I'm not talking about money and players. I'm talking about tactics. You don't have to have world class players to put together a team that can both play up the pitch a little and not concede loads of goals. You don't have to have world class players to set up a team that can create chances without causing itself to be wide open. Not all of his issues can be solved with throwing money around.
I'm well aware that our attack stinks and that we're probably capped out at something like 45 goals with that attack. We're on pace for 29. And he can't fix that without exposing our defense to an untenable degree because he can't put together a complete system. So we get this crap where we sit deep and hold a basic shape while hoping to get lucky and score a goal to nick it.
I don't think he should be allowed to sign players. If Thelwell has players he can get at a decent price with a longer term view he should go for that. No short term fixes for Frank. He's not earned it.
What gave me hope re Frank is that he seemed determined to dispel the notion he couldn’t organise a defence.
What I respected was the quite canny move of bringing in centre halves that could organise themselves and those around them, leaving Frank to focus on what happened in front of them. We supplemented that with the return of Gueye - I wasn’t a fan of the move, but again the logic didn’t escape me.
Of course, the trade-off here is that you have a defensive unit that will sit very deep.
No problem, says I, for the learned attacking midfielder at our helm will no doubt work hard on moving the ball long/directly up top, surrounding the target man with pacy, direct players who can pick up on those second balls and drive us on.
Not a bit of it. Instead, he tries to play out from the back, using players that can neither pass very well or run very fast. On the occasions we DO go longer, it is to a very small front man, completely unaccustomed to playing that way, and Gordon and Gray - the only two of our attack blessed with any pace - just seem to have been given the ol’ “go out and play” message, which is not a lot of use given the dumpster fire happening around them.
I don’t envy any manager who has to deal with the flaming sack of dump that is our team, but I point blank refuse to believe that Frank couldn’t have done any better than he has. Indeed, there were signs of recovery as our summer signings started to bed in, but in hindsight that was more to do with their natural ability, which seems to have been gradually coached out of them since.
I defy anyone to look at Brentford’s squad list and ours, post summer window, and say that they should be THIS much better a team than us, if at all. I know they have a preexistent togetherness and spirit that will account for some of that, but a very large amount of the discrepancy is just coaching, man. Their coach is great and ours is a bit poo.
