smudgerfox

I’m sorry but in order to progress you have to learn froM mistakes and in order to learn from mistakes you have to understand why they were made. For me - and I said so at the time - the crucial decision, was the signing of Vestergaard. I didn’t know then he was going to be a disaster in a Brendan-style defence but whoever was primary in making that decision needs to pay the price for it. I’m not paid to assess players and their suitability but others are. Had I been in the room I would have asked whether Southampton was an ideal club from which to recruit defenders…Rob Tanner, and I have no reason to doubt him, says Brendan was pushing for JV as he pushed for Bertrand. Lee Congerton- Brendan’s right hand man in recruitment- was our head of recruitment. Is anyone going to tell me that we signed JV in the face of fierce opposition from the Head Coach and the Head of Recruitment ? Just to remind everyone of the context - we’d won the FA Cup, we didn’t sell anyone over the summer, Evans was injured - he’d limped out of the Cup Final before half time, Soyuncu has a terrible Euros, Justin was injured, and then Fofana got a long term injury. it was imperative we got a Premier standard, Brendan-style CB before the transfer window closed. This was obvious to me and it should have been obvious to anyone. We signed JV, and within six weeks , Brendan was preferring to play NDidi at CB. Then we had the gruesome spectacle of watching our inept defence fritter away our Europa League place and a further European place finish while Brendan blamed our injuries. Sitting on the bench throughout this fiasco, unplayed was Jenek Vestergaard. The question remains: how did that happen?

I think this is an important point. We will need to win some high pressure games once this tough run is over. Given our pathetic attempts to finish fourth and some woeful semi final performances- even at times when the team has been functioning pretty well…it’s hard to be optimistic …we’ve already lost to Bournemouth, Southampton and Fulham and dropped two points to Brentford.

The podcast is very good by the way - I didn’t mean to sound snarky - but to me , these loans , especially with rising interest rates, are our biggest financial headache.

What they didn’t pick up on - which the BBC did - is that we have borrowed against Premier League TV income up until July 25. Shades of Peter Risdale at Leeds and a big problem if there is no Premier League TV revenue …

So how do you explain Lee Congerton being appointed head of recruitment? Nothing to do with BR - he just impressed the club with his track record at Celtic - is that it?

Yes and if you remember, apparently he spent his summer holidays speaking to players he wanted to bring in only to find there was no money to do so. So involved? Or not involved? Take your pick…

Yes where are our 18 year old impact subs ? Rotting on the bench in league 2 …

Listen - you can quote all the net spend figures you like but here are some of the players who started this afternoon - Joel Ward, longstaff, March, Milner - no team is full of BR rated quality players - what these teams do is play to their players’ strengths and try to cover for their weaknesses - what their managers do is avoid accusing them of being low quality and not caring - because when you’ve done that they’ll be even worse next week …if BR is a brilliant man manager then I can claim to be the Dalai Lama ..

I thought the worst comment was on Kristiansen - he said something to the effect that the recruitment team assure me he’s what we need !! Welcome to Leicester Viktor - and the manager who can’t wait to tell the world you’re “not at the right level..”

He’d worked with Ryan Bennett too

He’d worked with Ryan Bennett too

Podcast pundits still saying (in an echo of last spring) that we need to get new players in. They seem to assume the precarious position BR has led the club to will make no difference. Yet I see Gonzalez was haggling over a relegation clause in his contract - I assume we can only solve that by agreeing to selling him at a fairly low “trigger price”. So more financial pain should we go down. And Fiorentina have sensed our desperation and are demanding a hugely inflated price. New players are essentially being offered the chance to avoid relegation in the next four months, under a manager hanging on by his fingertips, and a relegation on their cv and an uncertain future if they fail. It’s not an easy sell is it?

Dyche played Dyche football at Burnley because it was the only way he could keep them up. He did a brilliant job with no money. They were difficult to beat and scored with relatively few chances. Every player needed to play at or near their best every week. How we could do with some, indeed all, of that.

yes like when he was asked about our defending at set pieces he said we lacked the “right profile of player.” What kind of an answer is that when you’ve been in charge for three seasons …?

I’ve been wondering what Brendan would have made of the 2015/16 squad. I certainly don’t think we’d have won the league with him in charge. He thinks we have no right to beat the likes of Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool, as they’re so much richer than us. The injury record that season, he could only dream of. Playing style to suit the players we had - rather than the players he’d have liked. And just what would he have made of the wider squad that year, players who played a vital, if unsung, role? Schlupp? Wasiliewski? King? Ulloa? He’d have never played Danny Simpson. Brendan’s coaching ambitions are the overriding priority. The idea of taking an eclectic mix of players and find a way of deploying them to the max to win games is utterly foreign to him.

