Carricks interview on Sky

TeaCider said:
Nah, Lenihan is fine and he was good for us.

But we're factually no worse off defensively without him, and he's a 30 year old who's not played a competitive match in 13 months because of a very serious injury.

He'll have a hard time getting back in to the side without there being a bunch of injuries or sales, and that's if he comes back at the same level as he was before the injury.
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In your opinion who would you say are the leaders in our squad, regardless of injury?
 
Ex Footy Legs said:
I do yes.
I want them to feel like all their hard work and clever play came to nothing against an inferior team - so they are super motivated to make sure they don’t do the things they did again!!!!
It’s a cracking motivator
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Horses for courses I guess when it comes to motivation/ reactions
 
Humpty said:
On what basis do you make this assumption? I just don't see it.
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With lenihan and smith they lead us to, at times, gritty draws or wins through their leadership qualities, not measurable of course for you stats guys, but we made the playoffs with uncompromising defenders who were not uber talented but made up for it by dragging more out of those around them.
That’s what leaders do!!
 
I would agree there’s a lack of leadership but it’s possibly down to our approach in the transfer market. We seem to be focusing exclusively on 21-24 year-old players with the odd one chucked in such as Ayling.

The danger there is the balance shifts too far one way and you end up lacking things like experience. I think we need to accept that the make-up of the team is definitely by design and that a lack of ‘old-fashioned style’ leadership and experience is a by-product of that.

You can also think that our leadership comes in terms of being brave on the ball. Hackney never goes missing in that respect. Neither does Rav, Clarke, Morris, McGree, even Azaz. They all want the ball and that speaks well of them.

But they’re not out-and-out captains and I think every team needs a couple of those. You have to have a couple of b*stards in there. I don’t think we have those right now and we haven’t really had that since peak Leadbitter.
 
Ex Footy Legs said:
With lenihan and smith they lead us to, at times, gritty draws or wins through their leadership qualities, not measurable of course for you stats guys, but we made the playoffs with uncompromising defenders who were not uber talented but made up for it by dragging more out of those around them.
That’s what leaders do!!
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We made the playoffs with an outstanding front 4 who scored the goals to win matches to cover the goals let in by a leaky defence.
That's what class players do!

Lament the loss of Akpom, Archer, Ramsey and the absence of McGree and Forss to injury.
I think we miss the presence of Crooks far more than Lenihan or Smith.
I also think we miss Howson's ability and experience.
 
Magic Man said:
In your opinion who would you say are the leaders in our squad, regardless of injury?
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I'd say the idea of a leader is almost always just people talking about older players who they think shout a bit.

We've often conceded as many with these leaders in the team than without them.

Obviously you'd look to the likes of Howson, Lenihan and Ayling as leaders, but we've had some hammerings with them playing too.
 
I don't understand why the answer to the inconsistency is always somebody who isn't playing. Lenihan, Smith, Forss or any of the others.

The reason that Boro didn't win yesterday is because Conway missed the penalty. Score that and it was done and dusted. I don't think there's much you can do to stop amazing shots like the guy scored twice yesterday, or fluky deflections. That just happens, but Boro had enough chances to put the game beyond Norwich's reach even allowing for the worldies. Missing penalties, especially such a weak one as yesterday, is usually going to cost dearly, and it did.

The frustration for the fans is that it's more points dropped from a good position. If you make mistakes, learn from them. It just seems as though the lessons aren't being learned, it's groundhog day football.
 
TeaCider said:
I'd say the idea of a leader is almost always just people talking about older players who they shout a bit.

We've often conceded as many with these leaders in the team than without them.

Obviously you'd look to the likes of Howson, Lenihan and Ayling as leaders, but we've had some hammerings with them playing too.
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I think you seem to be playing down the role of a leader somewhat, all good teams have 2-3 leaders.

My original post was implying that this current team would, in my opinion, benefit from more leaders being on the pitch.

I’m glad that we can agree that Lenihan is a leader within our current squad though
 
I do think having someone in that spine at CB/CM with bags of experience counts for a lot.

I love Morris/Hackney and Rav/Clarke (Edmundson at the moment who is deputising for Clarke)

But there's limited experience there and yesterday, as soon as that penalty was missed, we knew Norwich would have their tails up and some experience in the middle of the park would've been vital to take the sting out of the game for the next 5/10 minutes. Slowing down the game, reassurance, calmness, etc.

Instead, we capitulated and gifted a 2 goal lead away.

Some of that blame is down to Carrick though.
 
Lenihan is 31 next March.
Smith will be 33 in April.

Are they too old [in football terms] to play an active role in challenging for promotion, having been out for so long?
They won't be match fit for months, even if they came back tomorrow.
 
For example.

I do not believe for one second at 3-1 up after missing a penalty, we'd have lost that game with Clayton/Leadbitter in CM and/or Gibson/Ayala at CB.
 
Who is the best pointer we’ve had? Got to be this guy!


0_GP34874046.jpg
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
I would agree there’s a lack of leadership but it’s possibly down to our approach in the transfer market. We seem to be focusing exclusively on 21-24 year-old players with the odd one chucked in such as Ayling.

The danger there is the balance shifts too far one way and you end up lacking things like experience. I think we need to accept that the make-up of the team is definitely by design and that a lack of ‘old-fashioned style’ leadership and experience is a by-product of that.

You can also think that our leadership comes in terms of being brave on the ball. Hackney never goes missing in that respect. Neither does Rav, Clarke, Morris, McGree, even Azaz. They all want the ball and that speaks well of them.

But they’re not out-and-out captains and I think every team needs a couple of those. You have to have a couple of b*stards in there. I don’t think we have those right now and we haven’t really had that since peak Leadbitter.
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Spot on Viv, we have a mixture of very young development players and players who really still getting to grips with the championship.

They don't know how to see games out.
 
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