Are we doing OK or underachieving?

[PSumbler]

Casey - Looks a diamond
Inoussa - Our most dangerous winger
Ishe - Excellent second choice LB
Galbraith - Player of season
Idah - Excellent competition for Vipotnik
Yalcouye - Done very well other than the red
Melker - One of the brightest players in recent weeks
Stamenic - He’s excellent
Burgess - Done well

Coming back with my own views

Casey - better than Burgess but was woefully at fault for letting the ball bounce yesterday
Inoussa - agree he is our most dangerous but the competition there is a pretty low bar that he is over but not by a massive way. Runs a lot, little end product - see Jefferson Montero
Ishe - seems OK but we dont know this based on limited game time
Galbraith - Agree although he need to have his restraints taken off him
Idah - the fact that we now consider Vipotnik first choice when everyone said he was dreadful tells you much. He was our second choice striker this summer in the market and I have seen nothing to use the word excellent in that bracket
Yalcouye - overrated and nowhere near what Brighton fans painted him to be. Average championship midfielder.
Melker - Agree
Stamenic - has faded since his debut but definitely a player in there
Burgess - not the player Ipswich fans suggested he was

What that leads me to think is we are either believing these players to be better than they are or they are that good and the manager is making them look average.

And that is why people say it is a 6.

As for the others

Benson - I am fitter than him
Wales - clearly signed as one for the future
Santos - had forgot about him which says much
Farman - is what he was signed to be

 

[TerryPHELAN]

Look at the squad we’ve got. Definitely underperforming. A more experienced manager would probably get a better tune out of the players within the squad. I’m not advocating sacking Sheehan, but he needs to decide on a settled side instead of chopping and changing. We’re now 1/4 of the season in, and surely he must now his strongest 11. I think that’s been the main problem hindering a run of consistency.

 

[Flash]

I think we’re doing ok, considering we’ve completely refreshed the squad. I tried to warn people to temper their expectations at the beginning of the season, and that it would take time to reach our potential. It takes time for a player to get used to the league, look at how long it’s taken Vip to start performing. And that’s just at the individual level, the whole squad is still learning how to perform as a unit.

We’re not doing too bad in the league. We’ve yet to have a game where we look outclassed. And we’ve been unlucky or had poor refereeing decisions that have cost us wins in a few games. If one of those results had been different and we had an extra 2 points we’d be sat in 10th now instead of 16th. We’ve also had really good spells in most of the games but it’s been inconsistent, I expect as the season goes on those good spells will get more frequent and last for longer periods.

One good thing is we’ll end the season in a lot better position than we’ve been in for the past few seasons. Our squad transfer value will be a lot higher and we can focus our recruitment on improving weak areas.

I get people are impatient but there no quick fixes in the championship. To aim for promotion you need to have a good 2-3 seasons of successful transfer windows building on top of each other. And even then it’s not a guarantee. We’re at the beginning of that run and I’m still excited of what’s to come.

If at the end of the season we still look the same as we do now, then I would say we underperformed. But for now I’d say we’re not far off where we should be.

 

[exiledclaseboy]

There are two questions in the OP really. The answer to each is different but for the same reasons.

Are we doing ok? Yes. Just fine given the manager and squad we have.

Are we underachieving? No, given the manager and squad we have were doing just fine.

 

[Frankie Burrows Cap]

Seems that way, I put the same question in to Gemini and it came up with more or less what you've said.

Chat GPT (well the free version) seems pretty rubbish if looking for football stats. Lots of errors every time I’ve asked a pretty basic question.

 

[Smurph]

Chat GPT (well the free version) seems pretty rubbish if looking for football stats. Lots of errors every time I’ve asked a pretty basic question.

In the norm it's pretty good for the majority of things, I tend to use the paid version for a quite a lot of things both for work and personal.

Always worth checking what comes back when you've asked it to do some research.

 

[Manselton Jack]

Except that's clearly not true. The reason we parted with our previous manager was because of a run of 4 points from 9 games (1 win, 1 draw, 7 defeats) and with us slipping closer to the relegation places. Those games included getting humped 4-0 by Portsmouth, 5-1 by Norwich and a humiliating 3-0 loss to our local rivals, a team who ended up getting relegated.

As has been pointed out, this season we've been far more middling in terms of results. We've also only won 1 game by more than 1 goal and only lost 1 game by more than 1 goal.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it, some fans lose their shit more when we're thoroughly mediocre than they do when we're completely dogshit.

We're basically repeating last season, would I get rid of Sheehan now? No, but I can understand why many would.
You've mentioned the run of results in January which led to Williams sacking but the Portsmouth result in January was the first game of last season where we lost by more than 1 goal, sound familiar?

 

[JackSomething]

The difference between Sheehan’s swans last season and this seems simple - we lost a coach who was a midfielder and replaced him with another coach who was a defender. Hence the inability to move the ball coherently from midfield into areas which will hurt opposition teams.

If swapping one coach for another is actually the reason for the difference in the team, that would be damning for Sheehan and for the club in appointing a manager that would be so reliant on his coaches. Thankfully, I doubt that this theory is correct.

 

[JackSomething]

We're basically repeating last season, would I get rid of Sheehan now? No, but I can understand why many would.
You've mentioned the run of results in January which led to Williams sacking but the Portsmouth result in January was the first game of last season where we lost by more than 1 goal, sound familiar?

