20 league games under Artell

Quoted from toontown

But that would have meant not having a better player for half the season (better than none) and turning down 300k for selling him. Buying Conteh was about the only bit of this season that was a success!

It's not all or nothing though. The sale of Conteh has caused more problems and might contribute to our demise.

I appreciate it is all in hindsight but if we had got a seasoned pro in his position on a 2 year deal (similar to Thompson) would we be in this mess?

It was a success in that we made a small profit but at what cost?

These decisions define a season and although I agree with the overall premise of developing young players you can't have them disrupting your season by dictating things like that.

I really don't think our season has gone awry just because we 'let' Conteh go.  

I liked the lad but here and now he's not a patch on Thompson.  Yesterday Thompson took the game by the scruff of the neck, Conteh didn't do that once for us.  Equally so as much as I think Thompson is an immediate improvement on Conteh it hasn't taken us to the next level at all, such is the shower of excrement surrounding him.

Our season has and will be defined by urine poor recruitment which has left us with a lack of an experienced and commanding goalkeeper, fragile central defenders who are prone to huge lapses in concentration, full-backs who can't defend simple crosses and a midfield that just lacks anything at all other than running.  The 'best' part of the squad is the attack, which looks great on paper.  In reality though not enough of them have been fit/in form at the same time nor have we had the luxury of playing enough of them together because everything else behind is so fragile.

You could have Thompson for the season or you could have Conteh for the season, we still struggle with everything around them.  

That's a good point...so much of our attacking recruitment in the summer was done so with the aim of playing the two wide attacking players (Eisa, Khan, Gnahoua, Vernam, Clifton, Ainley, Pyke were all options there). We now seemingly can't afford to try and play that formation because we're so fragile everywhere else (and we weren't very good playing that in the first place.)

Eisa a big goal threat for us but an absolute liability in all other senses and we can't risk playing him.

Bizarrely, I think Pyke was signed as an alternative/foil for Rose, hence being given the No. 9 shirt. He's barely featured through lack of fitness and the fact that he's played most of his career as a wing-back. Unfortunately, for a defender-turned-attacker, he's no Barry Hayles.

Eisa has always been a fair-weather player. Can do some good attacking in a team doing well and on the front foot, but incredibly lightweight if asked to defend and doesn't achieve anything when the going gets tough.

That and, for me, he doesn't really offer much as an attacker apart from his brilliant shot. Doesnt seem to have a trick to take a player on, and his passing/crossing isn't great..

All good points, but at what point do we roll the dice and gamble?

When do we try and win games 4-3 rather than try and ultimately fail to shut sides out and hold onto a narrow lead.

Notts County and Doncaster are the two examples that led to us adopting a more pragmatic shape and approach.  But was it the change in shape that saw us stop conceding as many goals or just the cutting out of stupid errors.  Saturday against Barrow was just stupid mistakes that cost us, not that we had too many players ahead or behind the ball.  Rodgers remembers how to kill the ball with his first touch and we don't concede that second, Thompson doesn't dally on the ball in the middle of the park and we don't concede the second, Cartwright doesn't come out and make a mess of the cross and the third goal never happens.

Yesterday, Hume stays goalside and holds his man up then he never gets in a position where he panics and pulls the man down.

It can be 3-5-2, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1...whatever system you play.  If you're gonna make mistakes you'll get punished.  We're making mistakes, again.  We've gotta be bolder and get players involved who can do things at the other end for us.  Thompson's shot aside, we did so little yesterday.  Us hoping like sitting ducks that we can be less excrement than the other 3 sides doesn't sit comfortably with me.  

Quoted from GollyGTFC

21 league games under Artell (and 22 in total) and here's how those 22 have gone...

D L W D L L W L D L D L L D W D D W D L L D

Trying to be positive you can see that we have only lost 2 of the last 9 games, and that against two of the very best sides in the division with one win and a couple of the draws against teams in the top 10. So on that form there is no reason why we couldn't clock up enough points to stay up. But then, form can quickly change. A win of Saturday would be such a boost.