Everything about the KLD era is about building and developing. There are no sticking plasters, no temporary solutions, nothing that suggests League One is anything other than a short term irritation. But there are signs that, if we’re not careful, focussing entirely on the medium to long term could stop us ever moving forwards.
When teams try to play football against us, they can’t. The performance in the week against a reasonable Championship side showed that we have the foundations of a squad ready to move into that type of football. A physical game but based around moving the ball quickly on the floor. Strangely, I actually feel quite confident that we’d be OK in that division. I’m not saying top half, but we’re building a squad already that could keep us away from the bottom five or six places. The problem is, I don’t think we’ve the set up to get us out of the division we’re currently in.
We’ve all seen enough (more than enough) League One matches now to know how most games will be. And there are three things you just don’t find in the Championship – the pitches, the officials and the brute strength and style of some teams. None of those things can be a surprise. And none of them can be an excuse.
The pitch at Portsmouth was unplayable. The game should have been called off. But it wasn’t. And while we focussed on tutting and shaking our heads, Lee Johnson throwing his arms up in disgust at the fourth official, Portsmouth got on with scoring four goals.
Against Charlton, we saw the biggest weakness in our team, our physical weakness, exploited time and time again by a big, strong, brute of a centre forward. The officiating was beyond useless. The referee seemed scared of giving any decision against the mountain of a striker but no more scared than Flannagan and O’Nien were of him. But how does that come as a surprise in this division? Johnson didn’t change it until it was too late, he was too busy throwing his arms in the air at the fourth official. Perhaps because he isn’t sure what to do to change it, perhaps because he knows he doesn’t have the players in his squad to make the changes.
I think our medium and long term future look bright with young players coming through and impressing all who watch them, improvements in and around the ground and the academy improving the club all the time. But it’s all at risk if we don’t get out of this division.
I hope I’m proved wrong, but I worry that Johnson isn’t the man to get us out of this division. His ability to bring players on seems to be there, improving the younger members of the squad and, as was the case at Bristol City, he seems to be able to lift the team for one off games but, his inability to change things, to play to the conditions, or the opposition, seems to be costing us points. I think the fans and players know that when the arms get thrown in the air, his tantrum at the officials is a clue that the game is going wrong and, alarmingly, there’s no plan B.
I’m not suggesting we should get rid of Johnson, the rotating door policy got us to where we are now, but I’d like to see him use the upcoming games to try something different and, if he doesn’t, I’d hope Speakman would be asking the question.
Sheffield Wednesday are a team trying to play their way back to the Championship too so I’d expect to see a far more impressive performance and, hopefully, a morale boosting win after we were taught another League One lesson at the weekend, but after that we face an FA Cup match against Mansfield and the Pizza Cup game against Bradford.
These are both free hits and an opportunity to try and play differently, look at ways of playing more directly in games when we need to. Quite simply, this is the chance to develop plans B and C. Without them we will keep being caught out by more savvy managers and more traditional League One tactics and the longer term plans could be no more than dreams.
