| January / this team is different 11:27 - Dec 27 with 929 views | SomethingBlue |
Firstly, is there anyone left who seriously doubts this team's sheer resilience, attitude and aptitude? Last night had all the ingredients of a game where we'd be picked off by two or three on the counter: lose a crucial attacking outlet early on, concede quickly while adjusting to that, enjoy a bright spell either side of half-time without looking ultra-threatening. Almost every other ITFC side I can think of is disposed of on the break from there against opponents of that quality but we dug in, kept doing what we know we're good at, dealt better with their threats and massively merited what we got. This team is different and deserves all the credit in the world.
Presumably we'd all have taken 14 points from that exceedingly sticky post-West Brom spell. It's a good-looking next five games ahead, Leicester (a) aside: you'd be looking to win those home matches and take a point in what now looks a tricky game at Schumacher's Stoke, which would keep us bang on track.
It's also an uncertain time, though, even if the hurdles seem lower to the naked eye. To me there always seemed a chance Hirst would pull up if we couldn't get the right support to him in time, and so it has proved. We are masters at adapting so I fully back McKenna to sort something out for the next couple of games, but realistically have to assume it's at least month out of the starting lineup for him. I expect we are some way down the line for a new striker in any case but it seems important to me that we're reinforced by the time Sunderland visit.
I also have a nagging worry that we haven't heard the last of Morsy and AFCON – let's hope I'm wrong about this, in a week's time we will know. It'd take a fair bit of heavy lifting to power us through a few weeks without him, Hirst and Burgess – that's our physical spine. If we come out of January still in second place, by whatever margin, I'll be impressed and happy.
Think the speed with which we can get deals done in January may be key for the next few months. After Stoke there's a very nice 12-day period before the next league game and if we had a couple ready to come in and make use of that training time it could make a massive difference in helping us towards the line. |  |
| |  |
| January / this team is different on 12:10 - Dec 27 with 778 views | waveneyblue |
As always, very objective and sensible words.
Could you possibly offer coaching to Frimley ? |  | | |
| January / this team is different on 13:10 - Dec 27 with 649 views | LankHenners |
As you know when footballers talk to the media about belief, confidence, 'one game at a time' etc. you can often feel they're just going through the motions, rattling off the 'right' things to say before they're allowed to go but you can definitely tell these players believe it and are fully bought in to the culture/attitude McKenna wants at the club.
Thought Leicester were the best we've seen (certainly this season, perhaps over a much longer period as well) at moving the ball, finding the spare man, making subtle changes in game to get themselves on top and could have taken the game away from us if we didn't stay bang at it. In that respect, think it makes last night one of our best performances of the season - made a real point that we're not easily cowed and are here for a reason.
Understandable that there's been a lot of defending of and positivity towards what are essentially our 'back-up' players this season but it's been fairly obvious for a while that the likes of Ladapo and Jackson are 'do a job' players rather than ones we can rely on to perform to the levels we want. Was also pretty clear (despite quite a bit of denial on here and elsewhere) that we didn't get the reinforcements up front that we wanted in the summer, so have presumably been going at it in that regard since to get someone (or two) through the door as early as we can in January. As you say a bit of a blessing that we've got a (relatively) longish break from league action after the next couple of games to see that done.
We've navigated the trickiest spell of fixtures we've had pretty well, only really the Norwich game where you can say we should have got more than we did. As a 'block' of fixtures, April looks the most daunting but that's a while away and another way to look at the rest of the season is we've now got to play every team we've already played again, and we beat most of them the first time around. |  |
| |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