Well if we go on a run under Sheehan like we did under Williams, he will be rightly sacked.

I do wonder if some fans are just pinning all their hopes on us making a miraculous managerial appointment who will magically make everything better and get us promoted.

Our cycle since Cooper left has been to appoint a manager and sign new players, end up in mid-table and change manager. We then sign more players and end up in mid-table before changing manager again. The wheel keeps turning. We can absolutely sack Sheehan because we're a bang-average mid-table team with mid-table players and appoint someone else, but I wouldn't hold my breath that things will suddenly improve if we do so (other than the 'new manager bounce' which may be what Sheehan benefited from last season).

 

[Smurph]

If swapping one coach for another is actually the reason for the difference in the team, that would be damning for Sheehan and for the club in appointing a manager that would be so reliant on his coaches. Thankfully, I doubt that this theory is correct.

Worth remembering Martin was a centre half during his career and his teams can't defend for toffee. I agree this theory is highly dubious.

 

[magicdaps10]

We're basically repeating last season, would I get rid of Sheehan now? No, but I can understand why many would.
You've mentioned the run of results in January which led to Williams sacking but the Portsmouth result in January was the first game of last season where we lost by more than 1 goal, sound familiar?

It certainly has a sense of Deja Vue so far.

He has a decent squad does Williams and I firmly believe that it's a better squad than last season.
If we don't see improvements on the pitch and not seeing improvements in league positioning then Sheehan won't be long here.
I think he can change things but he needs to get moving with it sooner rather than later given we are now 13 games in.

 

[Manselton Jack]

Well if we go on a run under Sheehan like we did under Williams, he will be rightly sacked.

I do wonder if some fans are just pinning all their hopes on us making a miraculous managerial appointment who will magically make everything better and get us promoted.

Our cycle since Cooper left has been to appoint a manager and sign new players, end up in mid-table and change manager. We then sign more players and end up in mid-table before changing manager again. The wheel keeps turning. We can absolutely sack Sheehan because we're a bang-average mid-table team with mid-table players and appoint someone else, but I wouldn't hold my breath that things will suddenly improve if we do so (other than the 'new manager bounce' which may be what Sheehan benefited from last season).

The sack the manager wheel only to remain in roughly the same position is a pattern that most clubs at our level repeat, Stoke, Preston, Blackburn, etc
Sticking with the manager is fine in principle but only as long as you're convinced he's the right one.
When the division is as closely matched as it is then only a small improvement would lift us up to playoff level.
I genuinely think we have a better squad than last season, not great but better & the investment in players has increased.
If Sheehan can't improve the performances & results by the time we get to the new year then he's going to go the same way as our other recent managers.

 

[Smurph]

Personally I'd give him the season. Offer the reassurance his job is safe regardless of league position (unless relegation is looking likely).

Take pressure off him and the team and hopefully give them the freedom to perform like the side did towards the end of last season.

 

[Andrew - North Hill]

We are an incredibly average second tier club.

We are, but what we're seeing is a clear divide in the fan base emerging, where you have some people like myself (and I suspect yourself, Dr Winston, Smurph and more than a handful of others are in this bracket) where that's just perfectly acceptable. Because we have lived and breathed the truly shit times, the shittest of the shit, and in the grand scheme of things being a middling second tier club is categorically not shit.

On the other side, you have fans whose only reference point is the relative success of the last 20-odd years - promotions, PL football, League Cup and FL Trophy wins, play off finals, etc. So being a bland, ok team in the second tier is just not exciting enough and we need to be up there challenging.

At risk of sounding condescending, those in the lower bracket will learn the hard way if they keep trying to destabilise the club by demanding we get rid of coaches every 5 minutes because we're not playing like Brazil 1970.

 

[magicdaps10]

We are, but what we're seeing is a clear divide in the fan base emerging, where you have some people like myself (and I suspect yourself, Dr Winston, Smurph and more than a handful of others are in this bracket) where that's just perfectly acceptable. Because we have lived and breathed the truly shit times, the shittest of the shit, and in the grand scheme of things being a middling second tier club is categorically not shit.

On the other side, you have fans whose only reference point is the relative success of the last 20-odd years - promotions, PL football, League Cup and FL Trophy wins, play off finals, etc. So being a bland, ok team in the second tier is just not exciting enough and we need to be up there challenging.

At risk of sounding condescending, those in the lower bracket will learn the hard way if they keep trying to destabilise the club by demanding we get rid of coaches every 5 minutes because we're not playing like Brazil 1970.

Be interesting to see the poll and where people were expecting us to finish in comparison to where we stand presently.....both don't go hand in hand but after 13 games would give a good gauge regards the direction we are going.
I regularly defended our second tier solidity over the last few seasons only to be told different or I was wrong, it's interesting that some are now towing the same line and it seems fine for that to be the case(not you Andrew I may add, you to be fair have been consistent over the last few years).

It's interesting that posters now feel it's ok, still early days and we are still in the process of bedding things in when we are as boring as ever as an attacking threat and sat in 16th spot.
Are we seeing improvements in the grand scheme of things? Or are we achieving the same outcomes but just in a different manner?

We need to push on as a team and management, we can do it but that handbrake needs to come off.
I'm not expecting wonders, I think we have a decent squad, I won't get carried away thinking any different but we have a young squad with possible future potential.