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When Chair's back, we'll have four of 'em: Smyth, Saito, Dembele and our little electric piece of furniture. Four into two, or three at most, won't go. Will Madsen need to be one who makes way? Put it another way, and after today's non-event, is this going to be our strongest team/shape?
No one, including Marti, seemed to pick up on it - why? Watmore had the f*cking freedom of Shepherds Bush Green to get his shot away. The defence has been solid, but that was handed to him on a plate.
After today's slim pickings, who's feeling confident? And how should Marti change it?Personally, I feel a gloopy gulp forming and fear the wheels may come off up there, so I'm hoping to be a false prophet. Hindsight is a many-splendoured thing, but all those posters who were predicting nice comfy wins against Wednesday and our Wailing Wall have a smidgen of egg on their chops now. (I foresaw draws at best in both and was wearyingly correct.)
Despite my reputation for a certain asperity, and notwithstanding the above, I'll do a little damage to it and say, even if the glass isn't quite half-full, it could still be tipping that way. Today, it felt like we missed our resident 'axis of evil' dirty Jack Colback, as well as an electric Chair, like the heavens miss the rain. Those two, fit, firing and sensibly fierce, can, and hopefully will, give us our screen/pivot and playmaking vision. It feels like Chair has been out for an eternity, though, and we have to hope he'll hit the ground running rather than be hitting it in frustration. Dembele has to be a 10 for me, but in my view so does Ilias, so we may have a problem, Houston, when the latter returns. (For me, the jury's a worryingly long way out as to how well they will, or will want to.)
I agree that, on current form, and perhaps any form, Madsen and Andersen shouldn't be starting together. The former, in particular, is already tending toward the peripheries, though he can thread a pass and fashion a cross, and may pop up with a sprinkling of goals. Both of them, while decently skilled, look too lightweight and languid for this league. If our hopes rest on Danish shoulders, I fear we're going to be found wanting, however, especially while, for me, Varane continues to blow hot and cold. Apart from our delectable Dembele (even if it feels like he's still feeling his way into things), Saito looks to me the pick of the incomers, and very much in a QPR mould, if we can get him on the ball and cutting in creatively. I also rate him as cleverer than Smyth, though the latter is doing (a bit) better and gives his all.
On a further positive note, even with the limited service so far, Frey looks likely to comfortably hit double figures, while Cook (I'm crossing everything that nothing happens to him - perhaps Andersen could send up a prayer) and Dunne have been rocks in defence so far. Our goalkeeper is also a keeper. So while not everything in ther garden is coming up roses yet, we've planted a few features.
As for Marti, now we're agreed he's not the Messiah and is as much a work in progress as our team, it's a big year for him. He has plenty to prove and a lot to do, but he's said that and knows it, I think, so I guess we have to trust the process, even if the parts are still finding their whole. Our slo-mo first halves do worry me, though, and he's starting to seem a lot better at talking about other teams than devising effective strategies to deal with them and get at them from the start. He looked quite flat to me post-match, which is hopefully a paradoxically good sign. In the end, though, it's only the players who can do it on the pitch.
In the words of The Killers, 'Can we climb this mountain? I don't know.' Back to a week of worrying about it, I guess.
Stan's vote went to Mike Pejic, ex-Stoke City. I think we can agree this photo of him (with an aged Alan Hudson) is a profile so strange he could have auditioned for The Elephant Man.
Measured and professional, if not very revealing. Extraordinary that a question about Colback's double yellow wasn't tabled - presumably deliberately/under instruction.
I didn't see the game today, but the extreme polarity between the relaxed interviews with the manager and Smyth on the Offish and the verdicts of some of those on here (i.e. us fantatics, reactionaries, and non-experts posing as experts) is noteworthy to say the least.
That said, the manager's bland segue in the same breath from 'we didn't show the difference in quality' to 'we can take a lot of positives' I find faintly alarming. The whole interview looks staged to me, as if the 'upbeat' narrative were prescribed in advance. The interviewer couldn't be less probing if were a decommissioned lunar module!
It's also bizarre the way some say neither results nor performances matter a jot in these games, and it's just about getting 'minutes in the legs'. Why not just go for a run round Battersea Park with a ball for the afternoon if that's the case?
Some people might look happy, but a-clappy I am not!
1. Tony Currie 2. Mark Falco 3. John Spencer 4. Loic Remy 5. Djibril Cisse
The feelgood factor's back, so, feck FFP - don't you agree it's time for another? And, if so, who would you consider (unrealistically but tearing-up the-Champishly)?
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