Are they eds lads very young ? Was surprised to see City so far down
They're younger than most u21 sides in the league but that's far from abnormal for us and the rag kids are the joint youngest but 2nd in the league, our kids are better than them so should definitely be doing better than they currently are there's no doubt about that.
In 23/24 we were especially bad under Brian Barry-Murphy finishing right near the bottom of the table mainly due to selling and loaning out too many of our better kids plus injuries, last year we bounced back emphatically under Ben Wilkinson winning this PL2 league in the regular season and playoffs section too very easily.
Some are now targeting Ben Wilkinson as the sole problem for this drop off but I'm not entirely sure it's all on him even if we've started badly, because if he's the problem this year then surely last year we wouldn't have won the league and playoff section so easily.
There's more to it I think and yes I'd say there's 100% been a couple really poor underwhelming performances so far, where they just haven't turned up or underestimated our opponents whatever the reasons for that.
We seem to be employing a shift in tactics to match the first team which may or may not be contributing to sloppy mistakes that have really cost us, they also played well in a couple of the games they dropped points in but haven't won due to sloppy mistakes, things should be better than the table suggests by about 6 points and due to a lack of points are being overblown slightly but I'll admit the bad games were really bad.
It's all a learning curve long-term I'd expect them to pick up their performances up which have lacked a cohesive nature especially between defence and midfield, other than missing a couple players who might've started or helped depth wise they're still strong enough so have no excuse for a big drop-off.
Even if additional tactics are a bit confusing after Lijnders appointment the lads are at an age where they should be adapting sooner so need to pull their socks up, they just need to get on with it as they'll have been learning any slight changes to our tactics since they were back training
Talent wise individually I think it's still amongst one of our strongest EDS sides and should already be up there so the drop-off to makes little sense, think that as the season goes on (pending outgoing loans) there should be a clear improvement to the teams fluidity overall.
Even if this poor start costs us the league format we must remember PL2 does go into a playoff section once the league finishes, so technically they can still win the whole competition outright once the season enters the playoffs.
It's been an underwhelming start for the EDS but I'm still reserving total judgement for now they're just kids after all, some on here are losing their cool because the EDS are losing to experienced professionals fighting for their careers in the EFL Trophy there and some very overblown criticisms, some very fair ones on the performances too so far but we do need to improve and hopefully the Leicester game is the beginning of that.
