i hate to be pessimistic, but for all the 'man, imagine how good it will be when Staj gets to sign his own squad!' talk, let's not forget that Jair was his doing.
We all knew he'd be a terrible signing and he's worse than imagined - not signing anybody would have been better.
So I really, really hope he was a one-off and that Staj does much better with his recruiting.
It's hard knowing that we've achieved nothing this transfer window. It just kind of looks like we know that we don't have a squad that can win games, on paper we're wooden spoon contenders and we're not doing anything about it. I think I remember there were a few possibilities, and no visa spots available makes it difficult - though on the other hand, there hasn't really been a lot of signings at all this January, seems to be a lot quieter than usual.
I know we talk about our attack a lot on here....but with our entire attack as a whole, it's not even 'can't finish', and saying 'oh, there's no service' is just an over simplification.
Yes, our service sucks. Our crosses are mostly terrible.
And on the rare occasion somebody is actually making some movement off-the-ball, we're usually so slow to release the ball that they're being marked again - or we don't even look and send it to nobody (or send it to where somebody should be).
So, yeah, service - but how many chances have we had with decent service ad nothing. Muzz probably manages to receive the best chances, but he's not the only one.
Also, the players without the ball need to generate the option for service. How often do you see our attackers all just standing there scratching their balls? Any other team, the attackers are doing one of 2 things, if not both at once: trying to lose their players, and/or trying to draw their player away from space/other players. It's not just about moving off the player - there's a lot of subtlety and mind games in avoiding your opponents. Keep moving to the left, and you've set them up for the one time you move to the right. Keep backing off to run forwards, and the one time you don't, they're waiting 10 yards upfield for you and now you're 20 yards away from goal, unmarked, with the ball. That sort of thing.
Every other team can do this - just watch how often their attackers lose our defenders. Now, I know that doesn't take much because our back line is just horrendous and there is so much ball watching and laziness, but it always still requires some effort from the attackers to lose the player marking them/covering space.
But our attackers don't. Somebody has the ball in the top 3rd, and we have 2 or 3 players standing still and wondering why they haven't scored yet. So, our attackers don't know how to move off the ball, they can't finish - and as for service; strikers themselves need to know how to deliver service to each other and ours aren't much chop at that either.
So, there simply isn't anything positive about our front line.
Literally, the most positive thing anybody has said about our front line in months is that 'with development, Muzz could become a squaddie'
Of course, one wonders what on earth is happening with players like Fox and Kim (Fox in particular - we desperately need to keep playing competent defenders - and he was somebody improving every match).
We should, at least, have one of the best midfields in the league (except for the specific point of setting up goals - and really, every mid should be scoring at least a few a season. Why aren't ours?), but our midfield structure has been tinkered with a lot, not to mention key players playing out of position (which seems to cause some confusion and disruption).
And then it's a cycle - the more time we spend being rubbish, the harder it is to attract decent players with a limited budget. If we get the spoon again that's going to really hurt our recruitment and retention chances - after all, nobody likes losing every week.
Though by that point, I'm not sure that our seven remaining fans will care.
