When Brian Laws took the job his mission for the rest of the season was give us the best chance of staying up by rebuilding our faltering home form and somehow trying to get us to win on the road. The new gaffer has got off to a good start with the former, however after Tuesday the latter looks the pretty much like the impossible dream, as it seems as soon as a goal goes against us our heads go down and we self combust.
Laws seems determined to change our fortunes away from Turf Moor and has admitted it’s psychologically where the problems lie. We can match any team in the league on their home ground until they score seems to be the brutal assessment, then it seems we crumble and fall drastically short of our own standards.
Tactically things have been altered. Certainly on Tuesday the line up was the most defensive I’d seen start a match this season, but sadly if the players don’t believe they can get a result then not even parking the bus week in week out would be able to guarantee at least a point.
Looking at our remaining away games at Aston Villa, Arsenal, Wigan, Hull, Sunderland and Birmingham there are one or two opportunities to break our away hoodoo if we look beyond the next two at Villa Park and the Emirates. A win and draw from the remaining four matches on our travels are pretty much a must if we are to survive.
At home we have now set the bar in terms of results for the rest of the season. Saturday’s victory over West Ham showed we can get victories without playing our best. We may have hung on at the end and rode our luck but three vital points were ours against one of our main relegation rivals. With Portsmouth, Stoke, Wolves, Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham all still having to come at Turf Moor, the task of winning almost all our remaining home games looks quite difficult.
Brian Laws now needs to quickly strike the right balance that maintains our attacking threat but also tightens us up. At the moment combining the two looks to be proving quite difficult, especially with the defensive move of putting Danny Fox in front of David Edgar at Fulham on Tuesday seemingly backfiring.
It does show that the new gaffer is willing to try different combinations to try and make it work. I wouldn’t mind seeing how Fox does on the left of midfield with Stephen Jordan behind him, however the great thing I thought about Fox’s debut against Wes Ham (apart from the cracking goal and assist) was that every time Brain Jensen had the ball he would try and drop off to take it off him. This improved our often poor ball retention no-end on the day, especially with the Beast’s lack of accuracy on his kicks.
Another contentious move has been to drop Chris Eagles from the starting eleven. Robbie Blakes took his place on Saturday and his passing ability helped on the left hand side, especially with Fox adventuring forward. However when we were under the cosh I felt we needed a bit of the pace that Eagles provides to take the pressure off.
Again at this stage it’s all about finding those winning combinations all over the park. A fit Chris McCann and Graham Alexander would provide a great boost to the squad for the run in. Here’s hoping that the break in play this weekend means that at least one of these two important players can recover enough to be involved at Villa Park a week Sunday.
Right now the players are out topping up their tans on a warm weather training mission in Portugal. Given the events of the last month or so I’m sure this trip will provide more benefits in terms of team bonding and such like than being thrust into another game in the form of an FA Cup tie this weekend.
My message at this stage would be not to panic. It’s likely that over the course of the next few months that we will be in and out of the relegation zone quite a few times. As fans we have to keep positive and keep believing we are good enough to stay up.
It looks like all the teams up to and including Sunderland in 13th are still very much in danger of finishing in the bottom three if results don’t go their way. At this stage I’m far from worried about whether or not we’ll stay up. Instead I'm actually looking forward to plenty of heart wrenching twists and turns between now and May 9th as we all scrap it out at the bottom in what looks like its going to be an exhilarating run in.
The last week has been the pretty much the first time (apart from Rovers and the trip to Bolton) that the novelty of being the Premier League has worn off and it feels like we’re not just here for the ride. As the weeks progress the battle will intensify and if we play to our strengths I’m still hopeful that we won’t be one of the three that’ll fall through the Premier League’s trap door come May.
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