Losing jones has killed our season.

Whilst injuries have undermined our season, tactics and selections - particularly at home by Carrick have not helped. In stark contrast to last season the loan signings in January of Ayling and Thomas - who appears determined will start has undermined confidence in the team and adversely impacted performances. The insistence that Barlaser also starts irrespective of how bad he has been in the previous game is baffling. His super cautious approach to getting our best players back on the pitch is killing us, what on earth is going on with the likes of Dieng and Latte Lath being on the bench yesterday? He has been getting things wrong for some time now but he excelled himself yesterday. The loss of regular starters like Jones has definitely and significantly impacted us but that doesn’t give Carrick and Co a free pass on abject failure at home this season.
 
Duffman said:
Whilst injuries have undermined our season, tactics and selections - particularly at home by Carrick have not helped. In stark contrast to last season the loan signings in January of Ayling and Thomas - who appears determined will start has undermined confidence in the team and adversely impacted performances. The insistence that Barlaser also starts irrespective of how bad he has been in the previous game is baffling. His super cautious approach to getting our best players back on the pitch is killing us, what on earth is going on with the likes of Dieng and Latte Lath being on the bench yesterday? He has been getting things wrong for some time now but he excelled himself yesterday. The loss of regular starters like Jones has definitely and significantly impacted us but that doesn’t give Carrick and Co a free pass on abject failure at home this season.
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To be fair though, Barlaser played well at Leicester and who else do you play there at the moment?
Lath presumably not fully fit.
Dieng who knows.
I'd be playing Engel ahead of Thomas who was v poor last week (and Engel did nothing wrong v Leicester)
 
BoroPhil said:
To be fair though, Barlaser played well at Leicester and who else do you play there at the moment?
Lath presumably not fully fit.
Dieng who knows.
I'd be playing Engel ahead of Thomas who was v poor last week (and Engel did nothing wrong v Leicester)
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This place and football is so up and down in general, it was only a few weeks ago when Engel had been written off and now it’s Thomas.

All will have good and bad games.
 
Agree that we are lost without Jones at the moment. The only player with pace who will drive forward. I think the sale of Rogers has killed any belief though. Not because he was our best player (he wasn’t!) but because of what it represented. I think fans could get on board with young players being brought in and a transition season if we reaped the rewards next year. But selling him as soon as there was some interest, not reinvesting, on top of the heavy defeat to Chelsea just killed any belief. In both the season and the “model”.

To think Villa were only interested in him after the FA Cup match. A real sliding doors moment.
 
Ripley11 said:
Agree that we are lost without Jones at the moment. The only player with pace who will drive forward. I think the sale of Rogers has killed any belief though. Not because he was our best player (he wasn’t!) but because of what it represented. I think fans could get on board with young players being brought in and a transition season if we reaped the rewards next year. But selling him as soon as there was some interest, not reinvesting, on top of the heavy defeat to Chelsea just killed any belief. In both the season and the “model”.

To think Villa were only interested in him after the FA Cup match. A real sliding doors moment.
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The fee we got for Roger’s was legalised stealing, I don’t think too many people would disagree.
 
dontheking said:
Doing the double over leicester and having the easiest run to a cup semi ever, has papered over some cracks of a very bad season.
I did call it at the start but after the run of 7 wins I thought I was wrong, but as usual I'm proven right.
I did say relegation battle.
Not out the woods yet. 😬
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A stopped clock is right twice a day. If you are unceasingly negative, when the teams going through a bad patch you can feel all smug. Well done. "But as usual I'm proven right." Nauseating.

On a more general point, i think people underestimate how important Rogers was for us. Before the Sunderland match they brought up a stat on sky that showed in our previous 10 or something games Rogers had 8 goal contributions, the next nearest was Jones with 2.
 
BoroBourneNBred said:
In the summer we need:
CB
RB
Two MF
Two CF

That’s a minimum
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Probably,
festa5 said:
There's just no outlet at the minute. Jones, Coburn, Latte Lath, Rogers. They all give you something to hit if you can get a bit of space around the press.

Forces teams back a bit.

I think a big part of why it looks like we're dithering more at the back is because there isn't a good easy out ball anymore.
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we also lack ballers in midfield, you can press barlaser and win the ball high, teams know this
 
I don’t disagree that selling Rogers wasn’t really a choice at the end of the day, but we needed to reinvest or get in an exciting loan to compensate. As it is, I think it killed belief in what we’re trying to do. The whole place has felt flat since.
 
Ripley11 said:
I don’t disagree that selling Rogers wasn’t really a choice at the end of the day, but we needed to reinvest or get in an exciting loan to compensate. As it is, I think it killed belief in what we’re trying to do. The whole place has felt flat since.
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Short term it has yes, however we all know that winter is a poor time for value, so that ffp headroom will go to the summer transfer budget which must be significant already. If we were to sell Hackney and/or rav then we would likely have the biggest summer budget even above the parachute sides. Hopefully we won’t sell them and just spend the ~20m on our ffp allowance instead
 
The loss of Jones really was a low point in what looks like being an incredibly frustrating season.

It was totally and utterly unnecessary challenge which has had a disproportionate effect on the player to the actual force used.

Without him we are at times very ponderous in attack.

I don’t think the season has been killed by Jones absence, he is a good player but that for me would be taking his absence too far.

The midfield for me is key. Can we expect Howson to carry us forward in a promotion drive next year?

Can we keep Hackney if premier league clubs actually do come calling?

An assessment of the other midfielders would likely mean to me that they need to be replaced if we are to push on in this division.

Big changes look likely in the summer.
 
Jones' injury has changed nothing. With or without him we'd be a championship team next season. Writing was on the wall back in the summer.
 
Jones coming back into the team resulted in uptick in performance from 2nd half sheff wed

Jones gets injured results in down tick in form.

The stats don’t lie. Jones is our most important player, this season
 
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