What's your opinion on the players effort levels recently Finny? Is it fair to have expected a bit more from them even with the amount of games they've had to play in the last 5/6 weeks? Or are you putting some of those poor performances down to key players not being 100% healthy? If i'm honest i didn't expect us to win the league from day one (i think i had us finishing 3rd) so i'd like to think i'm not somebody that assumes there must be something wrong every time we lose a game. For example I thought there was an exaggeration on here when we lost that home game vs Sheffield last month. I still maintain we played well for the first 30 minutes of that game and we should have been 3-1 up in the second period. I think Aaron Fox admitted afterwards that Greenfield kept the score down in the first 10 minutes of the second. Sheffield then had the better of the last 30 minutes and although the score was 2-5 it was a game of fine margins IMO.
Lately though i have seriously questioned the effort levels of some of these players. You mentioned you didn't watch the Belfast match and i think it may have shocked you had you watched it live. It certainly shocked me. I expected us to maybe lose 4-2/5-2 but to lose the second period 7-0 and be 9-1 down after 2 periods was clearly unacceptable. I genuinely think had somebody said to the Belfast players in the 2nd intermission "Right boys you have to score 12 tonight" i think they would have done it. Our heads had gone, we had completely downed tools but Belfast eased off the gas understandably.
I agree with you about the ownership. Let's be honest if it wasn't for them we possibly wouldn't exist now. And if we were still in the EIHL we would probably be fighting it out with Manchester/Dundee/Fife for a play off spot every season. I'd be lying if i said Todd was always my cup of tea but there's no doubting that Devils fans should be very, very grateful to Todd and the owners.
Interested to know your views tho. Do you think ( or did you think) we are serious title contenders and we are going through a blip or because of the financial issues since covid do you think the ownership are content with top 3 but seriously challenge for the challenge cup/Play offs?
What about the remainder of this season? Do you think we've got the personnel to go through the rest of the campaign (barring injuries) and challenge for the league title? Or do we need a new face or two? We all saw how the addition of Coughler gave us real impetus last season.
I don't remember at any point this season thinking "that player isn't putting in enough effort". I might have thought they were sloppy or making poor decisions, but not a lack of effort. I should point out though that I don't think I've seen any away games, have missed a couple of home games and had to rely on the webcast for a couple too. But from what I have seen, lack of effort hasn't been the issue (yet).
WIth regards to potential title-contenders - when we put the team together I was very impressed. Years ago when I'd be stuck in work on my own over the summer doing updates/installation I created a spreadsheet that predicted where teams would finish based on their summer signings. It was a bit out of date but I did it again this year for some of the teams.
I was a bit surprised that we only came out 4th. However I was hoping that a high retention of players would help us start the season better than others and the ability to run 4 full lines would help us be more consistent of the season as injuries kicked in. The first was valid for only two weeks it would seem, and we've barely been able to play 4 lines all season. I expected us to be in the mix for all three trophies but wouldn't have put us as one of the favourites.
From what I read over the summer I think the ownership group expect us to be competitive. Last season I was expecting a transition year but from what they said they expected us to be challenging for the title for longer than we did. I have no idea of the financial situation of the club, but I wouldn't be surprised if last year we had to budget on the assumption we'd spend some of the season without crowds. The additions of Coughler and Brandt seemed to back that up.
As I posted earlier in the thread, I think we do need some player additions. Partially to cover for injuries and partially because I think we are missing some experience in defence. My worry is that the financial situation in the country rather than just the club means we are unlikely to attract the type of signing we need or have had in previous seasons.
