Another weekend, and the same losing feeling for the sixth match in succession. The Lads now find themselves with nine games to go and lying exactly mid-table and 11 points off the final play-off spot currently occupied by Norwich. It’s safe to now say that our season is not going to be extended. Form wise, we are the joint worst form team in the Championship in the last five matches that everyone has played. In some quarters of the fan base, people are starting to feel worried which is understandable. Are you personally starting to look for the panic button?
TWO MORE LOSSES BUT REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
Going into the games against Leicester and Southampton, there was that feeling that we were going to be well and truly schooled by them especially considering how our form was panning out. Justifiable in some sense. But you know something, I am far from despondent despite the results not going the way of the Lads. The second half performance against Leicester was good and to lose by a sole goal is creditable especially when you look at some of their line up and the fact they’ve dismantled a few teams with comparative ease this season. They had Harry Winks in their starting eleven who cost them a cool £10 million which is more than our own starting eleven as a whole. That’s disparity in itself. The match statistics show the Lads had a go at the leaders but unfortunately as it has been all season, the lack of a cutting edge was the main difference. Imagine what a proven goalscorer might have done, eh? Then we go and do one of the longest away trips of the season at Southampton. Mike Dodds said that from the touchline, all four Saints goals were avoidable, but he was able to draw some positives from the loss. Southampton have spent a great deal of money themselves in trying to regain their Premier League status and these two games just go to show that there is a division within a division which we are a bit off at the moment. Perhaps we should realise that consolidation is not a bad thing? The target to stay up is probably going to be around the 50-point mark or so, so if we can make the next few games count then we should be OK. It’s then down to finishing as well as we can once the target is achieved and be ready for a reset in the summer. However, the recruitment strategy is something that will need to be re-analysed as most supporters firmly know.
MANAGERIAL RUMOURS: OLE GUNNAR SOLSJKÆR LINKED
A new name this week, former Cardiff City, Molde and Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solsjkær. The Baby Faced Assassin as he was known in his playing days, has been out of work since being sacked by the Red Devils in September 2021, and comes with a pedigree which might become very appealing to KLD and Kristijaan Speakman. At Cardiff, his brief tenure of nine months, saw him win just 30 percent exactly of his games but at Molde and United, it rose to the mid-50 per cents. Overall in 442 games, he has won 235 of them for a 53.17 win percentage overall. That is not bad going. Solsjkær, or whoever it does finally become, will have to buy into everything straight away for sure. That said, Neil Warnock, who always said he wanted to manage the Lads has just become available today after leaving Aberdeen. Surely the powers that be aren’t looking in his direction are they?
ARE WE TOO GOOD TO GO DOWN?
With the teams below the Lads in the table scrapping for their collective lives, there is the danger that we will be sucked into something we don’t want at all: a relegation battle. That said I feel there are too many teams involved in the drop zone below us for us to get dragged in! Rotherham are sunk that is a given, but nobody aside of Sheffield Wednesday and latterly QPR have any decent real form recently. There was a poll this week where it was asked, who else will go down with the Millers? I’d go with Birmingham and Huddersfield based on recent form but with everyone seemingly to face each other in these final weeks then it can change quicker than the traffic lights at Spaghetti Junction. All we need to do is to re-establish credits in the winning column, a task that is not beyond us if we put our collective minds to it. But no team is too good to go down, as history goes to prove in this beautiful game.
YOU HAVE TO INVEST IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE
It’s now a given that you need to invest in quality signings once you reach the pinnacle of the league structure: the Premier League. Because if you don’t you will get torn apart at will just like Sheffield United did on Monday by Arsenal. That’s why I hope that the powers that be are looking at that and thinking ahead in their future plans for the club should we ever het back there. This will mean an undoubted change of transfer philosophy. Like most I would like to see us back in the Premier League with games against the big fish but realistically we are still a way off that at present. Going up too quickly could lead to us being a yo-yo type club such as Burnley and Norwich, and that is not the way forward. The Premier League is, as a lot of newly promoted sides have discovered, is a harsh reality check. In the 20 clubs there are varying degrees of disparity, from the moneybags to those scrapping to survive. If the Lads want to look at a model for doing well then we would need to look at what Brighton and Brentford have achieved. Good signings from a well developed scouting network, and an excellent team ethic has seen these sides challenge for top half finishes and in the Seagulls’ case: European football. Nothing is impossible, but a magic wand isn’t going to turn this Cinderella into a princess automatically. We need to be patient and build a squad capable of getting out of the Championship before we can dream bigger. It’s no use trying to push square pegs into round holes or muddle your way through the waters of the Championship, which we seem to be trying to do a lot of the time, because if you do either of these then chances are that you won’t progress but head into decline.
