No I wouldn't have agree with Hoyle about LOB. ( people picking themselves off the floor!
)
I thought we'd miss aspects of his game.. particularly the way he transitioned a defensive position into an attacking one with those bursts through the middle he did.
Like anyone else I hoped the replacements, be they signings or lads from the B team would fill the gap.
In some ways they have.. I think Rudoni is a better technical player on the ball...but overall we do miss him as we havent replaced that drive and energy LOB gave us with those runs.
Not sure Hoyle himself actually believed we wouldn't miss LOB either to be honest. Bit of politics being played there perhaps? Trying to remain positive about a negative.
Losing LOB was only a 'mistake' if you had a decision to make, and I dont think we actually did. The player was wanting to leave , understandably, and standing in his way when he had that opportunity to play at the top level and earn a fortune would have created more problems than it solved IMO..and we as a club had just had our income reduced by maybe 70% so really needed the money.
Colwill certainly was on a different planet to Mbete.
thats a really odd one though.
Mbete should have been a step up from Colwill really. He was much nearer Man City first team than Colwill was to Chelseas .. and Man City are much stronger than Chelsea.
For him to be so poor didnt make any sense.
On Colwill, I dont know if we did have any arrangement with Chelsea over his game time, but id be surprised if we did.
Im also not sure he would have played every game if he was available. Think Corboran really liked the Lees / Pearson duo at centre back.
Colwill played most of his games in the first half of the season... but it was actually the 2nd half of the season when the side really performed well and moved up into those play off spots.
Big reset coming up this summer whether we're in this division or league 1 I would imagine.