I would say bad recruitment as opposed to budget. While a reduced budget makes the job more difficult the likes of Accrington and Crewe who in all probability have smaller budgets show it’s possible to do ok.
For me JB was in a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation today, had he played 3 attackers and got a 6 or 7 goal spanking I feel some of the same people criticising him for being to defensive would have slaughtered him for being too attacking against a top side.
I do think we looked tired today and some players looked in need of a rest, but with injuries and with a squad a bit unbalanced because of trying to sort out the attacker issue we don’t have reinforcements where we need them.
Credit where’s it’s due today Hull we’re on their game today and having much better players anyway I think it’s naive to think there was any way we were going to get a result today. We bought on an extra attacker for the last 15 minutes but I don’t it was much of a surprise to anyone that it resulted in another goal for Hull rather than one back for us. It’s the games against sides at the bottom sides that annoy me more where the differences in squad abilities are more minimal and we don’t need to rely on sides having an off day or with Portsmouth a very off day.
Hopefully with some rest and maybe Rico being able to work some magic with the strikers we can put in a better performance Saturday.
I reckon that’s a fair summary, although I still think the non Covid squad may have looked a bit different. It’s also probably the case that when you rip the guts out of a side it’s a bit unrealistic to expect to hit the ground running with the new players especially when you are going up a division. We are going to lose some games on this run in but we simply have to get a result in the obvious games, starting with Bristol. Let’s not leave ourselves having to win at Sunderland?