Reading through this thread and I can see where some people are coming from reference McGhee and the performances being like a Malpas team.
However I believe it's the players that need to take a look at themselves here as much as if not more than McGhee.
I believe McGhee will turn things around but it has shown how thin our squad is.
Is this down totally to McGhee or are the Board at fault here. I can't honestly see McGhee taking Kennedy to Austria with us unless he had assurances from the Board about backing him with the funds to bring him in.
Then you look at the players he did have on trial, fair enough a couple of them may not have been up to the job bu what demands did the others have that Board wouldn't match?
Is it possible that Boyle was happy to renegotiate McGhees contract to keep him because he thought there'd be offers fo players during the Summer and the only one that seemed to transpire was for Reynolds. Of course McGhee knocked this back and may have lost any chance of having any cash because of it. However we were all of the same mind at the time, that a) the offer wasn't high enough and B) we'd be losing the best one of our central pairing.
How many of us now would have taken the cash and ran?
Reynolds hasn't been the same player this season and I'm not saying he's the only one but he was one of our most consistent performer last season.
I have to admit I expected to see more of Hughes and Porter especially as they are really putting themselves in the shop window at the minute with their contracts due to expire.
Folk have been going on about McGarry's performance last night but him and Saunders were the only ones that were getting decent crosses into the box and still our 2 tall strikers couldn't get on the end of any of them.
There was a commnt earlier about McGhee's substitutions, can I ask who else could he have brought on last night?
O'Brien for Malcolm - I believe he was right to take Malcolm off but he should've brought on Fitzy or Dairylea. As soon as McGarry moved to the right side he never got another cross in and O'Brien did hee haw.
Murphy for Sutton - Don't think it mattered which one of the front two he took off it would've still been the same result.
Dairylea for McGarry - I'd have taken O'Brien back of and shoved on McHugh and went 4-3-3 with Murphy and McHugh running at the defence and Porter as the target man for them.
Anyway c'mon McGhee show that you can turn this lot around.