I haven't been on as many coaching courses as Steve Evans, and it is all about opinions, but I see what I see and speak to a lot of people including former players and people who have opinions I respect, and I have boiled it down to 4 main points:-                                                                                                                                                                                          

1. We have not recruited well.  The idea of quality over quantity went out of the window.  The manager brought in twelve new players to add to the several from last season that he thought were worth keeping, and after a few games said we needed three or four new faces and bought Camp (after the Roos experiment backfired) and two loanees from Norwich.  That combined with the fact that some of the new faces have already fallen behind last years players in the pecking order tells me that a number of the new players have not improved us at all.

2. The manager has a tendency to get in utility players (see his comments when signing Halford, White, Buxton, Maguire, Thorpe) rather then players who specialise in one particular position.  I don't think he knows what his best side is, and has chopped and changed.                                                                                                                   

3. We defend too deep.  All the talk since Eric Black came in has been about 'shape'.  I went to most of the pre-season games where you can hear what the bench are saying, and it was clearly uppermost in their thoughts.  We seem to go into games content to get men behind the ball and get the shape that the manager wants us to have.  Of course it is important to defend well as a side and there will be times, especially away from home, when we have to defend for long spells, but if we allow ourselves to be pushed too deep for too long then players of the quality that we are up against will create chances and will score.        

4. We don't keep the ball.  This is partly because we defend too deep, because a consequence of that is that we often win the ball in our own third and are afraid to play our way out from there.  What often happens is that we are relieved simply to get rid of it to alleviate the pressure, and then it just comes back at us.  We are having 30-40% possession in every game.  I know that stats don't tell the whole story, but in this instance they are telling us something.  We will be helped in terms of possession if we play higher up the pitch, but our players also have to be braver and be willing to stretch play and have the ball.