What chance does Powell have? There is a real crisis coming sadly, and it is absolutely and completely the fault of the board. The fact that Powell is still at the club speaks a great deal about who we have in charge and we should all be behind him 100%.
The season got off to a bad start. We were all hoping to hear of new signings that would enable us to push on after the great end to last season. That didn't happen. Then we had news of more rumblings behind the scenes, court cases, contract disputes etc, etc. There was a negative vibe from the outset, which hasn't been helped by injuries. In reality, I don't believe the squad is much weaker than last season. Fuller, Haynes and Waggy were all good players, but none were regulars, and two were very injury prone. Church and Sordell should on paper be reasonable replacements. Cousins has been a big bonus and Piggot could yet prove to be a useful player this season. We also have Gower and Hughes who played very little last season. The squad is short on depth, but it wasn't much different last season as Fuller and Haynes were rarely fully fit. I think we are all using the lack of signings as too much of an excuse. We are simply not playing well, making too many mistakes and not being professional enough. I say that because I don't think our preparation was good enough, our fitness doesn't seem to be up to usual standards. We also had the issue at Watford where Yann was forced to hobble around on his injured ankle for about 10 minutes because the subs had not been warmed up. That's not good enough at this level. A lot of people need to stop feeling sorry for themselves, stop making excuses, and pull their fingers out, and I include some, not all of us, the fans. We should be doing much better than this.
Neither Sordell nor Church is a replacement for Fuller, who was for a long period a Premiership striker. Neither has replaced the pace and skill of Haynes either. The one thing they have is fitness, and I guess the question is whether they can contribute what the others did over a full season.
I think we're already missing the breaking pace and quality of Haynes, personally.
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I think we're already missing the breaking pace and quality of Haynes, personally.