We simly didn't have the right team make up at the beginning of last season. As NLHWC has pointed out, we lost three players that were never replaced and this had an adverse effect on the team and how it played. You could almost say the team was demoralised because Gunnarson, Westwood etc weren't there anymore. Our strongest players had gone and no strong ones had been brought in to replace them. You then add the kids into the equasion who did do very well for themselves no doubt but they were no substitute for the quality we lost.
In any job you need to know the people your working with, what their strengths and weaknesses are etc. The same principle goes for football. If you don't know the lads on the pitch then theres no way you can be an effective team. When you go to make a pass, you should be able to pick out those that you know will be able to receive it confidently and then use it properly and not just hoof it away from themselves in fear. Brown is a good example of that fear factor, though im hoping he'll settle down soon or someone else will be brought in to replace him until he does. Jennings & Barton are the opposit. Players that have shown a calm demenor on the ball and an ability to pick out good players with their passes and as receiving players they show they know how to use the ball when its passed to them.
Yeh we brought players in but at the time they weren't the right players (O'Hallloran, ROD) or they were the right players, they just needed a longer time period to become the players they had been billed as (Cody). Neither of these situations helped our stricken club and it probably demoralised the players more because i think in their hearts they'd already seem the outcome of the season. Some like Keogh fought against it, tried their hardest to make sure it didn't happen while others (Like Clingan) were like the Captain of a sinking ship and instead of trying to stop it, they rather went down with the ship as it sank.
But in the end, what happened has happened. We have been relegated, we are not the big club we once were nor will we be that club again until some serious money is flooded into this club and something is done about our idiot owners. I see other clubs finding buyers and i wonder why we haven't but i think its down to the fact that SISU aren't actively seeking to sell the club. They are waiting for something to happen e.g. the club bounces back at the first attempt and they get a nice bit of money out of it, or it goes into administration and they use that as an excuse to recover what they can and then make a run for it OR they are hoping someone will come in with big money to buy the club and give them their 30 million. They could even be hoping these new owners would allow them to stay on with only a minimal % of ownership.
But to finish my rant with the gelling, the answer is simple. Some teams gel straight away, some don't gel at all and some do but they just need a little time. Thorn wont be able to use the excuss of gelling for much longer. I'd say after 4 to 6 games and then they shouldn't have any excuss. They should know each other well enough to play with each other as the effective team i mentioned. Anymore than that and theres something wrong, although i do recognise that some extenuating circumstances can lengthen that gelling period so with that in mind a maximum of 6 to 8 games for total cohesion would be the max i'd allow.
