Against Sunderland and Rovers, the Williams’ system came fully on-line. These are the games to judge.
Against Sunderland, we either ran out of gas or the opposition adjusted, neutralized and took control 5 to 10 minutes into the second half.
Against Rovers that pivot started to appear with 5 minutes left in the first half, we held them neutral until minute 50 or so in the second half and shortly thereafter they scored. Both teams made 2 subs. They continued the momentum and we struggled to reassert and never really did. There was a brief flurry late in the half that produced the Yates chance to kill the game that was squandered. Object lesson to be learned there … what we all know … Yates is not up to it. A decent #9 there takes that feed and shoots on target, the rest is up to the keeper. The “works hard” #9 is also being shown up by Cullen in that metric. For me, the next #9 to be sub’d on has to be Big Myk or we reintroduce Thomas if fit. Yates has been given more than a fair shake. Time to check out other options.
You can produce all the cliches you want to explain it but matter of factly when Allen is present we have dominated as other players have more freedom to play. The moment he drops to average so do we. As suggested, fitness levels are not going to be the answer, although better is always better. Allen is great and giving all he can at his age. He’s not going to be a Prem league midfield leader at 34 for 90 minutes. We need a second “Allen” to assume that role when the real Allen drops off. It’s not Fulton. It could be Cooper. It could be Abdulai. It could be PP. but the truth is that there’s only one Allen, and so we really need a Plan B, that can be in the same theme as Plan A, just a tweaked version to accommodate the different combination of players.
Big work in progress. for now we have to be more ruthless when we are in control and clearly we need to score 3 when we own the first half. And, each game going forward is going to be against opposition that have had more time to go to school on the Williams’ method and devise counter measures.
Pato’s injury and perhaps the recovery limitations of other players is going to impact team selection against Watford. This will be a challenge to Williams and the ability to replicate the system across the squad … there is going to be a Plan B or A’