A hot day, a new era, with new owners, new manager, a brand new team and a new philosophy.
Sean O’Driscoll – who we have admired for a very long time – has spoken at length about how he wants players with character, players who try to do the right thing. And this was the first opportunity for the players to show it.
We lined up in not quite the formation below (it appears that the formation generator doesn’t have a 4-1-4-1 option):
So Gillett sat in front of the back four – and Radi was nominally on the right. But as we’ll see, one of the hallmarks of this philosophy is that the midfielders move around – so Radi did spend a lot of time behind Dex – and Guedioura did much of the filling in on the right hand side.
There will be people who saw today’s performance and thought we lacked width and penetration. Probably true. There will be people who saw the performance and thought we were too slow and a bit dull. Also probably true.
But I really enjoyed it – as a statement of intent, the new era is fully underway. The players tried to keep the ball on the deck, they tried to keep possession, they didn’t follow rigid formations, but instead tried to move to create options and at the final whistle they all applauded the fans and shook hands with the opposition (even Reid and Cunningham, after their altercation during the game).
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