The problem with Taylor Richards, writing as a QPR fan, is that it seems he has no interest in playing football. Plenty of talent but no desire. If your coaches can unlock his head then there is enormous upside for everyone, especially TR himself. Likelihood? Minimal, sadly.
For me the signings felt on paper a positive step forward and now 6 games in that enthusiasm has long gone . The most disappointing aspect is players brought in were obviously unfit even to play in friendlies .Now September and still no sign of some of them. A squad like ours can’t carry players like these. All teams have bad luck with injuries and I understand why we look to these players for quality but it counts for nothing if we can’t get them out there and why do we have to have so many of them . By Xmas we will be struggling to put out a full bench and a key position will have no fit players to play it we have seen it all too often. I was excited by the players we signed, I had high hopes ,disappointed we struggled to find a number 9 . Should we be signing loan players from the same league it feels unambitious ? 42 games left, time on our side and a good manager who hopefully will get the best out of what he has . Will it be enough ? Something needs to change soon , right now a win would be a massive help.
Continuing with the cooking metaphor, Cambridge United are an episode of Ready, Steady, Cook, not Master Chef: The Professionals: the manager gets given a random bag of odds and sods and has to combine them to make a delicious meal. It’s more about the cook than the ingredients - using experience and ingenuity to get the best out of very limited resources. Which begs the question why a chef of such quality would be working at this level, but we’ll pass over that for the time being. The cooks on Master Chef know what they’re doing, AND they get to choose the recipes and are provided with the very finest ingredients. As you hinted, why would solid, quality players come to a small club in an expensive area to live in, a club which nearly got relegated in each of the previous seasons, and has had three managers in twelve months? Gary Monk has managed some big clubs, with some success, which begs the questions why he came to Cambridge and whether he will stay for long? I have no idea, but Cambridge are a small club with a small fan base, which will need to be managed, on and off the pitch, with considerable skill, and will need a fair wind to transcend these constraints. For the foreseeable future, staying in League 1 would seem to be the realistic height of our ambitions. Too pessimistic?
The problem with Taylor Richards, writing as a QPR fan, is that it seems he has no interest in playing football. Plenty of talent but no desire. If your coaches can unlock his head then there is enormous upside for everyone, especially TR himself. Likelihood? Minimal, sadly.
For me the signings felt on paper a positive step forward and now 6 games in that enthusiasm has long gone . The most disappointing aspect is players brought in were obviously unfit even to play in friendlies .Now September and still no sign of some of them. A squad like ours can’t carry players like these. All teams have bad luck with injuries and I understand why we look to these players for quality but it counts for nothing if we can’t get them out there and why do we have to have so many of them . By Xmas we will be struggling to put out a full bench and a key position will have no fit players to play it we have seen it all too often. I was excited by the players we signed, I had high hopes ,disappointed we struggled to find a number 9 . Should we be signing loan players from the same league it feels unambitious ? 42 games left, time on our side and a good manager who hopefully will get the best out of what he has . Will it be enough ? Something needs to change soon , right now a win would be a massive help.
Continuing with the cooking metaphor, Cambridge United are an episode of Ready, Steady, Cook, not Master Chef: The Professionals: the manager gets given a random bag of odds and sods and has to combine them to make a delicious meal. It’s more about the cook than the ingredients - using experience and ingenuity to get the best out of very limited resources. Which begs the question why a chef of such quality would be working at this level, but we’ll pass over that for the time being. The cooks on Master Chef know what they’re doing, AND they get to choose the recipes and are provided with the very finest ingredients. As you hinted, why would solid, quality players come to a small club in an expensive area to live in, a club which nearly got relegated in each of the previous seasons, and has had three managers in twelve months? Gary Monk has managed some big clubs, with some success, which begs the questions why he came to Cambridge and whether he will stay for long? I have no idea, but Cambridge are a small club with a small fan base, which will need to be managed, on and off the pitch, with considerable skill, and will need a fair wind to transcend these constraints. For the foreseeable future, staying in League 1 would seem to be the realistic height of our ambitions. Too pessimistic?