Richard Smallwood

I can't remember names, but the lad in the middle for Swindon was impressive, as was the AFC Wimbledon midfielders

Maybe they have died out at the prima donna level of Prem/Championship etc, however they are very much still around in the lower leagues

 

What strikes me is the idea that a player has to absolutely stand out for all the right reasons at a lower level, in order to be able to play at a higher level.

But it's easy to see that's not true by reverse engineering the situation.

Both Mark Bower and David Wetherall sunk down the divisions with us, and it made little difference to their performances. They didn't actually get any better. They were a 6 or a 7 the entire time.

Richie Smallwood has dropped two divisions and again, it seems to have made little differences to his performance.

All three could have suddenly been signed by Championship/Division 1 sides, and again, they'd probably compete perfectly well.

It's more about what those players are good at, and I imagine at Hull if Richie Smallwood recycled the ball, he probably did so with a similar pass accuracy whilst playing it to better players than Gilliead or Platt.

Smallwood has been poor lately, it's true, but the histrionics in this thread are embarrassing of late - he's the same player, and didn't become crap overnight - if we surrounded him with Championship level players, he'd look like a Championship level player himself. Unfortunately, without Crichlow in the back line, he's largely surrounded by mediocre League Two players.

 

Thing is though Jon, it appears he has become crap overnight!

 

I don't think he did.

Bottom line is, we had two good wins followed by a bad defeat.

Nobody said Smallwood was crap against Mansfield or Sutton.

And I'm not counting Salford, because bollocks to that.

We're back to every single defeat being the end of the world.

 

Thats exactly the point! Perhaps I was being a little tongue in cheek, but he did turn crap overnight, straight after the Sutton game. He might turn good again overnight.

 

Gotcha! Sorry, bit slow this afternoon lol

 

So what happens when Macdonald and Smith are fit, and assuming we play two up top - where does and/or should Smallwood fit in?

How do we accommodate Walker and Pattinson?
is Smallwood first choice vs Macdonald? Where and how does Gillead fit in?

It’s unlikely our captain is dropped but I’m keen to see Macdonald and wonder how he could partner Gillead if we play 2 deeper CM’s. For now I cannot see a starting XI that does feature Walker and Pattinson if both are available.

 

It's not often you see a captain subbed however Hughes does that fairly regularly with Smallwood, both games this year and quite a few last season.

I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility he leaves him out here and there.

He hasn't had the impact I thought he'd have, perhaps he does the un-noticable things that people bang on about but I'm yet to see it, and we are over a year in. He certainly doesn't strike me still as captain material.

Whether we have the right mix of players in there regardless remains to be seen, can McDonald do more than an hour, Gilliead is marmite on here, Smallwood just "plays", there is no obvious replacement.

Hughes won't go two upfront, however much he dresses it up as such It won't happen. Walker and pattison maybe pushed further forward both looked best of a bad bunch at Accrington however I can see a tendency to "get in each others way" as both seem very similar players.

He has a conundrum now as to how to fit these players into a system that doesn't weaken a playoff team from last year. There doesn't seem to be a best fit at the moment, and certainly not like something they have worked on for two months.

A vintage Smallwood, a typical four shall we say, would lay deep take the ball off of uncomfortable centre halves and start play from there but I just don't see that in him. In fact, more than most he is the one often playing the ball back to a defence, none of whom including the wing backs, are remotely confident with the ball at their feet.

 

100% agree with this. Ironically this is role Clayton did well for the immediate games when he arrived, before getting injured. My hope Macdonald comes in to do this role and more, which if so sparks my question, what happens to Smallwood…?

Hope you're wrong about the two up top. He’ll have to try it since he’s spoken about it too many times. The truth will be in the resolve if it doesn’t work and also how to build Pattinson and Walker into that formation.

 

Not this season then ?.

 

You mention he's not captain material, and I completely agree. There was an occasion at Crawley where Kelly ran forward with the ball out of defence and lost it. Kelly was about 20 yards further up the pitch than Smallwood with the defence exposed. Id be expecting Smallwood with the experience he has to be covering and filling in. However he didn't and I watched Kelly sprint back past him whilst he ambled back. I would expect him to be bollocking any player that does that, never mind doing it himself.

I've no doubt he's a good player especially for this level, but he still absolutely has more to give than he is showing currently.

 

Did we ever sign a committed Smallwood? I only say this as at this point it's known that he reached out to City to join, as his wife was pregnant with their first child and he wants a settled family home. Not because of the project or the manager or the club, because of geography. He turned down Barnsley and Peterborough to join City. Which makes you think is he still playing football because it's still driving him? Or is he now just winding down and wants to play close to home more than progressing his career? Like in either case and barring a Sheff Weds miracle comeback, both those clubs would have been at a L1 Wembley final last season. Even before the season started, 9 out of 10 lower league fans would have put Barnsley and Peterborough in the top 6, he turned that down to play the division below.

So you bring the guy in. On paper, great. Experienced like you'd dream of bringing into a L2 team, won promotion higher up, should rub off on the other talent. But it just doesn't seem like a natural fit so far. Then, he is made captain. Sure, you could look around and think well who else would be obvious to take it last summer? Fair point. But you are handing the armband again to a man who wasn't swayed by the clubs movement, its plan going forward or anything like that, it's a good player who is hear because of geography. I personally don't think Smallwood deserves the amount of stick his play gets, his play really isn't as bad as some make out. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he is this stellar DM we were hoping for. But sometimes I think he is scapegoated slightly.

To start last season, we had a manager who Sparks has admitted had a break clause early in his contract in case Mark wasn't feeling management after dipping his toes back in, they had a break in the deal to cut ties and move on. Then we have a captain again who wasn't enticed during negotiations to pick our club, he chose for family reasons. Captain and Manager, neither joined for the love of the plan at first and we kind of had to hope they grew into it as the season went on.

Looking at Smallwood now, he again doesn't strike me as a player who is loving life here and if there was a well paid option a little closer to Redcar, he'd likely pursue it. There's bid spending York the league below, probably shaves 40+ minutes from his drive time per day. If they offered him a good deal to drop down one more league, I reckon there would be a Smallwood shaped hole in the training ground fence he'd run there that quickly.

 

Might be time of day for the route planner, but Redcar to Woodhouse grove is a 1hr28m/69.5mile drive according to Google. Where as Redcar to Barnsleys training ground is a 1hr37min/92mile drive.

That extra 20 minutes a day for training isn't probably a big thing to most?

 

Understand where you’re coming from with that theory but it’s very difficult to question Smallwood’s commitment when he probably played the most minutes of any outfield player last season. I don’t have the actual stats but I’d assume if he didn't play the most then he was certainly top 3. He only missed two EFL Trophy games and the Mansfield game in February when he was suspended. Not sure what else he can do in that respect.

Smallwood should benefit from increased competition in the middle as it’ll allow him to have the rest time that he probably could’ve done with last season as well as being used in his favoured role. Smallwood has said himself that his role had to change last season because of a few separate reasons and that showed on the pitch. Now we have extra numbers in centre mid, we’ll hopefully see players used in the roles that they are most comfortable in. For example, I don’t think we should be expecting McDonald to play every game but think he’s been brought in to try and give us a bit more when teams sit in a low block, an area that Smallwood struggled with last season because its not really part of his game.

 

The back pass from Smallwood on Saturday would have been no problem generally for Crichlow to deal with, you always run that risk passing back to someone who is slow like Taylor if they lose control.
Interesting to see how Crichlow seems to have fit in very quickly to the demands of L1 football, comments from his new club seem very complimentary. He's a big loss for us and I don't think we've replaced him.