Armstrong - Yes, great signing
Murphy - Ultimately proved to be a very poor signing. Very good ability, but I think we all have to accept his positional play, covering and tracking back etc. has proved to be a big Achilles Heel for him. His form is patchy at best and his head drops too easily.
Kent - Failed to replace him. Team suffered greatly as a result.
Joe Cole - Poor signing. First we spent weeks trying to integrate him into the team and wait for him to get fit and then we tried to get our play to work around him, rather than him slot into the system we were playing. He slowed things down greatly in his play.
Turner - An accident waiting to happen and he was only here to gain match fitness.
Jones - Hopefully a very good signing.
In doing so we have moved from 17th to 9th? - You do know the season isn't over yet don't you? Talk about spin!
We have moved from top to 9th, been on a horrendous run and continue to fall away alarming (from 11 points clear of 7th, to 8 points behind 6th. From being ahead of Burton in the table, to now being an incredible 19 points behind!)
I like the bloke, but .....
This is the third time this has happened to him. That should set massive alarm bells off for us! I am sure I am not alone in fully expecting this same thing to happen again next season.
Ricketts should have been dropped an age ago, but he has been ever present all season, injury apart.
Reda - We all knew it and it wasn't a question of if, just of when.
We started off really well, but then teams put systems in place that nullified us. This started happening way back in October and November. TM never, ever found a counter to this. We never adapted and just kept trying the same thing and it kept not working.
We needed to change our game and we didn't.
Another really worrying factor now too is that we are looking incredibly likely to be carrying a distinct lack of positivity into the summer. It has been a horrendous fall from grace.
Next season we want to be in a position of starting to build on what we had this! What we have is a dreadful run, our being very low confidence and us left with no strikeforce.
We will be starting from a position of palpable negativity and no positivity whatsoever.
Saying we were top for a bit months earlier in the season is nothing to be positive about, when it was followed by relegation form for the rest of the campaign.
The trend is downwards and has been so now for 4 months.
There are going to be very few positives to take from this season. A season needs to be looked at as a whole. August - October we were very good, November up until this point, we have been right up there with the worst teams in this division.
We are building from nothing and next season we need a keeper, at least one really good CB, a quality playmaker, another wide midfielder and 2 strikers.
It is all but starting from scratch.