are we better than last season ?

Was just thinking as a squad who thinks this is a stronger squad than last season ? Individually I'm not so sure, Eisa Rodgers conteh and surprisingly gnahouha are the standouts for me .

But in general as a squad I'm not sure , I think last year's squad is similar and I'm not sure we have massively improved in quality, in league 2 it's pretty much a merry go round in players I just think the transfer window was a big dissapointment in bringing in quality. We are just that bit short I think in quality to be anything but mid table again.

We’re better than last season, unfortunately so are 70% of the rest of League Two. I think it might take a couple of years of the bigger spenders going up before we can challenge for promotion.

I think rose is a quality player. Not an out and out striker but he leads the line well. I also think that Eastwood is marginally better than max. In eisa and conteh we have 2 cracking players and gnahouh is a gem of a find.

I like Rodger’s and mullarkey too. Definite improvements in those positions.

The jury is out on vernham’s as he didn’t necessarily impress that much pre injury and Pyke and Wilson haven’t had enough game time really.

It’s been a tough start having played the sides we have so far. Yes, they we have to be play against them at some time, but to have the fixtures we have has been a tough start. What gets me though is the amount of times we’ve had a lead and not been able to keep hold of it. Am not saying hurst should stay or go, but, it’s frustrating to say the least.

I believe we have better footballers who are much more comfortable on the ball and are better at retaining possession but we have failed in improving the quality of our goal threat. We also lack some pace on the break and this in turn reduces our threat on the counter attack. Individually players like Rose, Gnahouha and Eisa are decent and obviously Eisa has scored some cracking goals, but I’m not convinced they provide any more goal threat then the combination of Lloyd and Orsi, albeit Orsi was given very little opportunity.

A couple of really decent forward players would, IMO, make us real contenders for the play offs whereas I feel the current side should result in a slightly improved league position on last season. All a bit frustrating but just because we got turned over yesterday doesn’t mean we are in for a poor season but maybe demonstrates there is still quite a bit of improvement required to challenge for those top spots.

Without doubt better than last season in my opinion. If we win yesterday then the question doesn't even enter anyone's head.

Forgive me if the question is simply a level headed 'what do we think' question, I read it as 'we've lost our second game of the season, we must not be very good' type question.

Based on that, I don't think I'll ever stop finding it frustrating that if we don't win 10 games on the spin there must be something categorically wrong.

My assessment so far, for what it's worth in the public domain;

We look very assured on the ball. It took a few games to get that familiarity but I don't think I've ever seen a more dominant 45 minutes of football than that first half at Bradford from a Grimsby Town team. They barely touched the ball. Similar against Wrexham we controlled large parts of the ball during the parts I was able to watch.

Notts County were comprehensive against us and I thought they were fantastic, yet we still had good spells in that game. Mansfield - over the course of 90 minutes - were the most competent all round we've seen this season. We made top of the league Gillingham look poor and we made light work of a 'fancied' Salford side. Wimbledon on the opening day doesn't look such a poor draw given their start to the season.

5 of our 8 games have been against sides currently occupying the top 6 positions.

Our glaringly obvious weak point at the moment is turning possession and dominance of the ball into high quality chances. We haven't yet really taken the game to the opposition in respect of constant pressure in and around their penalty box and we build heavily from the back which allows teams to get organised, in turn making it difficult to exploit spaces and/or create overloads.

Personally, I'm more than comfortable with how we maintain possession, I enjoy watching that style of football. It cuts both ways when we don't win; if we play well and draw/lose by a single goal it only magnifies the attacking difficulties we've experienced so far. Conversely, it means we're not being beaten because we're outright not good enough to be in this division. That can of course make it doubly frustrating, knowing we have a good team who play good football but simply can't find a means of creating better quality chances and getting more points that our general football deserves.

The league table is what the vast majority will judge our season on for obvious reasons and I'll take some of my markers by the final league position, but it won't be the everything. If we play throughout the entire season in a similar fashion then I maintain my prediction for an 8th place finish and I would be satisfied with our performances. The lack of goals and genuine chance creation will be what reserves that being 'impressed' with performances. It's then on for a pre-season of adding the next level to our game and being more competent in the final third, this of course if we don't manage to find that recipe as the season progresses.

