Who is Target on loan from? Read they may recall him?
With injuries it depends who they are? We lose Rushworth, Grimes, Thomas, MVE or JDS we may struggle. Our two losses were when our back ups were playing. Three of the back four missing at Wrexham and three of our four top scorers missing from the starting 11 at Ipswich. To put it in perspective, the players missing had scored only one goal less than the whole Ipswich team at the time.
That said, both losses were impacted by dreadful refereeing decisions. The ridiculous decision not to send off Hirst at Ipswich was confirmed by ref watch as wrong.
I certainly want us and Adi Viveash (one of my all-time favourite coaches) to get promoted. Hope your new manager doesn't dump him. He is a very strong character and wont take any shit. See his interactions with Mourinho and Waghorn.
We have 3 players in on loan. Two are Target from Newcastle and Browne from Sunderland, whom as much as they're rivals who we don't get on with usually we have to admit we're thankful for these lads.
There's also the talented Norwegian teen attacking midfielder Sverre Nypan from Man City, but he's struggled to have much gameplay with those infront of him.
They're all on season long loans, though an agreement may be reached for Nypan to go back in January due to his lack of game time.
We've lost several of our mainstays to long term injury this season (as usual!) such as Dael Fry, Aiden Morris and Strelec, fortunately we have a fairly strong spine in depth, several goalscorers and as said plenty of multi-skilled players.
For any length of time, we'd probably miss Hackney the most, followed by Sol Brynn.
Our start to the season was governed by the fact that whilst our attack wasn't the most potent and neither was our defence (though it was pretty near the top when everyone was fit) we have the strongest midfield in the league that know how to play together, meaning we can 9 times out of 10 control the game in the centre of the park and dominate possession. In contrast to Carrick, Edwards did what he usually does; play a back 5 with 3 cbs to make us much tougher at the back, meaning we could control most of the pitch, whilst still lacking much of a cutting edge up front as due to Edwards' almost sole focus on defence we were light up front in terms of players getting isolated with the main body of the side being further back. All the same, it allowed us the success of surprise at the start of the season, followed by perhaps the efficiency of a side in 5th or 6th as teams learned to low block and play long to bypass our midfield, knowing if they tried to battle through it, they'd very likely get beaten.
Then not so long after Ratboy left, along came Hellberg, who prefers to attack with press, but most importantly has less emphasis on formation, changing it regularly depending on opponents and most importantly fitting it around the players attributes he has, rather than seeing where a player can best fit "his" formation. The result is the high energy pressing you see now, as with less clinical finishers than yours we instead go for battering teams with attacks raining in, with more mistakes forced from opponents, more chances and shots potentially created and tailored to fit every attacking player's strengths to now improve conversion rates. The defence is slightly less solid, but a lot of that is taken care of by the fact that with less time on the ball in their own halves now, opponents cannot go long as accurately and often, meaning they instead need to do what they didn't want to do originally and try and battle through that midfield of ours.
Adi, as you obviously won't be surprised by, has of course been an ideal man to make the transition. He never wants to be a manager, for the whole PR side of the role, the tubthumping and public speaking isn't something he likes or considers himself accomplished at, but he's an excellent coach who not only is respected, but has a vast array of knowledge and knows this league inside out. Hellberg has no plans to dispense with his services and it's common opinion that he would be a fool to do so.
