King, that’s a decent summary of the game. However, I don’t agree that there was any change in the manager’s mindset from being ‘negative and cowardly’ to ‘brave old Cook’. I wonder whether a lot of people just see it that way so that it fits with their own narrative.
It’s funny how when we are on a losing streak Cook is being all negative and scared to attack but we win and suddenly it’s because he did what we all said he should be doing and went for it. The reality is that the team were set up no more positively on Wednesday than we were on Saturday. In fact, in the first half on Saturday we were arguably better than we were in the first half against Blackburn. The only difference was that we didn’t put the ball in the back of the net against Reading and because we didn’t the game fizzled out. When we scored on Wednesday suddenly the confidence came flooding back and we looked like our old selves.
That’s the difference, confidence, form, something just clicks and suddenly the players find that extra yard and the sharpness in their passing comes back and they want the ball again and players get forward and aren’t worried about leaving gaps at the back anymore. I’m not doing Cook down here by saying he didn’t make any amazing tactical decisions, yes he tinkered with things a bit (switching Roberts & Byrne) but he didn’t suddenly say “let’s throw everybody forwards”. He didn’t make Vaughan suddenly win everything in the air nor did he make Windass have his best game for us or turn Morsy back into the player he was last season.
A couple of weeks ago Naismith and Windass weren’t fit to burn but now we’ve seen that with a bit of confidence and a run in the team they aren’t as bad as some people think. Same with Robinson, he went from being the best thing since sliced bread to not fit to wear the shirt in a matter of weeks. He’s a young lad on a bad run of form, that’s all.
I get what you’re saying about how he made a more positive substitution by bringing Macmanaman on but the difference was we were 2-0 up. It’s easy to bring on a flair player at that point when the momentum was with us and we were looking a threat. To counter that he did actually bring on Connolly as well, at the same time, to try and protect the lead.
Rather than changing his methods Cook, to his credit, has stuck with things and has had faith in the players to turn it around, which is what they’ve done. If you listen to the official podcast a couple of the players mention that he’s had them doing extra training and they have trained harder than they ever have and Cook has reminded them about what made them a good team in the first place.
Cook has resisted the calls to go for it and throw caution to the wind and I think he’s been right to do so. I don’t think he’s been overly negative he’s just been trying to find the right balance whilst having his main front 4 out, with the injuries mounting up and with us playing all of the top four over the course of this run. Over the last few weeks we’ve had players out of form, with no confidence, who have hardly played this year, making individual errors but people want us to throw caution to the wind and go for it. Football doesn’t work like that and we’d have been smashed 4 or 5 nil a couple of times. Even the great managers don’t play themselves out of a bad run that way.