The last point for me is what the second poster mentioned in that the whole of L2 has near enough improved over the summer, wholly agree with that statement.

Just had a quick look at Doncaster, they've also played 5 of the top 6 and sit 22nd in the league. Could be worse for us.

We’re definitely a better squad than last season in every department. We could still do with another striker on current evidence. That’ll probably have to wait until next summer when Conteh has considerably added to our player budget .

I do think we are better , but not by much and as somebody pointed out all the other teams seem better .

The style of play seems improved , but we lack the cutting edge / killer instinct to really hurt teams (maybe even more so than last season .

Orsi/Mcatee/Taylor and Lloyd were all better options than Pyke ; Wilson we don't yet know about. Rose is a very good player but the workload is heavy being the only real option .

I think likely we will be 10th-12th come January in a very tight league , and then whether we can invest a bit more or find the right player or 2 in forward areas  to push us on . If so I think we can push for the play-offs , if not it might fade out to a mid table finish .

Yes we are a stronger side this season but the problem we have is that other sides have improved plus the sides that came up have at least League 1 squads and a couple of the side that came down are very strong.
What I have noticed again this season is the size of these teams in our league, again yesterday we looked like a team of midgets compered to Wrexham.

Quoted from gtfc_chris

Without doubt better than last season in my opinion. If we win yesterday then the question doesn't even enter anyone's head.

Forgive me if the question is simply a level headed 'what do we think' question, I read it as 'we've lost our second game of the season, we must not be very good' type question.

Based on that, I don't think I'll ever stop finding it frustrating that if we don't win 10 games on the spin there must be something categorically wrong.

My assessment so far, for what it's worth in the public domain;

We look very assured on the ball. It took a few games to get that familiarity but I don't think I've ever seen a more dominant 45 minutes of football than that first half at Bradford from a Grimsby Town team. They barely touched the ball. Similar against Wrexham we controlled large parts of the ball during the parts I was able to watch.

Notts County were comprehensive against us and I thought they were fantastic, yet we still had good spells in that game. Mansfield - over the course of 90 minutes - were the most competent all round we've seen this season. We made top of the league Gillingham look poor and we made light work of a 'fancied' Salford side. Wimbledon on the opening day doesn't look such a poor draw given their start to the season.

5 of our 8 games have been against sides currently occupying the top 6 positions.

Our glaringly obvious weak point at the moment is turning possession and dominance of the ball into high quality chances. We haven't yet really taken the game to the opposition in respect of constant pressure in and around their penalty box and we build heavily from the back which allows teams to get organised, in turn making it difficult to exploit spaces and/or create overloads.

Personally, I'm more than comfortable with how we maintain possession, I enjoy watching that style of football. It cuts both ways when we don't win; if we play well and draw/lose by a single goal it only magnifies the attacking difficulties we've experienced so far. Conversely, it means we're not being beaten because we're outright not good enough to be in this division. That can of course make it doubly frustrating, knowing we have a good team who play good football but simply can't find a means of creating better quality chances and getting more points that our general football deserves.

The league table is what the vast majority will judge our season on for obvious reasons and I'll take some of my markers by the final league position, but it won't be the everything. If we play throughout the entire season in a similar fashion then I maintain my prediction for an 8th place finish and I would be satisfied with our performances. The lack of goals and genuine chance creation will be what reserves that being 'impressed' with performances. It's then on for a pre-season of adding the next level to our game and being more competent in the final third, this of course if we don't manage to find that recipe as the season progresses.

The last point for me is what the second poster mentioned in that the whole of L2 has near enough improved over the summer, wholly agree with that statement.

Just had a quick look at Doncaster, they've also played 5 of the top 6 and sit 22nd in the league. Could be worse for us.

Do you know I'm not sure we are better. I can't imagine this team reaching the heights of last, think about how we played in the cup, and despite not being exhilarating in the league we still had a very respectable league position.

My gut feeling is that Hurst himself isn't too impressed either - so many times he talks about what he expects the players to do but they are seemingly not doing it. Yesterday he highlighted the quality of the crosses and lack of bodies in the box and not long ago mentioned the January window so I think we might see more changes than we first thought then.

I do agree the league is more competitive than ever but we keep saying we are not here to make the numbers up so we will have to find a way to combat that.

Yes