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Post by Terriersmad on Jan 27, 2009 23:21:15 GMT 1
OK, I'm a new poster, so go easy on me for saying this, but realistically our season has been over since October, and the 4-0 drubbing down at Peterborough. Any faint chance we had of making the play-offs died tonight, and we now need to gear towards next season.
For all that seems doom and gloom, I'm still optimistic about the future of Town, as I'm sure many on this board are. Occasionally teams have bad days, and Town had one tonight that came on the worst night possible. But at home things are starting to come together, partly because we've got the monkey called Ternent off our back, and we're just one or two players short of a side capable of challenging for the title next season, provided we can sort out our recent poor away form.
Continuing with the assumption we're not going to make the play-offs this season, I think that we'll be the stronger for it. We made the play-offs too early in 2005/6, and have paid the price over the last couple of seasons. If we did it again (this season), we might pay the price of another couple of bad seasons before we did anything. Assuming we bring in more strong characters over the close season and the remainder of this transfer window, we'll be much better set to gain promotion, and also to stay at the top end of the league if we do happen to fail.
Looking at the squad, it's already strong enough to make the play-offs (but for the disaster under Ternent, we would be there), but we're still lacking a natural goalscorer up front and a very good right-back. As much as I like Holdsworth, he's much better going forward than he is at the back. He sometimes fails to close down the winger when he should and lets them get the cross in, and occasionally isn't strong enough (or tall enough). But, with that said, he's still better than much of the dross in that position in this league. As for strikers, I think Parker would be a much better impact player from the bench, with Jevons linking up with a big target man, who can also score goal after goal - a young Andy Booth. Playing that way, he wouldn't need to drop deep, and we could bring the best out of him. As good as Marcus Stewart was before Wayne Allison arrived, it was his partnership with the Chief that saw him perform to his full potential, and (although I may be alone in saying this) I see a little of Marcus Stewart in Phil Jevons.
This result aside, however, we've come a long way since Ternent left. After we wrote the season off we were given hope by a string of rejuvenated performances, and to judge on one lacklustre performance is folly - even the Manchester Uniteds of the world have off-days and lose to sides far below their strength. For the rest of the season, we just need to play good football and keep winning games, finishing in the top 8. So long as we can maintain interest, many season tickets will be renewed at the beginning of next season, and we can start to really push on.
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