Saturday 1st October 2022

[Floreat Salopia]

With all due respect to Shrewsbury, were you ever really likely to have a ‘playoff push’. Surely a mid table season is still a decent one for you

We’ve spent more than our usual budget this summer and the club and manager came out in the media saying that we’ll ‘giving it a go’ this season and not just here to make up the numbers. Cotterill’s come out and said if the best we can hope for is to just stay up/finish mid table then what’s the point of kicking off the season as we may as well just give up now.

We’ve recruited some decent players who won’t have been cheap in the summer. Player like Dunkley, Shipley, Bayliss and O’Brien won’t have been cheap. Add onto we’ve already got very good League 1 players in Marosi, Pennington, Flanagan, Nurse, Leahy and Udoh. On paper this squad is just as good as the squad Paul Hurst put together which saw us finish 3rd place with a silly high amount of points back in the 17/18 season. If it wasn’t for Wigan and Blackburn throwing ridiculous amounts about then we’d have had a shot at Championship football for the first time in donkeys years.

Unfortunately though, with spending a lot has meant our squad is paper thin and any injuries were always going to have an instrumental impact on us.

 

[Luke Imp]

There's always seems to be one unfancied side who gate crash the PO's - MK last season, us the season before, Wycombe(?) before that, Shrewsbury under Hurst.

 

[91SPP]

Have you figured out how to use Hourihane yet? When you signed him I assumed you had signed the one player that could challenge Bannon as best midfielder in the league. When I saw him play I was genuinely shocked how bang average he was. And also he seemed unfit, and was blowing at the end.

Hourihane has scored a few goals, but he's not been the best. With Knight moving out of right back to centre mid, who took his place in Ireland's starting XI, then he will have all on holding down a position in this Derby team. It's three between: Smith (injured), Bird, Knight, Sibley & Hourihane. I would personally have Sibley, Knight and Bird - Sibley, for me, is our most talented player but due to the nature of his play he's usually rotated. I think Bird and Knight are locks at this point. Hourihane/Sibley will probably rotate, although I wouldn't be surprised if Sibley plays off the striker in some games either.

 

[thewwfc]

There's always seems to be one unfancied side who gate crash the PO's - MK last season, us the season before, Wycombe(?) before that, Shrewsbury under Hurst.

yeah, we definitely were, I never thought that we’d be much more than mid-table the season we went up to the Championship, let alone what neutrals might have thought.

 

[WhiteRussian]

There's always seems to be one unfancied side who gate crash the PO's - MK last season, us the season before, Wycombe(?) before that, Shrewsbury under Hurst.

True. And clubs like mine will have that one shot at promotion where everything clicks. If you don't make it you get asset stripped and fall back to mid (or lower) table obscurity.

 

[BarrieOwl]

True. And clubs like mine will have that one shot at promotion where everything clicks. If you don't make it you get asset stripped and fall back to mid (or lower) table obscurity.

Makes a change from you asset stripping a clubs entire identity and history

 

[WhiteRussian]

Makes a change from you asset stripping a clubs entire identity and history

Fuck off and do your Victor Meldrew impression somewhere else Barrie, I've heard it all before.

 

[BarrieOwl]

Truth stings a bit White Russian?

 

[Luke Imp]

True. And clubs like mine will have that one shot at promotion where everything clicks. If you don't make it you get asset stripped and fall back to mid (or lower) table obscurity.

Exactly, it a tried and tested pattern. The difficult part is trying to get out the rut. We just about managed it last season, whether we're quite on solid enough foundations to be a little more comfortable this season we'll find out but it's difficult to re-build again.

 

[Luke Imp]

yeah, we definitely were, I never thought that we’d be much more than mid-table the season we went up to the Championship, let alone what neutrals might have thought.

Do you think you've reached the end of your squad cycle? Feels like you've had a low turnover of players for two or three years.

 

[thewwfc]

Do you think you've reached the end of your squad cycle? Feels like you've had a low turnover of players for two or three years.

Yes, definitely. I understand we have 15 players out of contract at the end of this season, and it remains to be seen how we’ll deal with this.

We’re also highly likely to lose Mehmeti in January, who’s carried our only attacking threat in a few games, but I’m sure we won’t get enough of a fee to replace him with a player of equivalent promise.

I don’t feel we have any real dead wood in the squad, where you think, “can’t wait to get rid of them”, but equally we’re missing strength in depth in some areas.

Akinfenwa was an irreplaceable one-off, but we really didn’t even make an effort to replace him…well, I’m sure we *looked*, but without success.

We’ve also relied heavily on Jacobson at LB for many seasons, but I think this time around he’s coming to the end of his ability to be effective at this level. Anyone with pace could always do him, that hasn’t changed, but he used to be able to compensate with great anticipation and a good footballing brain…but he’s had some shockers this season.

It’s not the worst thing in the world if this is a transition season, trying to be objective about it, but our chairman doesn’t help by banging on about promotion being the expectation this season.