Mistakes

[leewilson]

I thought we were in quite a good place at the end of last season. Ultimately, we ended the season poorly but squad wise I thought we had enough there to build something good from. Before the buys after all the outgoings, we had:

Doe, Saah, Bingham, Ogogo, Murphy, Chambers, Howell, Shields, Gayle, Connors, Goldberg, Hines

That's a tidy little core. Now all we had to do was build solidity around that. However, I only feel Wayne made good purchases in two areas.

1) Jamie Cureton and Ade Yussuf up front.
2) Mark Cousins in goal

We downgraded in a variety of areas

1) Batt at right back (I don't think he's terrible but Hoyte was better)
2) Lack of cover at CB
3) Nathan Green drafted in as cover left back.
4) George Porter and Ashley Hemmings as wing options instead of Hines and Elito
5) O'Brien - not anywhere near better than Seabright.

Several of his signings have made little to no impact:

1) Doidge - frozen out in recent times which is ashame considering the poential he showed pre season.
2) Boucard - Seemingly needs the team shaped around him but appears to now be out of favour.
3) Labadie - Not shown anywhere near his potential best consistently enough.
4) Partridge - Looked very promising early doors but 1-2 mistakes combined with the team as a whole not getting results and the youngster has been made a selection scapegoat.

At the start of the season, I made a tweet about our squad starting to look quite tidy on paper. The likes of Batt, Boucard and Cureton added necessary experience and all came with a pretty decent write up. The likes of Labadie and Hemmings also came in with a reputation as being quite good at this level. However, the big error Wayne made was going with a lack of physicality and fight. He's bought in pretty players who all excel when they have others to do the battling for them. We also suffer from a massive downgrade in the full back areas.

Wayne has clearly realised he ****** up in the summer. He's ditched Green out on loan, frozen Connors out of the picture entirely and pretty much ditched full backs. He's bought an extra CB who happens to be a unit, something we were crying out for in September. He's also ditched the wingers after realising that the ones he bought aren't good enough and has relied on a wing back system to give us the width. He is unfortunate that Ogogo and Howell both got injured but even before that, he didn't seem to know what his best midfield pairings were. Did it involve Boucard, Bingham, Labadie?? Does Chambers play in the hole? Wayne still doesn't know as these 4 tend to rotate in and out of the side game by game. No wonder we have little cohesion at the moment.

Forward wise was the one area that we were good in and Wayne has somehow managed to make us worse in that area. Cureton, Yussuf, Murphy and Doidge. 4 good options and more than enough to see us through the Christmas period, especially with Chambers acting as a 5th striker. We buy Agyemang because we don't have a player of his mould? Actually we do, his name is Christian Doidge. There was a massive hoo hah over paying a fee for him in the summer. Now, because he went a couple of weeks without a game and lost his match fitness, he's not trusted with being anywhere near the squad seemingly. Well at the very worst, he'd have contributed exactly what Agyemang has in his last two outings with the bonus of it at least being experience for a player that WE own instead of for a 34 year old non scoring journeyman.

We also have another goal threat who was fit in November but yet finally made a start today in Rhys Murphy. As we weekly hear, he's not up to full pace yet, probably because he's been sitting on the bench most weeks. Play him and he will start scoring again. And poor Ade Yussuf. Runs Carlisle ragged and then finds himself benched next home game. Then he's thrown back in in a tough away back up at Plymouth. Surely Agyemang, if he was going to pollute a squad spot at all, should have played in the away game to slow it down and hold it up for us up top?

He's got it completely and utterly wrong the last month or two. Wayne doesn't have a clue who his best side is. The players don't have a clue who is going to play game on game as there are changes every match. Look back at any season that we've done well and it's largely been because we have continuity. Wayne has resulted to throwing any combination together now and hoping for a quick fix. It doesn't work that way.

I didn't want to get rid of him and have to hire somebody else but it's got past the point of repair. There is no way we're getting another 25-30 points under him this season. We'll be lucky if we get another 15-20. We have to take the risk with having a honeymoon period and then grinding points out at the back end of the season, it's the only chance we have of surviving now.

Give Wayne Southend as there's no point changing with a day before the next game. Then regardless of whether we nick a result there, a new man needs to be given time to influence things in January whether it's through loans or outgoings etc.

Sorry for the extremely lengthy post. Needed to air my frustration in some manner.

[Dagdale]

Good post lee, but I'd say most mistakes were made shortly after we arrived at the end of last season's 9th League finish, a large slice of our team was ripped apart whether contracts were up or not and losing Medy who really was a great bonus to us last season was an almighty blow, then we arrived with a lot of players 'at dead end street' who at least had the chance to play League football and to be honest was at the time looking further higher but arrived on our doorstep, then pre- season at places like Ebbsfleet every one of us said were gonna struggle this term leaving the ground, then we kicked off the season to some pretty good bouts of decent play especially first half's but some devil must be lying in wait in the dressing room at the oranges because like today we just ****** up second half or unless opposing coaching staff suss us out better and kill us later in the game we are dead and deflated and for the death of me can't understand why in what five months its still there to witness, I've never seen a daggers side so demoralised and its been on show far too long now, its really hard to look back now and to feel pretty hurt that in stages and UNDER WB last season especially before Xmas last year I was watching a daggers side that was really playing some lovely football and more time than I can count away fans on a meet in the pub/s afterwards were pointing with me what a pretty good outfit our Daggers were, Where's it all gone wrong and more importantly WHY? Really can't see where's the next win coming from and don't think Hartlepool because the time we play 'em were probably be bottom and them and Tranmere will be moving upwards with new Managers.

[Adrian]

Cureton was a good signing, but it wasn't one that needed a genius to make.
Batt on paper was a good signing, but he came out of retirement to play for us which must have raised questions about his desire and fitness.
Boucaud has had one decent spell in his career at FL level and was still released by his club. That rang some serious alarm bells to me.

Any young player we have isn't really given a proper chance - Gayle, Partridge, Green, Raymond, Goldberg, Shields.