Adver News: ADVER COMMENT: Where has it all gone wrong?

fuck it, I started typing and kept going. All after reading the headline but before reading the article, so some of it will be a bit repetitive of whats already in there.

1. Billy Paynter - Paynter gave us 3 good season, sure he scored many more in 1 season (penalty taker) but he did give us 3 good season. I believe if we had offered him a new contract back in July 09 he'd have signed. He'd done well for us, being the perfect partner for Simon Cox and played his part. I think he'd have signed, his wages demands probably would have been about half of what we actually wanted come October. Of course there is no guarentee he'd still be here this season but we'd have had to have sold him, rather than watching him walk for nothing.

2. Gordon Greer - Selling your captain to a rival L1 team is stupid. He was a leader, he was our leader and he bought the best out of our defence. He was solid himself and inspired others. Played a huge part in keeping us away from relegation and getting to the play offs. The type of player every successful team has. Now, there have been plenty of rumours about who made the decision to sell Greer in the end, but I will say this. The decision should have been Greers. We offer him a new contract in July and that answers all the doubts, he signs it great. He turns it down and we know he wants to go and he's the bad guy in all of this not Wilson and not Fitton. Greer.

3. The Loan Market - Last season Wilsons loans were hit and miss. Danny Ward & Simon Ferry was top class and Stephen Darby more than played his part and has massive fucking bollocks!! We still had some shite like Hutchinson, Nouble, Obedeyi, Revell and the like. This season all our loans have been poor. Ritchie at best has been good, still inconsistent mind you. Obika cant judge yet. David Ball was crap, although thats probably not his fault. What happened to all these links with Bolton, Manchester City, Liverpool, Celtic and the like?

4. Failure to adequately replace players - Ok, this kind of goes over points 1 and 2 again, but if you lose your captain, defensive leader, organizer and your top scorer you have to replace them with players of at a minimum the same calibre. Why anyone believed for a second Pericard and Sean Morrison could replace Greer and Paynter I dont know. You can try and call it hindsight but its definitely something I've been saying since July. You can not expect a young player to replace an experienced player at the back. We started the season with all 4 of our centre backs 23 and under. No one to take charge and it shows, been obvious since day one. Took us too long to see the problem, took us too long to sort the problem and still we've only bought in Frampton. Should have got another back line leader in ages ago as well. Pericards career stats show he was never going to fill Paynters shoes, only a complete idiot would think he could!

5. Partnerships - One of the main things that made us so strong last season was the partnerships with in our team. Greer and Cuthbert, Amankwaah and McGovern, Sheehan and Ward, Douglas and Ferry, Austin and Paynter - there we go all 2 outfield players, all in partnerships that all were very effective, did the job they were supposed to and the team work bought out the best in each of those 10 players. Cuthbert hasnt been the same without Greer. Amankwaah and McGovern havent been the same without each other, Sheehan has been pants. Douglas hasnt played half as well as last season, Ferry has hardly played. Austin did well on his own but thats it. How many solid partnerships have we got now? none. Of course there are many many things that contribute to a successful partnership and one of those is consistent team selection.

6. Team Selection - Last season for a large part of the season the team picked itself. Lucas, Amankwaah, Cuthbert, Greer, Sheehan, JPM, Ferry, Douglas, Ward, Paynter, Austin. As touched upon in point 5 the players got to know each others games very well, played alot of games together to get that understanding, they were all on the same wave length. This season the team doesnt pick itself at all, we havent had consistent team selection for many reasons. I wouldnt even like to take a guess at Saturdays teams.

7. No Plan B - Even towards the end of last season we were coming up against resolute hard working teams (Exeter and Walsall at home spring to mind) and we struggled to break them down. When our original game plan didnt work, we had nothing to change it around, this season its worse. We are obviously losing more, going to behind more, plan A is failing more and we still have nothing to turn it around, nothing to switch to, nothing to change it to. When your idea to get a goal back is to swap Ritchie for Timlin you know you've lost it!! The fact give or take we've come from behind to win twice in the last calender year tells its own story

8. Confidence - You play football at any point in your life and you will probably realise you play alot better when you're confident. I know I do personally. The squads confidence is well down for obvious reasons and we've done nothing to turn that around. The players themselves should be trying to help each other and Wilson should be trying to build them back up. We also dont seem to have anyone with that natural confidence, someone like Christian Roberts or Simon Cox - they always had that swagger of confidence, even a touch of arrogence about them. Even if like Roberts (for the most part) they dont back it up sometimes having that sort of confidence about is absorbing. The fact give or take we've come from behind to win twice in the last calender year tells its own story.

9. Danny Wilson - I dont usually pay too much attention to managers pre-Swindon credentials once they get here. I'll judge them on what they do for us. However, having looked closely at Danny Wilsons managerial career, its clear that he's a great manager at keeping a good thing going but poor at turning a bad thing round. His career, does seem to follow that pattern pretty well, which is a worry for us - the time to replace him this season has gone now.

10. Attitude - this is a point I feel like I've made a thousand times now, the players attitude has been piss poor up untill recently. The fact that the play offs were still being talked about in December is shocking. We came across both on and off the pitch like a bunch of players who thought their position near the bottom was only temporary and that eventually everything would click and sort itself out. It didnt and it hasnt. Yeovils team isnt as good as ours, not even close - they came here and battled for their lives, manager, players and fans alike - because that is their mind set - us vs the world, all for one and one for all, not going to go down without a fight. They beat us in december because they wanted it more. Their re-action at the end, no fans left, players, manager, everyone on the bunch in a huddle, then over to the fans who were celebrating probably more than one should for a win against Swindon - but they know every point counts. Our attitude seems to have finally adjusted in the last few weeks, 2 months too late imo.

11. Something out of Nothing - how many times this season and we just scored, when we seemingly had nothing else on? I cant think of any? Wilson first season, with Cox upfront you knew he was capable of scoring a goal from nothing, we saw it plenty of times. Even last season Paynter cracked in a few from range, we dont seem to have anyone capable of creating something out of nothing.

12. Charlie Austin - yeah,. he was always going - but waiting so long was stupid and not replacing him was worse. Benyon has looked decent so far, but he's not Charlie Austin and we were probably 3 strikers short before Austin left. Austin out and Benyon in - isnt good enough, we should have got in at least 2 maybe even 3 strikers post Austin.