You couldn't make this up:
- do poorly playing the same way all the time...... Slate the Manager.
- do poorly playing in a makeshift Plan B style..... Slate the Manager.
Ah well. I'm sure he'll get both barrels tomorrow whatever the style unless we trounce Villa.
?
You aren't describing two separate problems that contradict each other - playing a bad plan B continually is the one problem.
Plan A was fine switching to plan B (trying to be defensive when we cant defend and long ball with no target men) was blatently a far worse idea than trying to carry on with plan A regardless of any injuries and then persisting with something doesn't work.
On the rare occasions we saw glimpses of plan A since September it still worked even with 2, 3 or all 4 of Cooks supposed best front line missing. On some occasions we've left out one of those players we apparently can't function without by choice. Derby second half, Blackburn and first half against Swansea were Plan A and worked great despite the fact Massey only played in 1 of those and the other 3 didn't feature much if at all in any of them. In fact playing more passing football made some of the duds look much better.
If our of our second string were all 6'4 monsters with no pace maybe it would make sense abandoning playing football and going long but the second string are arguably worse equipped to play long ball than the first choice. Macca and Windass couldn't win a long ball if their life depended on it and it nullified their attributes of pace and running with the ball by hoofing it over their heads rather than play to feet.
The first choice front 4 were inherited by Cook (Sharpe said him and Roberto signed Massey) and only cost about 1.3m combined. Cook has signed about 8 players to play accross those positions for about 5m combined so it's alarming he suggests the players he signed cant play his prefered system. Especially since before the start of the season Grigg had Jacobs had struggled at this level and Massey struggled in L1 - the signings in the summer were likely to be considered their replacements if they struggled again so surely were bought to play in Cooks system?
There has been absolutely zero benefit in performance or results in switching away from plan A. It's played against our strengths and to our weaknesses regardless of who is fit or not its been inexplicable and deserves criticising for persisting with it. We even used plan B against teams who were considerably worse than us and effectively deliberately dropped to their level.
If those front 4 were out and we tried to play the same way and it didn't work fair enough maybe you look at changing but we seemed to just give up without even trying and we all couldve guessed our new tactics were destined to fail without any hindsight by simply looking at what the squads strengths and weaknesses were. It was simply bad management. We've just got to hope the penny has finally dropped after that interview and tomorrow plan A will be back. If it is we will at least go down swinging and give ourselves a chance to pull off an upset.