Iron Bru › Forums › Blast Furnace › Southend United › Reply To: Southend United
What’s the most worrying the complete lack of team cohesion. Butler got all the players in relatively early and most “nearly all” on permanent contracts in a bid to get them bedded in. Two games in and it looks like he’s picked 11 players at random and their all strangers.
No patterns of play and looks disjointed. Not sure what he’s been doing with them during pre season, but whatever it is, it clearly hasn’t worked.
The squad is a jumbled mess. GK problem hasn’t been solved due to Butler’s stubbornness. A raft of RB’s and natural left wingers, when we’re short of a quality CM playerm striker and obviously GK. Jones is a fantastic shot stopper but falls way short in all the other goalkeeping areas, distrubution, claiming high balls e.t.c.
Butler was asked during a DAZN interview whether he has a preferred style of play, which he resonded “No. I just like winning football”. When you actually think about it, we never have had a style of play since he’s been at the club. We basically pass around the back countless times and hoof it forward in an attempt to play off the scraps.
Only problem is we haven’t got a Callum Roberts playing 2/3 levels below his ability level who’s going to drift into spaces. pick the scraps up and do the unthinkable. Butler is playing in the same manner without the magic on the pitch which get’s us out of trouble.
Only way really to circumvent the lack of Roberts would be to play two up front. If Butler thinks he can keep playing in the same way in the hope of a player coming up with a moment of magic game in game out, he’s in for a rude awakening. Brennan came up with one against Yeovil, but he’s not Roberts, we can’t be hanging our hat on him every week.
I’ll make a prediction even from this early on that Butler will be found out and he’ll end up getting sacked. We are still witnessing odd team selections, so not sure he’s really learnt much. Howe out wide against Yeovil despite having 4 wide options and leaves Rowley out against Southend for the anonymous Richards, who has looked absolutely abysmal so far.
Spent most of the budget and we’ve ended up with the same basic problems of last season as nothing has been addressed. Only now we don’t have star players who are able to paper over the cracks. This squad is the most unbalanced it’s been in distant memory.
Why he re-signed Barrows and went for Ogle when we have Jb, Starbuck is odd the say the least. Jb and Starbuck are miles ahead of those two. Completely wasted the budget.
Granted it’s very early on in the season, but it’s not looking good at all. After watching us in the last two games, something certainly isn’t right. Team Cohesion/ bonding should have been fostered in pre season. I haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever of us having either.
At the time I understood the Barrows re-signing.
My thoughts were that he’d been retained to be a utility player across the back to be used as cover, also with one eye on him helping us rebuild the much needed junior academy, with his deep links and access to high level junior footballers in the region.
Plus, all said and done he’s a solid enough defender, you’ll never get anything exciting, but that’s fine for a guy who can cover across the back 4.
What I can’t understand was bringing Ogle into a position we were already loaded up on..
This position should have been used to bring in a striker or to bolster the weakened CM position.