Analysing The Friendly’s

[Plymouth red]

Sorry, I completely forgot about Gueddy in my match report! Did well enough when he came on. 7/10 performance.  We were definitely better yesterday with Yates & Gueddy, but was that because they had the Portuguese 3 to hit? Their counter attacking & running murdered Oldham late-on. But the midfielders saw them & got them the ball (& got up to support too). On that showing Watson would’ve been going in circles & then losing  the ball, or passing back,  instead of hitting them early for the quick counter. Would like to see yates & gueddy start a game against better opponents.
Widdow is right, there aren’t enough games to work out best 11 & give all players a chance to gel as well as get fitness.
After pre-season I really hope Watson isn’t auto 1st choice. Very optimistic about Yates this season & for once we’re not going to be asking too much of a youngster  (a la Brereton last season) because he’ll have Colback, Bridcutt & Gueddy with him or as replacements who are all competent at least.  Watch Yates get sent on loan now!
I know others disagree, but as far back as I can remember watching (Frank Clark for actually going to games) our pre-season has been a good barometer for the season. Our promotion seasons were preceded by good results in pre-season (beating top flight teams, sweeping aside lower league opposition). We struggled against lower league teams in relegation seasons. This has not been a super pre-season so far - far from the disastrous ones where you knew we’d strugggle, but not great. Based on pre-season I’d say top 10 finish, where in the top 10 will depend on how quickly Karanka works out his best team & how long they take to ge (and if Karanka gets time to sort it out if we’re mid table at Christmas!).
Anyway, I’m NW based so won’t get to any more pre-season & I’m having an op on my leg just before season starts, so I won’t get to any of the tempting NW away games in 1st few mths, so I look forward to reading match reports from others.

I agree to some extent about pre seasons being a barometer but rarely have we had a preseason where we have signed a new first xi - Colback, pants and Figgy were here last season but other than that it takes time to blend in all the newbies and get them use to style of play.

So I'm expecting a bit of a slow start (very much like that first BD season) and won't expect the team to fully click until around mid September.