It is a bit too early for a play off run in spreadsheet, but as we are not too far away from playing each other I thought I would reach out and see how you think the season has started /will pan out for you. In our case it's without Pan....still that's Ipswich doomed as we said we would not sell him to any rivals for promotion .....so watch them plummet!
Fair warning, however I am now the official Matchday thread preview writer on PASOTI....entitled One Game at a Time it is a tongue in cheek review of recent form, our upcoming opponents and their history/travails against, us plus anything else that amuses me. It is written for the home audience so you will be able to read 22 out of 23 without getting too upset, although you do get a mention in the current one for the game at Derby as the only outlier in our September month of games against ex Premier sides .....which does include single season Swindon, of course in the Pizza Cup.
https://pasoti.co.uk/threads/one-game-at-a-time-derby-county-a-september-3rd.119584/ for those who might be interested.
After last seasons ultimately horrible end for us both I find myself strangely drawn to check your scores, and admit to being surprised by the slow start you have made, and delighted by our relatively good one...Charlton ten man blip aside. We both seem to have invested in forwards who immediately get injured, and there was a lot of chat early on about you being in for Hardie....happily unsuccessfully if true.
Hopefully we will be able to revisit last years end of season madness in a more positive way.
Good luck against Burton, the trend suggests plenty of goals/red cards......mainly against them so you might be right behind us again come 5PM Saturday....
Your timing could not be worse, our forum is currently in full nuclear meltdown after a pathetic whimper to end the transfer window. I'll try to keep it balanced in my summary!
We ended the season poorly - no denying that - but it did help in highlighting where our biggest weaknesses were so this transfer window should have been relatively easy. We needed:
- An upgrade at both LB and RB
- More power in the midfield
- A couple of wingers to replace the outgoing loanees and Sykes
- Proper CB cover
- Desperately needed a striker to help Matty Taylor out
- And then the above was added to when our first choice CB McNally left for Burnley for £2m, and we let two utility players Williams and Forde leave
Of the above we have brought in a new attacking RB as our only deadline day signing - Djavan Anderson from Lazio. No one has any idea if he'll actually be a promotion quality player or not, but personally I'm excited to see what he can do.
We've replaced McNally with Stuart Findlay who so far looks to be a better defender, but doesn't have the excellent on the ball ability of McNally.
Ciaron Brown returned who fulfils the CB cover, as well as youth player James Golding making the step up. Unfortunately, we failed to address the LB problem, which means Brown is also our cover there so not entirely helpful.
We signed a few wingers - all of which are now problems in the squad. Yanic Wildschut got a freak injury after 10 minutes in preseason and is out until January at least. Josh Murphy seemed an excellent signing, then also got injured quickly and is spending a while on the sidelines. Then Jodi Jones is a bit of an enigma in that he did well on trial, signed on a cheap contract, and then has made one cup appearance since and yesterday we tried and failed to loan him out. Marcus Browne we signed in January is way too good for League 1 but - you guessed it - is also out injured! Leaving the only available winger a youth player who, while exciting, is in his first proper season of league football.
We addressed the power in midfield by signing a 19 year old loanee Lewis Bate who is technically quite good but is short and skinny and is the opposite of a powerful midfielder.
And as for the striker, we tied Sam Baldock down to a contract - and then he ALSO got injured in pre season and won't be back until October at the earliest - and loanee Kyle Joseph from Swansea who I can't criticise because he's been decent so far. However, because of our horror show on the wing, we've swapped to a 352 formation which means we still don't really have cover for Matty Taylor because one is always injured and the other is already on the pitch. Again, our cover is a young kid who looks good, but shouldn't be relied upon so heavily.
So as you can see, a pretty bloody awful transfer window. We used to complain about the 22 player squad cap limiting what we can do - this season we aren't even close to hitting it and that's when you include our 5 injured players, our player who is mainly just a coach Mousinho, and the two players we tried to loan out yesterday. So while you may be surprised at our slow start, I think most OUFC fans are just baffled how we could have had our best budget ever, put in multiple club record bids, including 750k for Hardie, and yet have failed so miserably in the window that the start actually isn't a surprise.
We had what should have been a fairly easy start to the season. After Burton our fixtures get much tougher. If Karl doesn't pull some bloody good results out of his ass in the next two months, we'll likely be packing his bags.
Depressingly, that actually was quite balanced.