Weeks ago when I voiced my concerns in noticing some alarming signs, I was booed and heckled with profanities by some of you (such as procdoc). However, I didn't reply in kind and chose the high road instead. Yet, it is interesting to note that some of these same people seem to be starting to sing a different tune.
As I said weeks ago, a pattern has been emerging as to how the poor form towards the end of last season has been carried forward into this season. The team has remained largely the same. So naturally you would expect to see improvement from thar and to build from how we tailed off dramatically last season. However, that has not happened. To me it seems like some players (e.g. Simms) have regressed tremendously, while I have doubts whether new signings like EMC are up to the required standard. Yet other like Rapha have still not showed up to the party. Though Sheaf is important, we cannot pin our poor form solely to his injury. The performances have largely been abysmal and disjointed (in MR's words) this season. The clean sheet and win vs Blackburn this week was an exception and not the norm and the team again failed miserably in trying to beat a Sheff Wed side that played a day later in midweek and has not won away this season until today.
Look Robins has been great for the last 7 years (don't get me wrong), but he's running out of excuses as to why we are losing games/points week in week out and are so easy to score against. I am not openly advocating for his dismissal, but things have to be looked at objectively in terms of the good of the club and how to take it forward. The issue I have with MR is that sometimes he's too nice and will not/cannot beat the shit out of his players to some results on the pitch. He seldom makes effectual changes during a match that impact the outcome and this season he's been outthought quite easily by opposing managers. In his defence though his limitations as a coach have been hampered by the recruitment policies of no loans, no purchases/loans of players in their late twenties/thirties, no midfield/defensive reinforcements but a plethora of attacking ones. To add to this perfect storm that is fast derailing this campaign are the hiring of the new Performance Director, her appointments of Boateng/Carr and the dismissal of Viveash. I honestly haven't seen anything of value contributed by this backroom staff that was going so well under the Adi/MR tandem.
We face Preston next who we never get a result against and they have shown great improvement of late winning 3-0 vs Watford and drawing 0-0 away to Burnley. So things don't look promising for the team or MR.