Running down contracts is becoming much more common. Players and agents have realised they can sit it out and when they finally move out of contract, any transfer fee which would have been paid to their home club, will now be paid to them as a signing on fee instead. It’s something which will spread and will destroy the business model of many mid range clubs. As usual it’s getting no coverage in our personality-driven sports media and because it doesn’t affect the likes of Man U or Chelsea to anything like the same extent.

This is such an important point. It really is incomprehensible that a club with such limited finances would pay £15-million for a player who has been playing in the same league as us for multiple seasons, who is an international colleague of the club captain, and within six weeks decide he’s wholly unsuitable for our style of football. So much so we’d rather play a midfielder in his position. When week after week the defence ships goals. And that we’d pay him so much that we can’t even sell him! If Brendan was totally against this transfer I’m sure he’d have found a way to let us know that by now. As it is, the futile occupation of a Premier League Squad place by a player who may as well retire until Brendan leaves or his contract expires, stands as testament to the poor poor judgment of our esteemed manager.

Barnes predictability is the problem and that stems from Brendan’s insistence on “structure” which means he receives the ball in almost identical positions from match to match . This limits his options severely ..basically he picks the ball up on the left and can either cut inside (preferred option) as his right is his stronger foot - or use his pace on the outside and cross with his less reliable left foot. He invariably cuts inside and is of more immediate danger doing that but opponents know that (see TAA) and just wait for him and block his run. His pace and strength are well suited to playing as a central striker - though probably not a lone striker and his right footedness means he could play on the right - changing his point if attack might give opponents more to think about, It’s just not what Brendan does.

Another factor in the “small squad” problem is the lack of development players knocking on the first team door. Nearly all the loanees are flopping - the development team seems every bit as bad as the first team - didn’t Vestergaard feature in a 7-1 defeat to Fulham recently ? And most of the players who look superior quality are in positions we’re okay in. Meanwhile two ex Academy players are playing at a high level in Europe. I’m not saying it’s all Brendan’s fault but he inherited widely admired medical, recruitment and youth set ups - all of which have deteriorated rapidly during his time here.

Worth recalling that one of the reasons we didn’t sign anyone this summer was because we already had too many players (32 if memory serves me right). And the season before this one we had to exclude Mendy altogether until he was player of the tournament at The Africa Cup and we binned Benkovic. The reason we have a small squad is that so many players are taking up a place without being trusted with significant game time - Mendy, Vestergaard, Soyuncu, Ihenacho, Praet and Perez (until recently). Add in an horrific injury record and you’re down to an overplayed 14 or 15 who themselves become injury prone.

And how would you judge the squad of Brentford? Or Fulham? Smaller clubs with smaller budgets, who haven’t won a national trophy or qualified for Europe in living memory, doing perfectly nicely right now. No big names, no overpaid stars, teams playing to the strengths of their squads and involving every player in those squads. That’s what we need to get back to.

Fofana’s club had a hefty sell on cut

I know a lack of leadership is often cited for our inability to overcome in-match adversity. In that context it’s worth remembering that our captain, predictably, and our vice captain, again predictably, have barely kicked a ball this season. Two more questionable decisions - one by the manager, the other by the squad.

The Bertrand and Vestergaard signings have had a huge effect on the club’s ability to progress and they both deserve much greater scrutiny. Essentially we have two players eating up squad places and salary who have been of no use to the manager whatever, during a period when our defending has been a major obstacle to our progress. Bertrand wants to be a football agent, is part of Brendan’s sons agency, his best years are clearly behind him. Even before his injury his inability to keep up with PL match pace was all too apparent. Whatever we fans said at the time , our expert scouts and analysts should have been breaking down the door to stop this transfer. No good was ever going to come of it Vestergaard was signed AFTER the Fofana injury. It is absolutely unforgivable to sign a player who, within weeks, the manager would only play in emergency. Once Fofana was crocked, what was clearly needed was a first team, first choice centre back. Both these players had played for many years in the PL and there is absolutely no excuse for the club not knowing what they could offer. (And what they couldn’t) . JV is an international teammate of Kasper ffs . When you see such obviously and disastrously bad decisions being taken it makes you wonder about others. Are the outcasts (Nacho, Praet, Mendy, Soyuncu, Perez) really being treated fairly? Why are Barnes, Thomas, KDH and Daka failing to develop and improve? Why was Kasper sold so late and so cheaply? Why was Calvin Bassey not persuaded to stay? Why-are so many of our young players on loans barely playing ? And those that are, making so little impact?

This is the thing about Brendan’s teams they always have that kind of embarrassing performance in them … Relegation-bound Bournemouth (managed by Howe at the time), Newcastle more than once , several Spurs matches, Napoli a, Roma a, Legia Warsaw at home, Brighton this season, several West Ham encounters…Forest away in the Cup. The common thread? Witless, spineless performances during which the players seemed not to care whether they won or whether they took a humiliating spanking - home or away, no matter the competition, no matter the players sekected or the formation adopted …just an utter failure to turn up to play a competitive football match and the complete absence of any determination to win it…