Whilst I agree with your first sentence entirely, the second sentence I’m going to go out there and disagree with entirely.
It was easily Daniels worst performance of the season, and it was definitely up there with Monthes (although his performers have been far lower than Daniels of late so maybe less noticeable).
As for Evans, whilst I like him as a gk and think he can make wonderful saves. He is one of the root causes of how we play. It begins with him and his insistence on kicking it in one direction over and over and over and over is grinding my tits. He ignores defenders who want the ball, he refuses to throw it quickly into midfield to start counter attacks and we can’t play back to him in order to switch play without him aimlessly booting it no matter what.
Sick of it.
I’m not getting into debates (phew I hear many say) but I’m going say now that that was possibly the worst I’ve ever seen a pro football team play, it wasn’t a surprise, we’ll see it again and some of this has to be on the staff and the time they’ve had to improve it.
Even just this season (allowing for last year as a bedding in) I cannot see a formation, a style, a plan or any clue whatsoever to our identity as a football team. I can live with being not very good but I’d like to at least see us not very good but with a clear identity of how we are trying to play and some sort of direction of travel.
Unfortunately, Flynn seems to have lost the plot a little. Changing formation is one thing, but playing players out of position is a bad road to go down in general, it rarely works. Monthe playing at left back for example. Also, how is a player like Knowles going to progress and fulfil any potential he has when he doesn’t have a fixed role? His role should be clearly defined in the team based on his strengths and be working towards improving in those areas.
It is bad at the moment but more worrying to me is I can’t see where we are going.
Well we finally won again. If I had travelled from Walsall I would have been raging. They are well and truly on the beach and not interested.
This is from a Dons fan sums it up.
I’d be inclined to agree Pre Xmas but my views are changing
And we could give him time and it COULD pay off.
But also consider the likelihood of us having this same conversation this time next year. Replace his current set of L2 jouneymen with another set. We all know the type of player he signs. Even his young loan players (low and DJT) are carthorse journeymen in the making. Keep the players on 2yr deals here for another 12 months.
None of us know for sure but I don’t get a good feeling about Flynn anymore.
I agree with all that you say there. I think he has lost it a little and become desperate to do something to get things going again, when he should be staying true to what he thinks will work. As Dean Smith did…we went on those long winless runs with him but not once did he deviate from how he wanted us to play and we got there in the end.
Right now, it behoves senior management to sit down with flynn and help him through this. That’s what a good boss will do. Most of us have probably gone through a bad spell at work where we’ve lost focus and it takes some good words and actions to help us back onto the path.
What I really don’t want to see is more wholesale change, a new manager coming in, players cleared out and 15 new signings to settle in, thereby writing off next season. As others have also said, 4 or 5 quality additions to what we have and i trust flynn will have us up there, otherwise he will have to reflect on his position.
I don’t want him sacked either, I really don’t, for all of the reasons you mentioned.
I also agree he is desperate. I remember Graydon moving to a back 3 for a short time when he couldn’t buy a win. Moving away from everything that had made him successful. It was awful and he soon reverted to the tried and trusted.
I really hope he can get a bit more out of the team for the rest of the season. He keeps talking about players playing for their Walsall future, but we can’t just continue in this manner without asking questions, the buck ultimately stops with the manager.
Another good post and your second paragraph makes a lot of sense to me as some one who was managed as a young man and then managed folk for many years but the one thing football managers are not usually given is time. Those in charge need to think this through. If they think that in the medium to longer term Flynn has the capacity to build a wining team they should keep him .If they don’t then he should be relieved of his duties.
I have add that I don’t know the answer myself. At Christmas I would certainly have given him more time but now I am not so sure. For the first time last night I detected a frustration from the players at what they were being asked to do. If that continues there can only be one answer.
As a manager of people, when you’ve had things go your way results wise, and then they don’t, you can tend to lose sight of why things went well in the first place, and default to a more authoritarian style because you get frustrated with the people around you and the situation - especially if you’re a certain type of personality.
Sometimes you need people to let you know what you’re doing, have more faith, and get back to doing what you did when things were going well.
For me, he gets another half season - however if he’s still making the same mistakes, and the football is still as poor, then after that I think we need to look elsewhere.
last night was pretty dire to say the least - just feel sorry for the guys who trekked down there to watch
we were unable to string any passes together, loads of hoofball, loads of bad touches, our strikers generally have very few productive touches every game (perhaps Wilko excepted), nothing in midfield, for the second game in a row a poor clearance led to conceding …I despair
season fizzling out rapidly, some of the players have already got their flip-flops on !!
There will be much written about WFC and our performances over the next few days, and some of us will write paragraph after paragraph, and some of us will no doubt be both erudite and eloquent, and yet I’m not sure anyone will quite sum it all up as well as those five words of yours. Well done.
I agree with your points here but I cannot believe that a professional goalkeeper is ignoring quick passing or throwing options. For me that has got to have come from Flynns instructions or orders.
Modern goalkeepers are brought up to be front foot and alert to openings. He played for Cheltenham who played from the back.
The whole Kinsella thing is a joke. When we go through difficult patches, he is the first one (some) people throw under the bus, but when we are doing ‘okay’ he isn’t mentioned. He isn’t noticed as being a part of the improvement shown or ever praised (again by some).
In some peoples eyes, he will always be the scapegoat and will never earn their plaudits, which is fine. But for him to be scapegoated, consistently, when you think of some of the tripe who have turned out for us in his time here is ridiculous.
Give me a team of Kinsella’s anyday over a team of players who couldn’t give a damn about Walsall FC.
You’ll just have to forgive everyone for misunderstanding that stating that we won’t make top 7 with Kinsella playing, and then congratulating yourself when with him as a regular starter we are not in the top 7, somehow infers that Kinsella being in the team is the reason why we arn’t.
Just as an aside, there are also players that looked nothing like fourth division promotion winners whilst plying their trade at WS1in recent years that are doing ok for themselves elsewhere. Liam Roberts for example, who went on to win a fourth division promotion and now plies his trade in the Championship, Dan Scarr who had a fourth division promotion on his CV before coming here, and is now on the verge of adding a promotion at the level above. Whilst others are playing for teams that are threatening top 7 in this league…Jack Rose 13 clean sheets in 31 games for Sutton, 9th - Josh Gordon 12 goals in 35 apps for Barrow 10th, and Osadebe is now back playing for Bradford, 7th. I could easily see Kinsella moving on and being part of a successful team at this level with his attributes, provided he was playing for a team with a defined tactical method of how to win football matches rather than the flinging dung up the wall in the hope some sticks method.
