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| A picture of some trickery and magic. Which players would you say this applies to in our squad? |
After the last match the conclusion was that it was all Sullay's fault we'd only gone and got a point at Hull. Seasoned readers will be aware I love Sullay and can see no wrong in anything he does. Despite that, even I can see he's not playing well at the moment, though I personally think he's done ok in his last two games (his cameo against WBA was fairly lively and despite the general consensus, I thought he wasn't that bad on Saturday.)
Here's the thing though. He's really not a left winger. He's played ok on a few occasions there but just as if you put Dan Ballard at right back, Turton in midfield or Jerry Yates in goal, sooner or later, the returns are going to be diminishing. Sullay plays best behind a front man and he's really good at it on form. Really good. He drifts about, finds pockets of space and asks constant questions. He's got vision, can see a pass and execute it, ability to beat people like few players in the league and a decent shot. He'll at worst, occupy a defender or drag a midfielder back to track him. On the left, he just occupies a full back who is there anyway.
I didn't really understand why he got picked in a game where we were going to require the wide players to track back as we were away from home. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd always pick Sullay but I'm a naive romantic who would try to win every game 10-0 and probably lose it by the opposite score. I'd be Ardiles at Tottenham, fervently believing if we can just attack enough, defence won't be needed. What I don't understand is why if you weren't me, with Mitchell, Garbutt and Gabriel all kicking their heels and potentially better suited to playing a cautious role on the left, you'd pick an out of form, out of position player who as good as he is, definitely has fragile confidence to play instead and ask him to a job he isn't especially good at as he really isn't very good at defending. I don't think he doesn't try. He's just a bit shit at it.
Critchley seems simultaneously to really like Sullay's skill and also to have doubts about him. He benched him when Lubala arrived, only for it to be immediately obvious that Bez wasn't Sullay yet. He quite often takes off Sullay before others as he did on Saturday but he keeps coming back to him. It's as if he looks around at others and thinks 'yeah, but they can't do what he can do' and yet, despite his obvious if possibly grudging acknowledgement of his quality, he won't play him where he's best.
Which brings me to Northampton. I don't usually do a preview largely because I don't like bluffing my way through pretending to know anything about the opposition. I don't know anything about Northampton this year either other than they're not doing great and Keith Curle is their manager. I could look some stuff up but until you start sending me money in the post to do so, fuck that for a laugh.
The basic facts alone are enough to suggest this is a test. We've built up games against big sides as 'markers of where we are' and we've come through most of them with tremendous credit and yet, despite beating a good few sides at the top, we're not at the top. That's because it's sides that 'we should be beating' that cause us trouble. Sides with wiley pragmatic managers, who may well be happy with a point. We can't break them down. We're like a bull running at a wall, again and again until it falls over with a sore head.
We've got a squad with very few 'useless' players. There's no Scott Dartons. You can argue about their merits, but there really aren't many if any of them. There's plenty of competent professional footballers and I'd argue, with the right players complimenting them, most of them could. as individuals. play a part in a successful side in League 1. You don't need 11 match winners to get promoted. It's fine to have some players who just do the simple stuff.
You do need one or two though.
You need players to create chances. You can do that in a simple way. We could play Garbutt and Gabriel on the left and right respectively, get crosses in early and get players around Madine. They can both cross and will make us nice and solid. It's about as far from the vision of Critchball we imagined in August as it's possible to imagine without thinking long and hard about John Beck's Cambridge having some kind of weird orgy with Dave Bassett's Wimbledon and producing a strange twisted offspring that gets raised by Bobby Gould who reads them all Charles Hughes coaching manuals every night at bedtime till finally they're big enough to go and play against Northampton.
We could alternatively play Sullay somewhere on the pitch other than the left wing. Perhaps behind the front two? This would require a formation change and that's also quite hard to imagine. Critch likes to change players around but he's definitely never moved away from 4 at the back. It's quite possible to envisage Husband, Ballard and Marvin with Gabriel and Garbutt on the flanks, Dougall and Ward in midfield and Sullay in front of them, behind the Jerry/Gary dream team.
That would be a prettier watch for sure. It would be an attacking side, balanced, full of intent. A confident looking selection that seems designed to push the other team back and ask a variety of questions. We can still cross it to big Gaz OR we can go short to the little tricky player who is hard to mark. Jerry likes to move about a lot too so those two could be a bit of a nightmare for a defence planning on just playing a tight line and heading it away a lot.
Or we could just not play Sullay.
That leaves me a bit worried though. With no CJ, who creates? Again, this isn't a criticism of the individual players but they lack, as a collective, the spark of the creator. Yates and Madine both rely on others. Neither of them is a tricky, twisting little striker who can run through a defence or a whippet whose pace makes every through ball dangerous whether it's any good or not. They both rely firmly on getting on the end of things, working hard or physical strength. They're both grand, but they're not going to make their own goals very often.
In midfield, Dougall and Ward are both 'a bit' creative. Ward will knock a goal in from time to time, Dougall will play a nice pass quite often but they're first and foremost about energy, breaking up the play, keeping it simple. Garbutt can cross but he's not a flying winger. If he plays, you'd expect to see a lot of early crosses. It might work, but so far Critchley hasn't played a left midfielder on the left so it also might not even cross his mind. Mitchell is very fast but was bought as a left back. Gabriel is a real favourite of mine but he's a right back so it's a bit much to expect him to be the creative force on the flank. Bez is as yet unproven and Matty Virtue is another primarily functional player. He's got a shot, he likes to get forward but he's hardly spraying defence splitting passes every 10 minutes. Ethan Robson looks like he should be creative but doesn't actually create anything... Is there anyone else?
Who offers a bit of mystery? Who could occupy a defence whilst the strikers find space? Who can thread a pass or change direction in a shuffle that sends the opposition one way whilst he goes the other? What player in the squad would you like to have picking it up 25 yards out and running into the box? What player in the squad thinks really quickly or acts instinctively when getting the ball in and around the edge of the area? What play can come deep and take possession of the hard working Ward and Dougall and turn it into threat? I can only think of one now Kemp (who also never played in the middle) has gone.
Again - I'm not having a go at the squad. They're all good players but 21 goals is a low total and the evidence is there in the results. We've only beaten Swindon comfortably. No one else. We don't score enough goals and to be frank, we don't have striker who misses sitter after sitter. All strikers miss chances, but it's not like we're bemoaning Madine and Yates week after week for not hitting a barn door. We're simply not pressurising teams which is fine if they're any good and take the game to us (or not very good and do it as Swindon did) but if they don't, what do we do then?
My love for Sullay isn't all emotional. I do like the lad cos I like players who are a bit different. I simply don't see his supposed 'bad attitude.' I see a player who isn't especially good at some things and very good at others being asked to play a role that doesn't suit him and whose shoulders go as a result. My love for him is also pragmatic. He's like no one else in the squad.
Tomorrow, I see a game that we should be trying to win. We can try to win it by getting it wide and knocking it to big Gaz. That's fine by me, I'm no purist. It could very well be very successful. I just don't see in the squad another option other than Sullay to try and win it any other way if that's not working without a pacy forward or goals from elsewhere on the pitch.
I could be wrong. I could be right.
That's a preview. Don't expect one every week. You can (as I'm sure you're delighted about) expect another instalment of 'The FA Cup of Songs that contain team names but don't appear to be actually about the team itself though' the final rule of which which precludes this little nugget sadly.
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