I'm not sure which team you've been watching for the last 5-6 years and I hate to break it to you. But despite the personal, we've been very easy to score against. One of the easiest teams to score against I'd say. You'd think anyone with some common sense wouldn't keep doing the same thing expecting different results.I think one possibility people don’t consider enough is that if we removed the Bevoisms that occasionally drive us mad and play with a more conventional setup we might get worse.
For example, throwing midfielders like Dunkley into the ruck was maddening when the opposition got a clean hitout to advantage, yet we very often won the clearances while doing it. The downside was just very obvious and the benefit wasn’t.
Throwing an immobile ruckman into the mix would have won us some hitouts but robbed us elsewhere. The trick was to recruit a ruckman who wasn’t a liability (Martin was good but short lived, but Darcy is obviously looking great).
If we threw Naughton back he would no doubt take a raft of intercept marks and look a million bucks but the ball would likely exit the forward line easier and leave JUH more exposed. We could pick a more skilled forward than VDM who would kick a goal or two, but again the ball would exit more easily.
Doesn’t mean that he gets everything right at all, but there is usually a lot of thought behind what we do.
And every time posters say “at last, a balanced team” when the side is announced, we lose.