Post Transfer Window

Smallwood proved himself when he was mid/late 20s. He was terrible for Hull last season and he is fast approaching 32 now. He has been appalling this year.

Cast your mind back to McLean, Vaughan, Doyle - all 'quality' expensive failures.

 

Smallwood wasn’t terrible last Season at all he is very well regarded with Their fans. There is plenty of quality in our Squad which isn’t being used to its capabilities

 

He got released fella. And the general consensus by their fans was 'his legs have gone'.

He was held in high regard 20/21 season as he captained them to promotion.

 

In my opinion it’s quality which isn’t being exploited to its full potential.

 

Ok - in the sense of poor tactics or formation?

Are we going to see a new formation coming in now with the recruitment in Jan?

 

The thing is you need goals to get promoted, you mention quality and a few others on here have said similar at times but when you look through most of the squad’s careers there aren’t many why score regularly or create regularly either. Walker is a key but he’s been injured all season, which obviously wasn’t in the management teams plans but it’s left us painfully short when it comes to creativity. One player has scored lost our goals and that isn’t sustainable.

 

Yes but for most of the season the tactic has been play it around at the back. Now I understand that say last Saturday but it’s been the same all season at home as well.we don’t get the ball or enough players in the box to provide goals. We are not missing hatfuls of chances week on week we are not making them for reasons stated above

 

The tactics are the same as when Hughes came in, just done poorer. We don’t created load’s because the players aren’t very creative, we are relying on Walker to create and he’s been out injured most of the season. Non of the other players in the squad have a history or reputation of creating chances.

 

I thought he turned down Hull's offer of a 12 month contact extension in favour of the longer contract we offered?

 

Aye, I work with 4 Hull fans who usually argue like cats and dogs about goings on at Hull but all of them would have kept him. Not saying that he's brilliant for us mind.

 

To score goals you need to get the ball into the penalty area enough times during the 90 mins to create chances.
I watched Wrexham v Sheff Utd and it was typical Parky which worked a treat.
If we had someone like Tozer launching the ball from every throw in to Cook and Oliver they’d create havoc in the box, defenders would panic.
Loose balls would fall to the likes of Walker and Chapman.
The back 4 didn’t need changing in my opinion.
Yes it’s pre-historic dinosaur tactics but it would have absolutely got us out of this league and probably the league above.
At that point you revise tactics and bring in players that can operate at Championship level with appropriate tactics easier on the eye.

 

Tozer has a unique talent with that throw, an ideal weapon for league 2 next season. Just nobody out there with a throw like it.

 

Il be honest, I think we have somewhat strengthened this January window and Im well aware that I will be in the minority regarding this but here is my thinking on the singings we’ve made :

Young / Costelloe : As we know, Young wasn’t getting any game time. Whether he should have is debatable, but at the end of the day, Hughes primarily plays with one up top, an Young isn’t the type of player to lead a line. He’s also pretty poor on the wing as he can’t cross. Id say in the time to come, Costelloe will prove that he is more suited to our system so id say this transfer is an upgrade

Sutton / Clayton - A box-to-box player was ideally needed but we also lacked a deep lying playmaker ever since Watt left in the summer. Sutton does give his all but his contribution on the pitch is the equivalent to what Gilliead provides whereas Clayton provides something different. Also has leadership skills which are vital for us right now so id say this was also an upgrade

Angol / Derbyshire - Too early to comment on this one, but similar to the previous one. Derbyshire is a different type of attacker to what we currently have. Angol was poor this season. Derbyshire can’t really be any worse than the performances Angol was putting out

Bola / Foulds - Foulds was steady. But not the best. Could be upgraded on. Bola’s lack of matches under his belt is worrying. But some Rotherham fans did say there is a player there somewhere. Perhaps with a run of games, we may see a similar result to that of Halliday

Kelleher / Kelly - Kelleher was conference league standard. Then again, Kelly isn’t exactly getting rave reviews either. Neither are in the first team picture so this switch doesn’t make much of a difference to us as neither will play for us this season

Wright / Nevers - Nevers may come good, But I don’t personally see him putting in the same kind of performances that Wright put in for us. Very likely chance of this being a downgrade. We will really need the returning Walker an Banks to compensate for the loss of Wright

Songo / Stubbs - Songo had one role in this team, to help us hold onto a lead. His departure means we haven’t got someone else to play that role. Stubbs is heavily injury prone an cannot be relied upon. That being said, Exeter fans said he was quality for them an belongs in the Championship when fit. If Stubbs can stay fit for the second half of the season, as he did last year (which is a big ask) then He could very well turn out to be an astute signing

To summarise, I think the signings made will suit Hughes’ style of football which could very well make us stronger. The signings of Derbyshire, Bola & Costelloe could very well give us a different dimension to our play. Stubbs & Clayton bring big personalities, something we need in this team, hopefully that takes the burden off Smallwood’s shoulders an the team can start playing to a higher standard

A lot of hypotheticals in this I know, but there is always the chance that it could work out

 

He has a point. I'll wait for those who disagree though...

 

Smallwood is a quality player. But his set pieces are poor.

 

I dont think Smallwood has been very good this season. He had had 27 goal contributions in 350 league one and Championship games so was never going to get us goals and assists but he does add a bit of stability and a wise head. There was a big social media buzz when he signed although I really do think people were going from his Wiki page and seen that he had played a good number of games at a higher level and were going OTT. We had that with Dion too in the summer.
I dont think Gilliead as a partner has helped Smallwood and Gilly himself will say that CM is an unfamiliar position for him. It is an area where we have looked weak all season. That is largely down to the type of players being played there and the job that is being asked of them by the manager. At 32 I dont think we will see much else from Smallwood. He will play some tidy passes and run around a bit but he won’t be going box to box and he won’t be chipping in with 10-12 goals a season. He can’t take a corner to save his life and I think Clayton will add more on the pitch when it comes to motivating the lads around him and being more of that captain figure. I still think not signing a well-established box to box midfielder from somewhere in league 1 or 2 might come and bite us on the backside come May.