| Greater than the sum of its parts 13:06 - Sep 28 with 657 views | DBaldy |
Found it interesting reading various comments on here and elsewhere about our good start to the season, how we’re playing and how certain players are playing above themselves (or are maybe just better than fans of other teams realise?!) but it’s fairly clear to me that the team, in fact the whole squad, is greater than the sum of its parts.
George Hirst is a good example of this, as he barely got a look-in when on loan at Blackburn last season, but with a change of scenery and more importantly a different manager, he is now a very important player at the same level.
You can also look at Morsy and Luongo – yes Morsy dropped down a division to join us, but he hadn’t exactly set the world alight at Wigan and Middlesbrough previously, while Luongo couldn’t get into the Middlesbrough team last season, but they are both crucial to how we play and again are showing that they can indeed be very effective at this level.
Harry Clarke is maybe another example from his time at Stoke. But the point is, McKenna is getting more out of these players than various other managers have been able to while playing at the same level, while at the same time, players who have historically only ever been deemed good enough for League One (Burns, Burgess etc) are also more than able to hold their own at this level, which again is down to McKenna and his coaching staff. I would bet that if you put any of these players into another Championship team then they wouldn’t be performing at the same level and would return to their pre-McKenna level of performance.
I saw someone make reference to our squad being ranked 17th out of 24 teams in the Championship in the new FIFA / EAFC game (my son plays a lot of Xbox so I’m familiar with it myself!) and while any player and team ratings are clearly subjective, this is just another measure that to me proves the value of better management and coaching. For what it’s worth, Leeds are ranked 2nd and Southampton 3rd (with the scum 4th somehow!) and yet we’ve more than held our own against them, while of course against Wolves their players’ ratings would have been far higher on average than ours, but again our style of play saw us through.
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that McKenna is able to get far more out of his players than your standard Championship-level manager would and so it is absolutely essential that we do whatever we can to hold onto him for as long as possible. Over the course of time and as we hopefully progress upwards, certain players/positions will be gradually upgraded – Williams for Leigh and Hutchinson for Edwards being the recent examples – so if McKenna is able to get this level of performance out of the supposed 17th best Championship squad, what would he be able to achieve with even better players at his disposal? Say if we’re able to upgrade on other “fringe” players in January (possible examples might be Evans, Harness or Jackson) then the potential for this team just gets higher.
The level of detail that goes into preparing for every match, and evidently that goes into every player transaction, along with how he addresses the team and speaks in the media are things that people outside of ITFC don't see quite how good McKenna is.
I’ve said to some mates who don’t follow us as closely that if we keep hold of McKenna for the next 5 years, IMO we will definitely be in (or at least have been in) the Premier League, so with the additional financial benefits of that, and again upgrading players and positions when the right time comes, it’s hard to keep grounded when thinking about where McKenna could lead us over these next few years. He has everything set up exactly how he wants it here (for the time being at least) and so hopefully he does indeed see the project through rather than jump ship when a PL team eventually comes calling.
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| Greater than the sum of its parts on 13:44 - Sep 28 with 565 views | tractorboy1978 |
We've signed a lot of very high potential, very coachable players with (IMO) high ceilings since McKenna has been here. There's no doubt he's also got the likes of Luongo, Morsy, Burgess, Burns playing the best football of their careers but Hirst, Broadhead, Williams, Davis, Clarke, Hutchinson, Scarlett are all players that have represented their countries at youth level and/or come from top academies. I think some people do underrate the quality of some of the 'parts' we actually have.
Do agree though - it's so exciting to think what McKenna could do with even better players. [Post edited 28 Sep 2023 13:45]
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| Greater than the sum of its parts on 13:54 - Sep 28 with 516 views | Help |
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