That's definitely happening to us. We've gone from having virtually no possession and playing on the break to dominating possession and we're struggling to create good openings when teams do to us what we used to do and sit back. We have a decent starting 11 when everybody is fit, move away from that and we struggle.
Our bench on Saturday was Botman, Lascelles, Ritchie, Lewis, Karius, Manquillo, Wood, Murphy and Longstaff. That’s 5 defenders, a keeper, Ritchie who was played more as a defender over the last 2 or 3 seasons, a forward, a winger and a midfielder.
Botman didn’t start for some reason, he should have because he’s much better than Dan Burn in every aspect of his game, Burn played Bournemouth onside to get their goal because he’s a ball watcher.
Against Bournemouth we had our best technical player(Bruno) only playing 72 minutes because he’s coming back from injury and he clearly wasn’t 100% fit. We’re also without Wilson and Saint-Maximin who are both potential game changers. I’m no fan of Shelvey but he still adds something, especially if he’s coming off the bench. We still came close to winning the game as we his the post twice and their keeper made some fantastic saves.
We didn’t have a clue what to do and we kept playing the same balls, unsurprisingly the outcome was the same. We must have some really thick footballers if they can’t work out that what they are doing isn’t working.
Hopefully we’ll have Wilson back for Fulham, Bruno is away on international duty so will get some more minutes so will come back match fit. It’s not known whether Saint-Maximin is going to be fit for Fulham and we’ll not know that until the team is named on the day as Howe keeps team selection to himself.
I still think we’ll finish the season in a better position than last season, Howe has changed our style of play massively and it was never going to click on day one of this season, he has them playing much better than I expected at this stage, even if the results haven’t been great. He’s clearly a good coach because most of our players have improved under him, some massively.
We need to spend wisely, go for quality over quantity, spend all of our money in the next couple of windows on single players who can change games. We need players who can split defences and we need pace.
My starting 11 would be Pope, Trippier, Targett, Schar, Botman, Bruno, Joelinton, Willock, Saint-Maximin, Isak and Wilson.
I would look to replace Willock first and get him on the bench. After that we need to upgrade Schar then probably Trippier because of his age. Targett will need replacing as he’s reliable but lacks pace, maybe Lewis can stay fit and put pressure on Targett as Lewis has a good performance in him, even if he doesn’t show it too often, mainly because he always seems to be coming back from an injury. Wilson will also need to be replaced sooner rather than later, he's getting on and he's injury prone which is a shame because when fit, he's a very good footballer who can score goals out of nothing.
Anyway, I'm more than happy with the progress that we're making as a club and a team, everything is going in the right direction and we don't seem to make many mistakes at club level, if any.
