The Doctor":2o8el9s7 said:
To try to provide some balance...
There's been quite a lot of criticism of Sheridan for 1) his starting line-up and 2) his half-time substitutions.
Re. 1) I believe that Morgan was unavailable due to the birth of his son earlier in the day and Alessandra was unavailable at late notice due to illness.
Re. 2) Smalley was obviously injured in the first half and was struggling to make it through to half-time. At that point Sheridan could have brought on Thomas but instead opted to push Harvey up front (with Morgan and alessandra absent he didn't have a huge amount of choice) and play Mellor as a right-sided midfielder (not unreasonable given his recent attacking performances, including in the first half). Perhaps McHugh had also picked up a knock - he didn't do anything particularly wrong in the first half in my opinion.
I sort of agree, Smalley was definitely injured but to facilitate Mellor on the wing O'Connor had to move position. I felt Mellor is more effective with his runs when he's running from deep rather than starting on the halfway line.
Sheridan could have gone with three at the back in Nelson, Hartley and McHugh, push Mellor forward still and save a sub.
The sub I couldn't agree with was Norburn going off and Allen coming on, a like-for-like player. Norburn had a poor game but we were losing and had to score so Thomas should have been brought on. Our only attacking player on the bench wasn't used in a match we were losing.
Six of Sheridan's summer signings came from teams who played in a higher league than Argyle last season, I believe we have the players to get us promoted with some loans along the way, what we don't have is a stable formation, a gameplan and players who know their roles week in, week out.
Sheridan needs to pick 11 players, settle on one or maybe two formations and go with that for the next 10 games at least.
How many formations has he used this season? There was another new one last night.
