What happened Saturday ?

Granpa

I sat on the Coach going home asking myself ' how can a team under a new Manager win their first 4 games, and then go 11 games without a win ' ? I decided that it is all down to the change of philosophy under the new Owners. I believe that they have set a good plan to take us back up ASAP, and a big part of that is to change the way we play. Previously we had little decent thought about building attacks, other than to lump the ball up the middle and hope for the best, not pretty to watch. If you look at the good teams, they keep the ball no matter how many passes it takes until they can produce a decent opportunity. They will wait in possession, rather than just fling in a hopeful cross.
It seems to me that CP and co have been working hard to alter the way we play, and that has made it hard to win matches, but on Saturday we witnessed that better style being made to work. I can't remember one hopeful punt up the middle. This is obviously helped by introducing better players, and I thought that the cameo by Michael Stewart was very encouraging. Hopefully with further changes in the Summer, we will start, not only to mount a serious promotion challenge next season, but to do it with a squad capable of moving towards the ultimate promotion challenge. Time alone will tell, but in the meantime I will remain totally positive.

Dazzler21

Like it Granpa

Elthamaddick

our style of football under Powell is definately alot easier on the eye, hasn't produced the results just yet, but Rome wasn't built in a day

dickplumb

I think the only way forward is to play the game on the deck. We need to retain the ball better and to have players that are comfortable on the ball and can pass it well. The Under 18s played in this style under Damien Matthew and like Arsenal this style of play should run throughout the whole club,so players coming through the academy can adjust easier to the way the first team play when they progress. As Matthew is now first team coach and Powell and Dyer want to play football rather than hoofball i can see the ethos of the club changing.

thenewbie

Evolution not revolution. I can see what Powell and team are trying to do, and if it does work then we could/should see some effective and impressive stuff but as 11 without a win shows there is a LONG way to go before we can count it as a success. 5 good/lucky results do not counter 11 bad ones.

Powell Is Pleasant

I see Powell's reign so far split into 4 parts:
1. Playing poorly and winning
2. Playing poorly and losing
3. Playing quite well and losing
4. Hopefully, now, we will start playing well and winning? Has anyone got any straws for me to clutch at?

DRF

I think people wrongly assumed that Parky wanted players to hoof the ball up. He didn't and he constantly balled out the players after games when they had panicked and resorted to doing this.

MrLargo

[cite]Posted By: Powell Is Pleasant[/cite]I see Powell's reign so far split into 4 parts:
1. Playing poorly and winning
2. Playing poorly and losing
3. Playing quite well and losing
4. Hopefully, now, we will start playing well and winning? Has anyone got any straws for me to clutch at?

Don't think it's clutching at straws, think there is genuine reason for optimism. As I've stated on other threads, one of Powell's main remits was to change the "Hoof it" football played by Parky to a more attractive passing game. As you quite rightly state, even when we were winning at the start of his tenure we weren't playing particularly well, due in my opinion to the fact that the side Parkinson had assembled (on a shoestring budget) was equipped to grind out results, but certainly not capable of playing pretty football. The intent was there but too many players weren't capable of playing that way.

Without wanting to get into a debate about scapegoats, the likes of Francis and McCormack have come in for a great deal of stick this season. I don't doubt their effort, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the introduction of Solly and particularly Parrett have contributed significantly to an improvement in performances, even if we've had to wait til Saturday to be rewarded for it. There are still significant weaknesses, particularly in defence, which will hopefully be addressed in the summer, but I've seen enough from the Southampton game onwards to suggest that Powell can do a good job for us given the right tools.

Cautiously optimistic for next season.

BigRedEvil

Parrett/Ecclestone are PL loans who have been coached to not hoof it unlike Francis/McCormack who don't have the same ability.

We'll see, we played ok vs Southampton 2 weeks ago, should have lost vs Bournemouth and apparently we were unlucky vs Rochdale. And against Brentford we were a bit unfortunate to lose the game as there wasn't much between the teams imo.

So we have been slightly improving let's hope it continues.