I still don't know why?

[inckley fox]

Partly with the benefit of hindsight, partly based on my gut feelings at the time... Some of it's conjecture, but I suspect I'm more right than I'm wrong-

a. The signings of Whitbread, Vardy and Futacs. The persistence with Vardy for too long.

b. In the summer the emphasis was on getting the team to gel in a 4-4-2 rather than on adequately preparing the team for more than one formation.

c. Pearson's negative experiences last season led him to be more lenient with certain players than he would normally have been; therefore not demanding enough from various players. Publicly he wouldn't criticise the team for poor performances unless we lost games, and even then he wasn't always forthcoming. Several comments from players seemed to suggest that this was also the case behind closed doors.

d. Teams focused on closing Drinkwater down and not enough work, perhaps, was done on the training field to encourage him to play on the front foot despite having less room to manoeuvre, nor on encouraging his midfield partners to offer themselves short.

e. As teams learned to mark Knockaert he came deeper and deeper to collect possession, but not enough work was done on his one-touch passing / physical game to help him cope with this.

f. Teams targeted our weakness down the left side of defence. Konchesky was poor but wasn't replaced, Keane lacked the experience to adequately cover for him.

g. Not enough work was done on Kasper's kicking, which led to us surrendering possession too easily.

h. Marshall didn't learn / wasn't adequately coached to make a yard for himself and whip the ball in early (which he's fairly good at) rather than trying to beat his man (which he's not good at). He also seems to struggle to provide crosses-to-head for Wood.

i. A more physical midfield presence was missing all season.

j. Not enough work was done to get King to track runners from midfield.

k. The injury to James.

l. The tendency to go too direct to Wood.

m. Pearson's stubbornness in interviews led to fans becoming more frustrated, believing that he was unaware of there being any problems. Some of this spilled out on the terraces.

n. The unnecessary reduction in competition for places by the bizarre situation with Schlupp, the loaning out of Moore (and arguably Danns, St Ledger).

o. A tendency to delay substitutions until the 70th minute, despite regularly conceding goals in the 45-70 minute range.

p. The failure to organise the side properly for defending set pieces, or attacking from them.

q. The insistence on keeping an undefeated side has led to us playing exactly the same defence for four consecutive games where we've conceded two goals. Again, a lack of proactiveness (if that's a word) on the part of the boss.

r. De Laet hasn't improved his defensive game, and this has been exploited.

s. Our midfielders, King especially, still haven't learned to close players down adequately in the 18-30 yards-out territory, hence we've conceded a lot of spectacular long range efforts.

[ARM1968]

Still think it was the milk myself.

[MooseBreath]

I've got my business exam coming up on Wednesday (we have to study business for some reason with my degree), and I've been learning alot about motivation, leadership etc. It's interesting actually, and as one of the statements reads 'a highly motivated person works hard at a job, a un-motivated player does not'

That's seriously degree level business these days? no wonder so many new graduates can't get jobs.

[THEBIGJOHNSTEADER;]

Not sure if its true but I heard that the players were hypnotised at half time at Peterborough into thinking, that Nigel Pearson, was Paul Daniels. I think the players have reacted like anyone would.

[Fez of Mahrez]

I think our quality was overestimated a bit, mainly because of that 4-0 win at Bristol City when they were probably at their lowest ebb. We have been very good at times this season but we have rarely shown guts to grind out a victory or draw from going behind, particularly away from home.

We hit form at a particular part of the season when people began to talk about the inevitability of automatic promotion but there were always other teams up there. I remember a period when the majority seemed confident but it was close between four teams behind Cardiff and the law of averages seemed to tell me that we wouldn't make it. I didn't see us dropping quite as much as we have but the danger of falling into poor form in this division is that every game suddenly appears difficult and we lost a string of "easier" games against largely in-form teams beneath us (e.g. Sheffield Wednesday) which meant we then had to go and win against Brighton, Bolton, Palace, Watford and Forest. With the best will in the world, we won't make it now and I'm not sure anyone who thinks we will has watched us very closely or for very long. We don't have the characters to see big games through (Cardiff away being a perfect example).

Whether anything went on behind the scenes, I don't know. I think changing the team for the Huddersfield away game in the cup is a complete red herring. Teams who get promoted deal with things like that. In fact, it should benefit them. If our players couldn't focus mentally or whatever it is people seem to think happened because we dropped a few first choice players for that specific game, then they were never mentally strong enough to go all the way anyway. To me, blaming Pearson for his selection in that game is just people looking at when the poor run started and wrongly blaming a perfectly understandable decision. We had a large number of games coming up at that time.

