No Need To Panic – Yet

Prior to the season, it seemed many were expecting some kind of vague promotion push, or at least for us to be challenging for play-offs.

Seven games in, a few are apparently now believing that we are in a relegation battle.

The signs are ominous. We have a cretinous owner casting gigantic dark clouds over the club and thrashing bolts of lightning at every available opportunity. We have a manager, who affably likeable, is completely inexperienced in England. We have sold almost every player with any form of experience. We have replaced them with loans, and some promising but relatively inexperienced players.

Most notably, we have lost 4 games – 4 in the last 5. The two victories came against two very poor teams, at home.

Yet it is too early to panic.

Whilst our form away is dreadful – this will end at some point this season. Our home form is still strong.

We are creating plenty of chances and from the relatively small amount of football I have seen, playing good football at times.

The main problem seems to be a real lack of experience at this level.

Dawson and Meyler are the only two outbound players with either any experience or authority. Dawson is increasingly vulnerable, and Meyler does make the odd mistake – as great and as necessary a player for us that he is.

The rest of our defence is sadly lightweight, and quite inexperienced at this level.

It is particularly worrying just how many mistakes have been made – some of the defending for the goals conceded over the last two games has been truly amateur.

From what I’ve seen, there really does have to be significant work on defensive positioning and defending as a unit, and perhaps away from home we need to play two defensive central midfielders to protect the back four. Do we have two defensive midfielders?

But definitely too early to panic.

Unless we lose to Sunderland on Saturday.

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