I'm the opposite. This morning I was quite hopeful for the season and not at all downhearted. Post game I am pretty depressed and am so for 3 reasons.
1. Can't see where the goals are going to come from. Jukebox is excellent at holding the ball up, is strong and a good target man. A goalscorer though he is not. Sure he will get goals, but he's not a poacher and I just don't think he will ever be a 20 goal a season player. He is more of a provider.
2. The kids. Both brilliant today and I was chuffed to bits with them, but therein, flipping the coin over lies the problem. Manager after manager has warned about over deploying the kids and using them sparingly and giving them breathers. Well from what I saw today we really need them game in game out and besides, if we rest them who the hell are we going to bring in, especially in the midfield. Bell, Clingan and McSheffrey have all got poor injury records of late. Bigi looked like exactly the player we need. Trouble is, he's 17. No way on god's earth can he last the whole season for fear of burning the poor kid out. Here we are first day of the season having to play kids. If we are bringing the kids in now what else do we have left in our armoury?
3. First day of the season and we already look like we are down to the bare bones. Baker now out for 3 games. Couple of injuries on top of this and we could really be in trouble with the season only just started.
Thought we passed the ball about well but in truth didn't look like scoring in a month of Sundays. Pretty much every shot on target was from distance.
Certainly more depressed than i was before the game. The reality of what a long season we have ahead of us really kicked in today.
Totally agree about points 1 & 3, but I don't think Gael and Cyrus will be expected to play 40 games this year. If Thorn has any sense then Thomas and Clarke/Keogh will step in to give them a rest. Don't forget that eventually Deegan will be fit as well.
We didn't have to play the kids today, there were senior players on the bench because of them. We could easily have played Wood and O'Donovan from the start. I think it's a bit disrespectful to say we had to resort to kids on the first day. Even if we still had Gunnar I'd have picked Gael, he's simply the best player we have for that position right now, and I'd say that when Deegan's fit too.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?