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I don't see why anyone is panicing. A 5-0 defeat is bad but not the end of the world. I actually expected us to lose (maybe not as badly as we did).
The team Hughes have have never played together and this will take a long while to gel. Look at Man city, when they first got taken over they bought some of the best players in the world for each position, it took them a couple of years to win the league. I am not saying we are going to win the league, but hughes has the building blocks to build a successful team.
The key to being strong in each of the 3 areas (defense, midfield, up top) is communication and understanding between players, saturday showed that most of our team have a lot to learn about how each other play. The amount of times balls were played through to runs that werent happening, or defenders not covering each other because of the lack of understanding. This will come with time, we just need to be patient and not single out individual players for what was really a team failing.
The 2 mistakes we made were:
1) Bought too many players - out starting lineups will enourmously different to last season, i think we would have been better off not signing so many players, but have kept much the same team and strenthening with 3-4 players in the summer, then maybe 2-3 in jan. Then the the team would not have been so disjointed.
2) Better choice of preseason matches. Our preseason tour was more for publicity then getting the team match-ready. I would have preferred a tour of a european country where the standard of football is more like the standard of the EPL
This team will stay up, and i feel will finish mid-table. But we have a couple of months in the bottom 5 before we start climbing up the postions as the team starts to "Gel".
The team Hughes have have never played together and this will take a long while to gel. Look at Man city, when they first got taken over they bought some of the best players in the world for each position, it took them a couple of years to win the league. I am not saying we are going to win the league, but hughes has the building blocks to build a successful team.
The key to being strong in each of the 3 areas (defense, midfield, up top) is communication and understanding between players, saturday showed that most of our team have a lot to learn about how each other play. The amount of times balls were played through to runs that werent happening, or defenders not covering each other because of the lack of understanding. This will come with time, we just need to be patient and not single out individual players for what was really a team failing.
The 2 mistakes we made were:
1) Bought too many players - out starting lineups will enourmously different to last season, i think we would have been better off not signing so many players, but have kept much the same team and strenthening with 3-4 players in the summer, then maybe 2-3 in jan. Then the the team would not have been so disjointed.
2) Better choice of preseason matches. Our preseason tour was more for publicity then getting the team match-ready. I would have preferred a tour of a european country where the standard of football is more like the standard of the EPL
This team will stay up, and i feel will finish mid-table. But we have a couple of months in the bottom 5 before we start climbing up the postions as the team starts to "Gel".
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