SHA Small Heath Alliance

Apologies for the length of this post.

Correct. This Plan B (is there or isn’t one) debate has been done to death on here so I don’t wish to revisit it tactically. As a supporter, it’s not my job to work out all of the intricacies.

Whether he is or isn’t adapting during games is one debate, but the only consequence for me is whether any changes pay dividends often enough. Ultimately I still leave the game feeling we’ve played ok and been unlucky to lose, etc, or don’t! What’s happened regarding substitutions, formations, etc, along the way doesn’t bother me.

It’s the same with XG, I don’t care for it to be honest. I prefer to judge on the actual scorelines and also what my own eyes tell me about our general performance levels.

What I do assess is whether, as a game is progressing, my feel for the game tells me that we are likely to get back into a match from a losing position for example. I can only recall Middlesbrough away as being a game when I was reasonably impressed by how we played after falling behind. I’ll say Leeds too in fairness and therein lies a point because that was a complete shackles off blood and thunder game. That game, from the outset, seemed different from our usual approach.

We came from behind to win at Blackburn, yes, but I thought that was a poor game against a very limited side who could just as easily have beaten us as it goes.

You look back at last season and we notably came back to beat Wrexham and Peterborough at home early on but in those games we just let very poor early goals in. I never felt as though the opposition had made life difficult for us in that we wouldn’t come through in the end. We didn’t have to change the approach with which we’d begun the game.

However, in the games where we were truly put under the pump and struggled to get any momentum going, it just carried on in the same fashion for the entire game.

I recall Charlton, Shrewsbury and Bolton away (the three league games we lost) and then Peterborough at Wembley as being the matches in which once it was clear we were struggling and genuinely being outplayed that we were never going to get back into them.

I appreciate I’m picking four games out of 50-odd here and that we got 111 points so it sounds ridiculous to criticise, but I do think there’s an argument that once we were truly put out of our rhythm we didn’t tend to find the answers.

What has impressed me under Davies generally has been our ability to hold on to points from winning positions, but in recent months we’ve dropped off there. Not closing it out against Stoke, Charlton and Southampton at home, none of whom played well against us in my opinion, has hurt us.

We are not a bad side but, for whatever combination of reasons, we are nowhere near ruthless enough in both boxes.

Redditch Blue

Apologies for the length of this post.

Correct. This Plan B (is there or isn’t one) debate has been done to death on here so I don’t wish to revisit it tactically. As a supporter, it’s not my job to work out all of the intricacies.

Whether he is or isn’t adapting during games is one debate, but the only consequence for me is whether any changes pay dividends often enough. Ultimately I still leave the game feeling we’ve played ok and been unlucky to lose, etc, or don’t! What’s happened regarding substitutions, formations, etc, along the way doesn’t bother me.

It’s the same with XG, I don’t care for it to be honest. I prefer to judge on the actual scorelines and also what my own eyes tell me about our general performance levels.

What I do assess is whether, as a game is progressing, my feel for the game tells me that we are likely to get back into a match from a losing position for example. I can only recall Middlesbrough away as being a game when I was reasonably impressed by how we played after falling behind. I’ll say Leeds too in fairness and therein lies a point because that was a complete shackles off blood and thunder game. That game, from the outset, seemed different from our usual approach.

We came from behind to win at Blackburn, yes, but I thought that was a poor game against a very limited side who could just as easily have beaten us as it goes.

You look back at last season and we notably came back to beat Wrexham and Peterborough at home early on but in those games we just let very poor early goals in. I never felt as though the opposition had made life difficult for us in that we wouldn’t come through in the end. We didn’t have to change the approach with which we’d begun the game.

However, in the games where we were truly put under the pump and struggled to get any momentum going, it just carried on in the same fashion for the entire game.

I recall Charlton, Shrewsbury and Bolton away (the three league games we lost) and then Peterborough at Wembley as being the matches in which once it was clear we were struggling and genuinely being outplayed that we were never going to get back into them.

I appreciate I’m picking four games out of 50-odd here and that we got 111 points so it sounds ridiculous to criticise, but I do think there’s an argument that once we were truly put out of our rhythm we didn’t tend to find the answers.

What has impressed me under Davies generally has been our ability to hold on to points from winning positions, but in recent months we’ve dropped off there. Not closing it out against Stoke, Charlton and Southampton at home, none of whom played well against us in my opinion, has hurt us.

We are not a bad side but, for whatever combination of reasons, we are nowhere near ruthless enough in both boxes.

Typhoontechie

Not sure, but I reckon Davies has about 7 months to have us looking like automatic contenders or he will be off.

If we don't go up this year, which looks very unlikely now, then I reckon he has ten games at the start of next year to have us in the top two or he will be for the tin tack, rightly or wrongly. Only change incan see to that is if someone KH really like the look of becomes available before that, such as Farke etc

montypenguin

I think you're spot on with this summary.

Compare our recruitment policy to Wrexham, who spent just as much money as Blues, but on experienced Championship players while we bought in the likes of Neumann, Ducksch, Kyogo. When it wasn't working in Jan we did the same again with Wagner, Solis, Priske and Vicente.

montypenguin

I think you're spot on with this summary.

Compare our recruitment policy to Wrexham, who spent just as much money as Blues, but on experienced Championship players while we bought in the likes of Neumann, Ducksch, Kyogo. When it wasn't working in Jan we did the same again with Wagner, Solis, Priske and Vicente.

The Wrexham side on Saturday with the exception of Kaboré the right wing back British home grown players including the substitutes.

Players with lots of Championship/ League one experience again with the exception of the right wing back .
Some Players which the football pundits on this site said weren't good enough for us when they signed them.

I remember them signing both Josh Windass and Kieffer Moore and the " we should be looking to do much better " comments.