is to get the absolute maximum out of the players available, rather than persist with a system that clearly isn’t working.
Sean Dyche took Burnley to seventh in the Premier League with a squad that, man for man, I’d argue was considerably weaker than the one we’ve got now.
He did it through organisation, discipline and making the team greater than the sum of its parts.
That’s what good coaching looks like.
I don’t think our biggest problem is the quality of the players. I think it’s the inability of the manager to organise them into a functioning team.
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