In many ways, the last couple of games have been a story of two players.
Michael Appleton made the point recently that players coming through the youth ranks at the club have to develop faster than the first team progresses if they want to earn a place in the starting eleven. So, we’re not currently looking for the next Callum O’Dowda because he was a youth team player who played for us in League 2. We’re now looking for a youth teamer with League 1 or Championship ability; the next Joey Beauchamp or Chris Allen. Every step forward the club takes, makes it harder for youth team players to get game time.
Canice Carroll’s debut in the defeat to Fleetwood, therefore, was a significant achievement in a team which has progressed towards the edges of the League 1 play-offs. In the past, debutantes would attract warm applause simply for touching the ball or running vaguely in the right direction, now we expect them to be fully baked and ready to go. Twice in the opening minutes he was caught out of position, the second time leading to the penalty for Fleetwood’s opener. The people behind me were chastising his lack of experience and tactical awareness and questioning where Phil Edwards was when we'd barely played for 15 minutes.
We don’t really know what Carroll’s ‘thing’ is; is he a Joe Skarz safe pair of hands or a Marvin Johnson marauding winger? That's part of the problem, until we know his thing, it's difficult to know whether he's playing well or not. He seemed to grow into the role as the game progressed and overall had a solid game.
At the other extreme, we have Chris Maguire. Maguire very much has a carefully crafted ‘thing’ in that he plays on the edge. He’s like the person at work who light-heartedly flirts with women in the office. Everything is generally fine until one day he says the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person and he gets into trouble.
What makes Chris Maguire special and different, is also what kills him. The second goal against Fleetwood is the best illustration of this. There’s a gif going round of Maguire against Swansea last season doing keepy ups in the corner. It was a very Chris Maguire thing to do; a moment of panache in a high pressure situation. Against Fleetwood, in almost exactly the same place, he got caught out trying to be too clever and it lead to the goal. Had he dribbled his way out of the corner as he intended, he’d have been heralded a genius.
Fleetwood proved that this division is basically made up of Bolton and Sheffield United at the top, a few waifs and strays at the bottom and then a whole bunch of teams like us in the middle. We have are doing what in cycling is known as en chasse patate – literally, potato hunting. We're stuck in a no man’s land between the leaders and the back markers. We are neither good enough to go up nor bad enough to go down, so we dangle frustratingly somewhere in the middle.
The Fleetwood and Walsall results have turned our thoughts to next season and what we do to turn this promise into a promotion push. The first question is around squad size, it only takes a couple of injuries and we're in trouble. Michael Appleton’s options – or more specifically Darryl Eales’ options – are to increase the squad size or reduce the burden by forgetting the peripheral cup games. If we did play weakened teams in the EFL Trophy, then Appleton would be abandoning a core part of his philosophy - that success comes from the repetition of good practice. You don't pick and choose when to perform.
The other question surrounds the composition of the squad; both Sheffield United and Bolton have shown the value of maintaining solid, dependable squads, less thrilling than us, but ultimately more consistent and therefore successful. The question, then, is whether we should be looking at a few less Canice Carrolls and Chris Maguires and a few more solid and dependable experienced pros. We might lose a bit of sparkle in the process, but we might pick up the extra points we need for promotion.
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