The final third of the season has been awful. I have posted this many times over the past few weeks but there are a couple of things that stand out for me, which make me doubtful about another season of Warnock.
One is the Blackburn game, Warnock actually mentioned that himself yesterday. "The Blackburn game killed us," he said. I agree with him but would absolutely love to know why that was. We should've had a penalty and played against 10 men, and we lost Fry for a handful of games after, but how can one moment like that change the course of an entire season? I always had the sense that we never really recovered from it and hearing Warnock reference that game yesterday was interesting. I do wonder what happened to us from then on because we were flying at that point. In fact we went to Forest in February and put in our best, most complete performance of the season so we were still capable of doing the business.
Second one is the absolutely mental decision to start wanging on about next season when there were still a dozen games to play in this one. I think we were 7th. "Next season we'll have a right good go, are you with me," may look like a great campaign to sell season tickets on paper - it is, to be fair - but how about we concentrate on the current season where, you know, we're 7th and in with a great shout of the play-offs having allowed you to add Bolasie, Fisher, Mendez-Laing and Kebano to your squad? I cannot get my head around such an experienced manager writing off a season that had been full of so much promise so early on. He must've realised what putting so much emphasis on the next campaign would look like. I think the team, on a subconscious level at least, were given an out by that. If the manager doesn't believe then why should they?
We have had some injuries too - our squad is not deep enough to cover the loss of Fry and Tav in particular but also Dijksteel and Morsy. Tav is absolute class, his importance cannot be understated IMO. It is imperative we add a similar player in the summer. And the striker situation is mental. We managed to finish 10th without one, essentially.
The end of this season just feels like such a shame. I was absolutely loving it for a while, I liked the way we were doing our stuff. We were drilled, nice and solid, had a style of play - it was effective football, quite direct of course but we played some effective stuff doing that and when Tav is in the middle of the field we play some good football - but it has ended quite badly. The football has been dreadful for weeks and Warnock's selections and public statements become more muddled and, at times, plain odd.
Obviously he will be in charge next season so if he can find better strikers than Akpom, add a good 'keeper and strengthen the middle of the field then we should be good for a play-off push. With Warnock's teams you never know, we might be 10th again or we might win the league. I suppose that's what you get from him and it will be interesting at least. If he can get us back to how we were for the first two thirds of this season I'll be happy, TBH.