From: http://thewatfordnest.blog.com/ Right, theres only one place to start and that’s with the comments I made at the end of the blog on the Manchester United game. “Results against Manchester United away do not determine whether we'll go down, it's the results against Sheffield United, Wigan, West Ham, Charlton that will. The players need to make sure they don't lose faith, keep concentration and never give up, or this season will be like the last Premiership experience – A False Dawn.” I think it is fair to say, that the players did lose concentration, they were not battling as much as usual and it was another Sheffield United. So many questions: Why after a battling performance against Man U did the players not put that extra bit of effort in against a winnable game like Bolton? More importantly why, considering we were the highest or second highest scoring team in the Championship can’t we score to save our lives now? Is it purely that without King (and now Young) we lack creativity and sharpness? When I saw Bolton had gone 1.0 up I knew it was all over, why last season did we go 1.0 down and know that we could still get a result? 1.1 (Plymouth) or 3.2 (Norwich)? I’m not going to give up hope after one game, but it’s the matches like this Bolton game that will be getting us all down, and unfortunately make us more critical about our chances for next season. We can’t afford to be lazy but I do believe we have, at worst a mid-table Championship squad (not just first 11 anymore). I thought it was our destiny to stay up, it appears it wont be, unless it is our destiny to do so by going on a miraculous run. Instead, we need to do what Bolton did, keep a nucleus of players over a few seasons, go up and down, and eventually stay up. At the end of the day there seems to have been too much change in too short a space of time. I’d like to end by analysing the new players. In my opinion they are not Premiership quality, but they are in the cases of Kabba, Hoskins, Williams and Williamson (imo) all Championship quality players that will be useful next season. Add to that the summer signings, both Shittu, Smith and Francis, also all proven at Championship level. The unproven players are Priskin, Moses, Jarrett, Cavalli, Avinel and Rinaldi Out of these I expect Priskin will do well and Moses will have a role to play at some point in the future, whilst I can’t comment on the 3 transfer deadline players, as I know absolutely nothing about them. Sorry for the lack of match details, next weekend I should have the Internet back, and I can actually talk about the game rather than events or opinions surrounding it.