I also look back at the televised Middlesbrough and Wolves home games when we were a missed penalty and the width of a post from taking two points from those games instead of six. Of course, lots of people said winning those games was the sign of a team who could win promotion but the alarm bells were ringing a bit at that point for some.

There are two players whose complete loss of form has cost us more than any others in my opinion - Drinkwater and Nugent. These were two of the first names on the teamsheet up until February and they have been benched recently (far too late, I would say). To have two of your most important players drop so much in the quality of their performances is hard to recover from and we didn't address it early enough. When Vydra was flying for Watford earlier this season it seemed like he would score (twice) every week but he seems to have been off form lately and Forestieri has come in and done well. Whether Schlupp should have played more this season is one argument. Another is that Pearson had either misjudged or been let down by Vardy and Kane, who we needed to do the same job as Forestieri and come in to perform better as a second choice striker.

The other thing about Drinkwater and Nugent's loss of form is that suddenly we had two big gaps in a first choice XI that virtually picked itself around the beginning of February.

You've also got Knockaert's dip in form and Marshall not performing consistently (although I think he is quite underrated for the impact he has and he has still created a decent number of goals this season for his playing time), both of which have contributed too. Those two were both in that first choice XI as well at that time.

More recently, without that first choice XI firmly embedded, even when playing pretty well against Brighton and Bolton it has seemed like a slightly random team selection and then Pearson sticking with it when it appears to work rather than working out how we can best win the game. For example, playing 4-4-2 against Watford seemed odd to me when we had done so well playing 4-3-3 at Brighton by flooding central areas a bit more and not letting them overrun us in midfield. They play differently but they both have numbers in midfield and we already had a way of coping with that which we didn't return to for the Watford game. That, to me, made it look like he was scared of playing 4-3-3/4-5-1 at home because our fans would want us to play with two up front or because he thinks it can't be an attacking formation.

That's my main gripe with Pearson and reminds me of when we played Millwall last season with Gallagher on the wing just because it had worked the week before. Apparently there was something the other day about Pearson not making plans to deal with key opposition players and I think that's criminal in a division where little things like that often make the difference, particularly away from home.

[Fox92]

That's seriously degree level business these days? no wonder so many new graduates can't get jobs.

Yeah man, I know loads of people that study business... I don't do it, but for some reason, it's part of my degree (and I study something IT-related).

[flowwolf]

If you put that question to Pearson himself he would just shake his big Badger like head and say " I dont know why either"

[ozleicester]

Thanks evryone for your thougths, makes or some interesting reading, (some in particular actually offered some insights and ideas i hadnt previously thought about )

So from what ive read here's (in no particular order), a brief summary of the problems...

Pearson

Sub Par players

Unmotivated

Hoofball

“Found outâ€

Bad tactics

Young/inexperienced players

The owners building expectations

Weak midfield

Unnecessary changes

One dimensional

Poor set pieces (attacking and defending)

Dressing room issues

Lack of Leadership

Form drop from important players

Luck

easy fix then

[The Year Of The Fox]

Where it went wrong?

Here's my take:

1. I didn't think we signed enough quality players at the start of the season. In particular I wanted an older, more experienced head in the midfield.

Therefore, I predicted 7th (I thought we'd be ok, but not good enough).

2. I believe we got found out. Other posters will argue that we changed our formation and tactics which led to our slide. I think we had to change to some extent, we were continuing to lose away from home, but also the other teams studied us and knew to stamp out some of our players. Particularly Knocky.

3. Some of Pearson's team selections. To drop the likes of Dyer and Schlupp in a team already devoid of pace was bizarre to say the least.

4. January... With the exception of Wood, the squad was not strengthened when it was clear it should have been.

5. Belief... What once was seen as Fortress KP no longer became a safe haven. We started to lose games at home too. Self belief and confidence stem from the managerial team. I never thought I'd see the day when a Nigel Pearson side stopped trying.

Given all this, it's amazing that we still have half a chance. This shows that promotion was there for the taking. Somehow now we must beat Forest and pray that Bolton slip up. I wouldn't be surprised actually to see this happen.

But it could have and should have been so much more comfortable than this.

Agree with this

[Captain...]

Someone started a thread the other day that has now disappeared stating that they had it on good authority that the players had a bit of a bust up over pay and it caused a split in the camp between Pearson signings and Sven's. I could well believe this.