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Not for one second criticising a 7 point haul from 3 games, 2 of which were away in the Championship, but it's abundantly clear that performance levels, have dropped since the international break.
These levels are still very high. We are the second best Championship side ever at this stage of a season. We've just been promoted. My god is this dream land.
Last season our form in the first third of the season was incredible. The final third was just laughable. But that bit in the middle between November and January is where we dropped a lot of points, lost games, went on a run without a win and drew something like 5 in 6 or 7 matches.
Burns is a bigger miss to how we play that I realised. The international break doesn't help. But we've also returned to a period of ridiculous rain, horrible conditions and of course slightly diminished pitches.
Before the break, Huddersfield away we didn't get going for large parts. Since then we had some very dodgy spells against Bristol City, Birmingham ended the first half with 7 efforts to 1, dominance against us we've not seen under McKenna. Plymouth for large parts looked better than us.
It's possible that this team, the way we draw teams out, the way we need the conditions to be ideal to look our absolute best, is going to mean we are in for a tough few months in terms of results.
Massimo hasn't looked the same 9/10 every match levels of late. Morsy has possibly had some average games for his insanely high standards. Maybe a bit of fatigue too.
Unlike last season though, our worst performances, which are still decent, see us taking close to maximum points.
November and December are going to be very tough. Come out of that with a healthy lead still going into the transfer window and the easing of conditions and we've got every chance!
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Fair Weather Team? on 10:13 - Nov 7 with 785 views
I think people are being overly critical or at least over analyzing the recent performances. Brizzle away was like many of our away games this season, if anything we were slightly more in control than in some others. We had a rusty first 10, then controlled the next 60 minutes and should really have scored more than the one we managed, then we came under a bit of pressure last 15 that ultimately led to them creating only one good half chance and not much else. The only away game where we've been more in control was against Sheffield Wednesday, the worst side in the league, and we still only won that 1-0.
The Plymouth game again was not dissimilar to many of our home games this season. We spent a lot of the game on the front foot, created a lot of chances, but looked vulnerable at times on the break. That's been the case in most of our home games this season, the exception being the Hull game which many - myself included - lauded as the best performance they've seen from a Town side in 20+ years. That's the standard we should aspire to but we won't hit it every week and in truth we've only really hit THAT level once this season. If Davis doesn't switch off in stoppage time, the Plymouth game is a comfortable 3-1 win and we go away happy.
The Birmingham game, they started very fast and ultimately whilst that tempo stifled us for 30-40 minutes it wasn't sustainable. Ruddy was much the busier keeper, they scored two slightly freak goals, and ultimately we did enough to come back and get a draw. Perhaps a slight dip from previous away performances for the opening part of the game, largely because Birmingham set a pace that was very hard to live with (for them as well as us) but we limited their opportunities and ended the game strongly. Hardly a poor performance.
I think as fans we've been spoilt rotten over the last 9 months. We're on a run of form that is not normal by any measure and at times we've been steamrollering sides when everything clicks. Tail end of last season we were just battering everything in sight. That's not going to be possible with the greater quality sides have at this level but we're still setting a high bar in terms of performances. There were some grumbles after the Preston game that we weren't really at our best, looked a bit leggy etc. but the consensus from Preston fans seemed to be we were the best side they'd faced - and they were fresh off a trip to Leicester - and we'd likely go up. That's a very different view from the view of many of our fans.
[Post edited 7 Nov 2023 9:00]
I would agree relative to performances earlier in the season. I'm not sure the performance levels at Birmingham or Bristol City were any more or less dominant than most of the previous away trips this season. We lauded narrow wins at Southampton, QPR and Sunderland, in what were always going to be tight games where we would concede chances, I'm not sure why Brizzle is any different.
Plymouth I thought was a touch below par myself, especially 1st half. I thought we looked leggy and a bit clumsy in possession. There were a few nice patterns of play, largely involving Broady, but few and far between. Perhaps it was a consequence of such a long break, and then the quick turnaround from the first game back from that. There wasn't much in the 1st half and going in level was probably fair, I'd say the same was true in the 2nd really where both sides created chances. I thought Plymouth were unlucky to come away with nothing, they had some big chances at really crucial times that they didn't convert.
Any talk of 'poor form' is a real nonsense though, we've picked up 7 points in the last 3 tough games, which included 2 away trips to decent Championship sides. I think some people's expectations have become a little silly. I'm not sure if there was a specific inflection point when supporters suddenly expected the likes of Hladky, Burgess, Luongo, Jackson, Harness and Ladapo to be going away to established Championship sides, some of whom have spent millions this summer, and outplaying them on their own patch. We need a little bit of realism at how well we're doing with the resources we have. That's not to say we don't have some good players, I think we do, but so does everyone else and it's an incredibly attritional league when you're met with that quality every week.
Hopefully tonight we can give a good account of ourselves. It would be nice to see some more of the incisive football we've become accustomed to, out from the back, breaking through the lines, into Chappers and Broadhead on the half turn. I don't tend to care what others think about us, but it's on SKY, and I've got a few non Town supporter friends who are really dialled in to the McKenna hype, hopefully we show what the fuss is about tonight and take another step closer to keeping him here.
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Fair Weather Team? on 13:06 - Nov 7 with 677 views
Don’t disagree that we appear to have struggled at points in the last 3 games but we’ve “won” all 3 of them on xG, which is as good a proxy for “who deserved to win” as any.
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Fair Weather Team? on 15:42 - Nov 7 with 575 views
This might have been mentioned further down the thread, but during that November-January we didn't have Hirst, Clarke*, Broadhead or Luongo.
Three of them added some muscle and ability to scrap, and the other is pure class in the final third, and made us more likely to come up with a moment to win tight games, like Bristol City recently.
Imagine how much better we'd have been if we had those four from August 2022, scary good I reckon.
*now being edged out by Williams, but the point stands.
IMO we need to be facing the better teams, who will try and play against us, for us to get maximum joy. Leeds away for example worries me less than Brum Saturday. As leeds will play, leaving space for us.
That said we are going up and gonna keep this insane run going
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