Re: Barnsley vs Aston Villa Match thread

[De Kuip]

It's a good point about pace.
It just keeps coming back to that lack of midfield quality. What the fuck was RDM thinking signing 117 forwards and not strengthening our midfield adequately?
The midfield is the engine room of any team. It sets the pace, protects the defence and is that vital supply chain to the front runners - or it should be. In our case it simply isn't doing any of those things well enough.
I watched Arsenal on the weekend and again tonight, and yes, of course they have a world class midfield, but it's all relative and you could see how the heart rate of the team, the tempo of the attack and switch to defence was all eminating from the midfield. Only as a last resort were they allowing it to become the defence''s job to deal with opposition. The distribution, aggression and pressure was all generated from the midfield.
We have to emulate that to really control games, but we are still so light in that department and the January window may come too late to do anything about it.
I'm so surprised that we seemed to buy up everyone that was a forward , when in fact we'd have been better doing that with midfield. Good attacking midfielders get goals, good forwards don't do much in midfield.
Also, a strong mid would have given our equally paper thin defence some well needed protection,  rather than going missing too often and meaning too many of our defending is last gasp desperation.
I said at the time I'd rather we'd signed another midfielder rather than a forward - as did most of us,  and bloody hell those chickens are coming home to roost at present.
Sooo frustrating.

[Trotters]

He can still sign free agents, right? And I'm sure there are some quality players available. So either they won't come or they've not been approached. My guess is the latter.

I'm not sure RDM understands what's wrong. Can't fix things until he does.