Magath's trust in youth may be too costly?

I was thinking along these same lines when reading some of the Facebook posts. FM keeps talking about putting together a youthful team and building them up all together. Yes the old aging team of the last couple seasons wasn't working and this is a big change in strategy and management. BUT, nowhere has it been mentioned that these youthful and exuberant players have the combined skill to compete in the Championship (let alone the Premiership). I realize that I must trust that FM and the coaching staff to have the appropriate scouting and evaluative skills to know whether or not the current crop of youngsters are Premier League quality. I'm just not sure that it is not too much youth at one time.

A second note is that I don't understand the benching of players on their way out. I know it is a common practice in these leagues but I feel it's a bit egotistical of the managers to think they're going to get the same caliber of play and results from 18 year olds that they would get from the likes of Bryan Ruiz. Why not use Ruiz while you can, get some points (and confidence) under the team's belt, and then go with the "next man up" philosophy. Sure the team may struggle for a couple of games afterwards but at least they won't be starting in a big hole and be sitting at the bottom of the table.

 

Don't see how two losses in a week, the first two games of the season, in a 46 (!!!) game season calls anything into question but hey what do I know.

 

I thought that young group dominated the game against Millwall. Everyone looked fit and fast. I liked how they moved the ball from the back on up and maintained possession (must have been 60/40 percentage or better). They hustled to get balls in the mid 1/3rd and had a number of chances on goal. They were the better team - I know - except for the score. They also still have some experience and toughness in Scott Parker and Hoogland; and Amorbieta looked good to me last season. (Parker's interview after the game made me think he's the guy to keep the others thinking about winning, and not just developing.)

 

Timmy, there are always questions. That's part of what makes us fans. And I would claim that it's been longer than two matches in a week. We've been a Championship side for three months now. A lot of these decisions were made prior to the Ipswich match.

Magath's overconfidence in himself is getting old as well. Last season he ignored the obvious fact that the team was nose diving without a parachute claiming that no team that he coached had ever been relegated. Now this talk about how well this strategy worked for him in Germany - that means it's guaranteed to work in England too, right?

I'm not throwing in any towels. That's not how I operate. I just wonder if our youth are Championship ready (and hope that I'm wrong). I've heard many quotes about how grueling the season is and how physical the league is and wonder if it's prudent to trot out a mostly inexperienced and young side 46 plus times. Hopefully Felix's fitness routine will still have them fresh come spring.

Four matches over the next two weeks. This is going to be fun.

 

Eight games in to a 38 game season was the proper milestone in the EPL to gauge a squad's ability; unless some advanced metric displayed otherwise, earlier. Using that same ratio, we shouldn't really be making any definitive conclusions until we're 10 games in.

Now, I get why people are getting upset. The club has been losing regularly for well over a calendar year now. And if we were in a bygone era and had this been a home loss to, say, West Brom, it'd be really frustrating.

But this a whole different kettle of fish.

 

What do people expect from an entirely new squad? I am going to admit upfront with such a complete overhaul I have very little expectation of promotion this season. However, even if I did expect promotion I would realize that eleven new starters are going to need at least 4 or 5 league matches before any resemblance to normalcy could begin to set in. To be honest this squad has exceeded my expectations so far.

Felix is perhaps still fishing for his best eleven right now but I suspect a couple of timely goals will solve most of Fulham's current ills. I could of course be wrong. It would not be the first or likely the last time for that to happen.

 

Agree with most of you. No reason to push the panic button yet. I like timmy's 10-game marker. Let's see where we are then. I didn't see the Millwall match (too busy this weekend to catch the replay). But I watched the match at Ipswich and I saw enough to keep me optimistic.

 

Way Way WAY too early to be worrying about this. Two games is not enough to identify a trend.

 

This is the proper prospective in my mind. It's early and there's 40+ matches remaining. Let's not throw out the life boats (aka FOF) just yet. The kids will come through (I still hope for another signing or two).

COYW

 

I agree with the consensus on here, that patience is required and that it's too early to draw conclusions. That said, Ipswich and Millwall are good samples of teams at this level and we weren't far off the pace in either match.

I guess it depends on how you're defining costly. If costly means not winning promotion at the first time of asking, I'd suggest that wasn't realistic regardless of our approach. The scope of our overhaul was far too large (by necessity) for the manager to learn his side and for the team to gel in time to win the necessary points. If costly is relegation, I'd say while 2 matches isn't enough to draw many conclusions, I have seen enough to think I'll be very surprised to find us in a relegation battle. We'll only get better as the season goes on and the gap between us and 2 more established Championship sides didn't appear to be that significant.

If there's one area of criticism I'd level, it would be at Khan for saying we'd spare no expense to go up at the first time of asking, back in the summer. Had the message from the club been the same one that was in Felix's letter, from the get go, I think expectations overall might have been more realistic. And in fairness, I think the majority are being patient and have a realistic view. It's a vocal minority making most of the noise and I don't know that there's anything that could have been said to satisfy some of that lot. They seem to have axes to grind, whether with Magath, Khan, their own stupidity or the cold cruel world. Maybe mama didn't breast feed them. Who knows.

 

Don't get too smug there Don. I'm okay with the youth policy, but I've had questions about Felix from the jump and the Wolves match has me seriously questioning what he's doing. I'm not going to say he needs to go just yet, but I'd like to see a little more method to his madness going forward. Rich at CCN and The Felix Dilemna article at Viva El Fulham both summarize my feelings on the matter quite well.

I've seen your posts on facebook and elsewhere and I don't share your "he's just figuring out his best combination of players" viewpoint. There's definitely over-reaction out there, but I'd suggest there's an awful lot of underserved blind faith being spouted as well. We'll see what happens, but I'm getting that early Jol feeling again.

 

I wouldn't say I'm on facebook. I've had an acct for a while. I opened it when a buddy was travelling abroad for a year as a means of keeping in touch and seeing the pictures he'd upload from his travels. Now I use it to view the FUSA facebook page on my phone. I haven't used it for anything else....ever. And don't plan to.

 

We're three matches in so if Felix has been feeling out his players we should start to see a more settled worst eleven as soon as the window closes. If he is a chop and change man we will know that soon.