Remember a certain Martin O'Neill came in mid-season and had a miserable start as Leicester manager before completely turning in around in the latter part of the season and the rest is history.
We need some shrewd dealings in January - not necessarily spending money. Nigel needs to get in his type of players in 2 or 3 positions and at the same time move some players on. I don't know if any of our squad are being watched by other clubs but any bids should be considered. Perhaps the odd swap deal could be productive if it suits us!
If we can stabilise in the January transfer window, Nigel can hopefully finish his sorting in the summer whichever league we may be in. This is it, though, for managerial changes - no more! So long as he wants the job, Nigel should be the manager for the foreseeable future.
O'Neill's sticky start got us up
posted on 19/12/11
I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I remember Sven receiving the "wait until the January transfer window so he can build his own team" chestnut.
I don't necessarily believe signing a whole host of more players is the answer. We have premiership quality talent in our existing players however we are missing a team bonding between them. As Blackpool demonstrated, you can get promoted with some of the worst players in the division but get promoted as a team and playing like a team.
However, how you get all our players to bond - I dont know!
posted on 19/12/11
Cosbyfox
posted on 19/12/11
"how you get all our players to bond - I dont know"
Superglue in their lip salve?
posted on 19/12/11
no more nails
posted on 19/12/11
'We have premiership quality talent in our existing players'
But a lot of it is distinctly average Championship talent.
I think Nigel will get them bonding in time but it's very obvious we are lacking wingers and a creative midfielder. There is only so much he can do with what we've got, though I haven't agreed with every decision he's made about the lineup so far.
We will not go up until we sign at least one winger and a creative central midfielder. He simply has to sign these players or we can forget it.
I won't give up on us this early, we were in a worse position last season at this point (and playing worse too, as unbelievable as it seems now) and after a good run we ended up 1 point out the play-offs at the end of February.
We are still capable of getting there but not without 2 quality signings which have to be spot on, the squad isn't good enough.
posted on 19/12/11
Yes, we got 21 points from the next 10 games last season and were 2 points better off at this stage. After February we began to nose-dive.
posted on 19/12/11
“We have premiership quality talent in our existing players”
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Yes and no. We might have Premiership quality in some players, but we don’t have Premiership quality in every position within the team.
The failure of Sven to build a balanced team means that NP has had to revert to his old guard to give us balance. These players were not quite good enough before and are not good enough now.
I’m getting fed up with reading that we have a squad talented enough to go up. We don’t! We might have a squad capable of scraping into the play-offs, but it is too imbalanced to guarantee anything. This is why Sven was sacked.
posted on 19/12/11
wouldn't you say we have a better team now than the one we comortably made it to the play offs with?
Not saying you should, just wondering
posted on 19/12/11
actually not a 'better team' but better individual players ^