On this day #5847

[From Despair To Where?]

12 months ago, we hit our onfield nadir regarding our current circumstances.

The day that Sam Hutchinson publicly outed our academy players as not good enough.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Really was the lowest of the low. Doesn't feel like things have improved off the pitch, but at least the team have given us moments to enjoy on it since.

Easy to forget we were 10 points off safety after that game, and we survived comfortably in the end despite having a further 2 points deducted.

[Armadillo Roadkill]

I remember him more as saying everything wasn't good enough - the players, the coaching, the tactics. He certainly did seem to be saying the younger players kept making the same mistakes, but to be fair, he was right wasn't he?

Also, to be fair to him, that rant was the beginning of the turnaround in many ways. He paid the price for publicly saying what we all suspected - that things were very wrong and needed to change.

But yes, that was absolutely the lowest point I've seen this club at in the 24 years I've been watching them.

[From Despair To Where?]

The point is, this is stuff you say behind the scenes, not on record to a journalist. Hutchinson wasn't exactly leading by example, either. (The same could also be said of Dean and Carroll, all senior pros).

I believe Selles has said that it was at this point that he realised they have absolutely no control over the ownership situation so it was best to just try to filter it out.

[Vision]

Hutchinson was at fault for the equaliser as he let his man go. For the winner there were 3 of ours marking two of theirs at the far post. Yiadom, Dean and Kelvin E. We know Kelvin isn't the most switched on defensively and as experienced pros the other two should really have been able to manage the situation. But yeah the narrative that it was mainly down to the kids was a bit of deflecting really.

The most significant thing to come out of that day was that Selles didn't press the panic button as he had after certain defeats earlier in the season. We'd played pretty well for most of that game but struggled after we took off Smith. Smith subsequently played pretty much every minute of every game when available after that because of his value defending set pieces.

The side remained pretty settled after this and the results improved.

[SouthDownsRoyal]

At least the takeover is close to being competed!

[Snowflake Royal]

Hutchinson certainly wasn't right in everything he said, and it was a terrible public airing or dirty laundry, but it really did seem to be the catalyst that forced change.

It was around that time that Selles finally woke up to the shape he was employing being a complete failure, and implementing the reorganisation that dramatically improved performance and results.

I remain grateful to Hutch for kicking over the anthill publically and essentially forcing some change.

[From Despair To Where?]

Regardless of how warranted It was, it was an appallingly toxic thing for a senior professional to say publicly, especially as he was as culpable as any other player in that squad. You just don't publicly throw 17 and 18 year olds under the bus.

Selles alluded to big personalities within the squad having a negative influence on squad morale. You do wonder if it prompted Selles to excise the last of the boils because Hutchinson never got a sniff of another start. Wouldn't surprise me if changes were already afoot and all it did was prompt Selles to jettison him.

I'd have been more grateful to Hutchinson if he'd picked up their man for the equaliser.

[Clyde1998]

Hutchinson certainly wasn't right in everything he said, and it was a terrible public airing or dirty laundry, but it really did seem to be the catalyst that forced change.

It was around that time that Selles finally woke up to the shape he was employing being a complete failure, and implementing the reorganisation that dramatically improved performance and results.

I remain grateful to Hutch for kicking over the anthill publically and essentially forcing some change.

IIRC, we changed the shape for the Portsmouth game (a few matches before). Dom Ballard played out on the left (in a similar role to Ehibhatiomhan has now) for a couple of games before he got injured at Wycombe (the league game after Shrewsbury).

The team that played at Shrewsbury game was (the exact shape is subject to debate, as The Tilehurst End has it listed a 4-1-4-1 in their match report from the time):

Button
Yiadom - Bindon - Abbey - Dorsett
Wing - Hutchinson
Azeez - Knibbs - Ballard
Smith

Quite simply, we should not have lost that match. We went 2-0 up and should've been three or four up by the time we conceded the first. We had dominant spells within the second half too.

We changed to a 5-2-2-1 by the time we reached stoppage time (the exact shape, again, maybe somewhat different), which invited pressure on the defence:

Button
Yiadom - Bindon - Dean - Abbey - NGW
Wing - Hutchinson
Knibbs - Elliott
Ehibhatiomhan

What that game did do was confirm the 4-2-3-1/4-1-4-1 formation as the formation we were going to use going forward that season, as we looked fairly effective whilst playing it. We controlled the midfield better and weren't as exposed defensively.

I think the biggest impact of that game was to weed out players, who must've been causing problems (or simply didn't work well) - similar to how the earlier defeat at Port Vale had resulted in certain players (Andy Carroll; Tom Holmes; Tom McIntyre; Nesta Guinness-Walker) all falling from players we expected to start most games to being fringe players at best.

Nesta Guinness-Walker and Sam Hutchinson never appeared again in the league for us - Hutchinson was on the bench at Eastleigh and played once in the League Trophy.

Harlee Dean also fell out of the league squad for a number of months; he played 45 minutes against Eastleigh and only appeared once on the bench between the Shrewsbury game (11 Nov) and the Carlisle game (2 Mar) - the win against Exeter on New Year's Day. He only played two more minutes in the league after the Shrewsbury game - Cambridge (16 Mar).

In terms of the starting XI, we only made one change for the Wycombe game that followed - Craig in for Hutchinson.

I think we had started to make changes to on-field issues a few games before it though - it just took a few games before those changes started to make a serious impact to our results.

[stealthpapes]

Shrewsbury was gutting because of how we lost, but as said above, we played well for good stretches of the game. I thought it was clear a corner had been turned at that point even if heads went in the last minutes of added time*. By the end of the next month, our form had changed from W 0 D1 L6 to W3 D4 L1 (using games played in October, November and December, Shrews (A) as the last point on the first chunk).

EDIT here's my match report

Up until the Added Time board went up, that was a solid, if imperfect, away performance. Their keeper looked dreadful, especially his kicking and positioning. We were snapping into tackles in a way that we rarely have this season. One good goal, one maybe lucky one, Azeez just needs to hit that for ...

Oh.

While it was a poor mistake for their first, it boiled down to someone taking charge. While it initially looked like it would run, Button should have clocked the player closing down. One shout, ball in touch.

Shrews made a half-time sub and formation change that put the pressure on to us, but it still wasn't bad. Then our first set of subs gave up midfield completely, put our most mobile defender out wide, then Guinness-Walker came in out of position. Right. We actually weathered that storm and the third sub seemed to swing things back. Kelvin chased balls down, saw out a defender.

Once it went 2-2, tho...

Gutting.

Other things...

*Shrewsbury well served with pubs, the three up from the station good and there were three planned (has we won) that looked gr8. Got a further recommendation which looked solid enough.

*the young lad throwing up... Need a bigger bucket.

*only one matchday bus was an actual joke.

Which matches, in a more stream of consciousness style, Clyde's analysis of the formation. And, in case it needs repeating, it's a young side, they're going to be brittle.