Germany's Danny Röhl couldn't have chosen a tougher first managerial job, attempting to rescue Sheffield Wednesday from a summer meltdown and biblically terrible start to the season - our regular correspondent Lovely Jon Hore takes us through his club's myriad disasters.
Well, we thought it would be bad but my God. How’s it been so far?
For the first ten games it was the biggest load of unwatchable dross I can remember watching Wednesday. Dreadful results, dreadful performances, meek surrender week after week without laying a glove on anyone or even really trying to. Xisco did very well to last ten games. We look like we’ve turned a corner now, and results over the past couple of weeks have given us some hope of staying up. It feels like something is building under Danny Rohl, but the Xisco period did so much damage that it’s still going to be a massive task to stay up.
Brace for impact – Sheff Wed in the league so far…
Sheff Wed 1-2 Southampton Gregory 54 – Armstrong 8, Adams 87
Hull 4-2 Sheff Wed Tufan pen 45, 58, 70, Connolly 85 – Delgado 36, Smith 90
Sheff Wed 0-1 Preston Lindsay 49
Cardiff 2-1 Sheff Wed Ugbo 48, Wintle pen 90 – Bannan 76
Leeds 0-0 Sheff Wed
Sheff Wed 0-1 Ipswich Chaplin 45
Sheff Wed 1-1 Boro Musaba 38 – Lenihan 53
Swansea 3-0 Sheff Wed Lowe pen 28, Yates 64, Patino 67
Sheff Wed 0-3 Sunderland Ballard 5, Clarke 8, pen 31
West Brom 1-0 Sheff Wed Swift 13
Sheff Wed 0-0 Huddersfield
Watford 1-0 Sheff Wed Asprilla 82
Plymouth 3-0 Sheff Wed Bundu 44, Whittaker 45, Hardie 76
Sheff Wed 2-0 Rotherham Smith 11, 36
Bristol City 1-0 Sheff Wed Dickie 64
Sheff Wed 0-4 Millwall Wallace 31, Saville 42, Harding 52, Norton-Cuffey 72
Birmingham 2-1 Sheff Wed Bacuna 45, James 81 – Byers 45
Sheff Wed 1-1 Leicester Hendrick 90 – Issahaku 23
Sheff Wed 3-1 Blackburn Cadamarteri 5, Johnson 78, Windass 90 – Szmodics 65
Stoke 0-1 Sheff Wed Musaba 90
Norwich 3-1 Sheff Wed Sainz 7, Barnes 48, Rowe 72 – Cadamarteri 32
This was a team that got promoted last season with a tonne of points, it should surely be able to compete better than this no?
Darren Moore leaving dropped a nuke on the whole preparation for the new season. Xisco was crap but he didn’t have the easiest job coming in with only a few weeks to assess the platers, sign half a squad and implement his ideas. Recruitment was questionable at best though, and we’ve ended up with a pretty poor squad for this level. Our League One squad was built to be solid, experienced, and win because our players were just a bit better. Everyone knew we needed a big injection of quality, youth, pace and legs to compete in the Championship, but only two or three of the 12 summer signings make it into our current best XI. The younger players were always going to take some time to get up to speed, but the players with Championship experience that you’d look to make a difference straight away were Ashley Fletcher and Jeff Hendrick, so we might as well have just not bothered. The change of manager meant we had no continuity from last season in team selection or system either. Instead of trying to blend in the new lads slowly, lots of them were thrown straight in, with regulars from last year either on the bench or banished from the squad altogether.
Xisco - how much blame there?
Loads. It wasn’t the easiest job in the world but he was genuinely awful. Definitely the worst manager in my lifetime and that’s a very low bar. Every week we’d sink into a deep, narrow 5-4-1 and just wave the white flag. I get that we were playing better teams, we’d expect to have less possession a lot of the time, and might want to keep it tight and compact. I wouldn’t have an issue with us setting up like that if it looked like we had any plan on how we were going to get the ball back, counter attack and score. But there was nothing and it was impossible to see what he was trying to do or how he was trying to play; we never had a go, we were really passive, and carried absolutely no threat. The team just looked really badly coached the whole time he was there. Random team selections, very questionable tactics, freezing out senior players, increasingly chippy interviews as it unravelled, the whole thing was a shambles from start to finish.
New guy, impressions? Changes made?
