If it wasn’t working and it was clear to see and with Holden and a decent Striker up top, in the team. I’d say give it to xmas, than look to make the changes in January
Whatever your and my personal opinions are it is up to the powers that be within the club to manage and react to the situation to avoid the worst and anything else is a waste of the skin on our finger tips
People will vote with their feet unless current results, attitude and commitment change
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As I said earlier, this is actually what a lot of people were saying they wanted us to have - a stable formation/team selection after 2 years of the DC tombola system.
While I’m OK with this approach and also think we have to give it a few more games to see whether it will all start to come together, the problem I have is that we ought to have a Plan B to hand too for when it clearly isn’t working. When we are chasing a game can we push 2 up top instead of stubbornly sticking with just 1? Can we go 3 at the back and put an extra (attacking) player into midfield to take control there? Or can we leave a centre half up the pitch and bang high balls in to get knock downs? Those are things that even “settled” teams do when they need to in the closing stages of a game, but (so far) we just keep on with exactly the same rigid formation for the whole 90 minutes.
So start off most games with the signature 4231 and see how it goes. If it is getting results (when the team finally click) great - but when it isn’t after, say, 3/4 of the game then mix it up a bit.
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We could be a very long way behind the rest come Christmas if this doesn’t click at some point that’s almost chucking the season away leaving it till chrimbo you have a longer fuse than me mate 
but fair enough.
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Don’t get me wrong if we are rock bottom getting beat week in week out then action will need to be taken alot sooner, but if there is signs of progress stick with it, I had us to finish mid table this season so my expectations were reined in this season.
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Unfortunately, a sign of a bad Manager is someone who doesn’t change things when it’s not working.
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Flip side a sign of a bad manager is giving up all the hard work over the summer just to change it after 4 games
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If we have to make a change to the formation as drastic as that, then JF should be sacked on the spot when he is meant to have hand picked theses players to fit the formation we are playing.
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We only scored past Kidderminster reserves, clearly the hard work is not working.
This is spot on and something that really resonated under the Smith era. For a couple of seasons we had a really talented squad struggling to break into the top half the division due to teams sitting behind the ball and being patient, knowing exactly how we were going to set up and how we were going to play.
It wasn’t until he worked on the 352 over a summer that we had some flexibility that gave us some unpredictability and a different way to break teams down.
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The biggest difference was having Rico Henry and Demetriou. They took Smith’s team to another level in my opinion, whether it was in a 4 or a 3 at the back.
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Really enjoying this new bloke for us at E & S. He’s not afraid to call us shit. From what I’ve heard in the past though, it’ll be interesting to see if he suddenly changes his way.
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I didn’t realise that Richard o Kelly had left villa and was looking for a new challenge, he certainly knows about the style of football we are trying to play.
See now I do get the hardwork part and I do understand where Taylor is coming from because we all want to see them running around and never giving up but maybe we should spread some of the working hard about over the 90 minutes to save them blowing out their arses after 60 of them and I’m sorry but hard work alone isn’t enough each individual needs some form of quality other than hard work whether it be creativity, passing the ball at speed,running at defences, quality on set pieces and whatever else you can think of they all have a personal duty to produce and help to get results which once they are over that white line is their responsibility it’s out of Matt’s hands at that stage.
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I think it’s a minimum requirement for a professional footballer to be able to perform for the full 90 minutes , they have all had ample time to prepare for the season , no excuse.
Don’t think your gaffer would be very happy if you said I’m only working 6 hours today but I’ll still expect 8 hours pay .
We’ll be relegated. I’d give it another 2 games and if things are still the same ditch it. Playing football in league2 when we signed players on peanuts very rarely works.
Whilst I would love to see it, I dont know whether RO’K is looking to retire but would swap him for NMc in a heartbeat although we dont know what length of contract Nmc has
Maybe give him a 2-3 month “consultancy” contract to bed this lot in might be an option
Some good points made, so in essence we are saying Smith needed a couple of years, in which he had a pretty dismal run, to make progress. Glad Taylor has another couple of games to turn it around. 
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If RoK is available Pomlett should take a punt and move heaven and earth to get him ,
Get McDonald and or Fullerton out and if Taylor doesn’t like he can go as well.
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Silly !
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