The regression to how we we are playing versus this time a year ago is the biggest worry for fans and I share that concern. In my day job, you have to stay focussed on the rolling recent performance, what happened 6 months is banked but you don’t get any pats on the back if recent performance is crap because the recent performance is the sign for the near future. It’s how football managers are monitored rightly or wrongly.
However, we haven’t had our best player recently whereas last season we were struggling even with Jack. Though we have had a few poor games even with jack, he shouldn’t be relied on to be one man team.
We aren’t losing these games, whereas last season we might not have created as many good chances to have been able to score first yesterday. I know we beat Newcastle home and away last season, but those sorts of games as played out yesterday we struggled.
The squad is relegation fodder when you get to the quality on bench. Yesterday didn’t look too bad because Cash was there, but the dross we have on the bench each week leaves us with limited options.
I do think Smith has a ceiling which might be lower for us than I like to hope, as he regresses into the same decisions far too often. Football managers are stubborn, in some respects I respect that as they look to build a philosophy whilst the fans want to win the here and now, but it not like we even tweak things for our own advantage.
That said, it’s very difficult to tweak and change things with the squad he’s got. Take Trez, he can only play in two positions, and you know what you’ll get from him and where his limitations are. As much as I like Trez’s attitude, there’s a player who just isn’t all round good enough for a club looking to establish itself as a premier league team again. Traore too, isn’t good enough based on my subjective view of the first half of the season - too early to write off, but if quality comes up in summer we need to go for it.
When I see the names on the Sheff Utd odds list for next manager, you realise there is dross out there. If having rich, American owners means we can attract the Ancelotti types then there comes a point we might have to make that decision, but there isn’t better out there without going back to the managers we were hiring from the 2010’s.
Big summer for the club to invest in quality on the pitch, and big responsibility on Smith to then work with that improved squad to be less reliant on one or two players and have more in the way of tactics to win games we should be winning rather than being one dimensional.