The fans love him. It’s still very much a work in progress, but he’s polishing a massive turd and in my opinion is getting as much as possible out of a squad that’s just not very good for the level. It’s been clear from the day he walked in that he’s just a very good coach with a clear idea of how he wants to play, and the type of players he needs to be able to do it. Performances massively improved straight away, and although it’s taken a bit of time for the points to follow, we’re now seeing the team capable of playing the way he wants for a full 90 minutes and points have started to come with that. He came through the coaching ranks at RB Leipzig initially, starting as a data analyst and then moving up before leaving there for assistant manager roles at Bayern and German national team. That background shows in his approach and philosophy. He’s very data-driven and has spoken about his non-negotiable principles - high intensity, high press, win your second balls, win your duels, and don’t stop for 90 minutes. The main thing for me is that we’re watchable again, and we go into every game knowing that we’ll have a real go and that will at least give us a chance. He’s shown an ability to react to things in game and his in-game management and substitutions have had a massive impact in the last few games where we’ve been able to maintain a higher performance level for the full 90 minutes. It feels like we might have found one here.
January rumours? What needs doing? What realistically will be done?
The only rumour I've seen so far is Scott Hogan - not keen on that one myself and looks like the exact sort of mistake - old, big wages, injury prone - which we like to make. Personally I think Rohl will want younger, more dynamic types. Realistically, I can see a couple of loans going back if the terms allow it (Hendrick, Fletcher) and a few of the others who are out of favour (Gregory, Bakinson, James) being offloaded if we can find clubs to take them. I don’t see us doing a lot of permanent business so we really need to get it right with our loan signings. New head of recruitment Kevin Beadell comes with a good reputation for this, so I’m hopeful that between him and Rohl’s knowledge of Germany we can come up with a couple of gems. I can see him looking for younger, more technical full backs, and then reinforcements up front and maybe out wide.
Ins >>> Djeidi Gassama, 19, LW, PSG, £900k >>> Pol Valentin, 26, RB, Sporting Gijon, £250k >>> Di’Shon Bernard, 21, CB, Man Utd, Free >>> Juan Delgado, 30, RB, Football Manager Regen, Undisclosed >>> Reece James’ Non Union Mexican Equivalent, 29, LB, Blackpool, Undisclosed >>> Bambo Diaby, 24, CB, Preston, Undisclosed >>> Anthony Musaba, 22, RW, Monaco, Free >>> Ashley Fletcher, 27, Fuck Me, Watford, Loan >>> John Buckley, 23, CM, Blackburn, Loan >>> Jeff Hendrick, A Million, Newcastle, Loan >>> Momo Diaby, 26, DM, Portimonese, Loan >>> Devis Vasquez, 25, GK, Milan, Loan
Outs >>> Fisayo Dele-Bashiru, 22, CM, Hatayspor, Free >>> Jaden Brown, 24, LB, Lincoln, Free >>> David Stockdale, 37, Big Fat Goalie, York, Free >>> Dennis Adeniran, 24, CM, Released >>> Ben Heneghan, 29, CB, Released >>> Jack Hunt, 32, RB, Bristol Rovers, Free >>> Ciaran Brennan, 22, CB, Hartlepool, Loan
Do you want to just talk about the chairman for a bit here?
I’ve ranted about him on here before so won’t bore everyone too much again, but he continues to be out of his depth in running a football club. We had the perfect opportunity to build on promotion and he fucked it up in record time. In the last six months there’s been the Darren Moore contract debacle, appointing Xisco over Rohl in the summer, an unpaid tax bill and subsequent embargo, a request for the fans to donate to pay said tax bill before he paid it himself the next day anyway, threats to stop putting additional money into the club because of fan criticism, arguments with fans over email, season tickets on sale in December and then not, the list goes on and on. It’s a sign of how things are that it’s not much more than a month since his last official statement/public meltdown and that feels like some sort of achievement. For most of this season we’ve had more club statements than points.
Strong points and particular weak links in the team?
Di’Shon Bernard has been by far the best of the summer signings and is a really good athletic, ball-playing centre back. Barry Bannan is still our best player and has been great since Rohl came in, he’s taken his game to a new level off the ball and really bought into the high intensity style which I wasn’t sure he’d be able to do at his age. I must give a mention to Will Vaulks as well who has been brilliant in the defensive midfield role recently. I’d say that our weakest links are our full backs, especially now Dom Iorfa is out with long-term injury, and up front. We just don’t have many goals in the team. Bailey Cadamarteri has come in and looked good but is still very young and learning his way so we can’t be relying upon him week-in week-out yet. Michael Smith is OK at this level but Fletcher isn’t up to it and Lee Gregory is too old to play the way Rohl wants and I don’t think we’ll see him again. I definitely think this is an area that we need to upgrade in January.
Chances of survival?
We’re still eight points from safety so realistically I've got to say they’re still pretty slim but at least we now have some hope where before there was none. It would be good if QPR could stop winning please. It looks to me like the points needed to stay up could be slightly higher than usual and we might actually need to get to that magical 50-point mark, which means 37 points from 26 games. It doesn’t sound impossible. We’ve just got to keep chipping away and try and drag some of that lower mid-table group, your Birminghams, Stokes and Millwalls, down into the mix with us and you, and Rotherham and Huddersfield.
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