Here are the priorities imo -
1) Reduce the average age of the squad & significantly increase the stamina levels of our players. This is the real reason why we tend concede more goals as the game goes on. It's not because we get caught on the break, it's because our players don't bother to track back.
2) Hughes needs to come up with a fixed, reliable attacking strategy. At the moment we don't even know what sort of team we want to be & what sort of football we want to play (or at least it's not working very well). This season, our attacking tactic seems to be - Give the ball to Arnie, Bojan, Shaq & hope they can create something. At times that has worked remarkably well, at other times, it has been completely ineffective. This also explains our inconsistency. Hughes & Bowen are known for giving their players a lot of creative independence but this can only take us so far. I know he has introduced bits & pieces like cross field through balls, runs from the wide areas into the box, dropping deep to create space for other players to run in behind & so on & so forth but it's not very coherent at the moment. He need to inject some of that physical counterattacking football he introduced at Blackburn into the squad.
3) We need to be much harder to beat, especially at home. I'm certain that if we can achieve points 1) & 2), then this will follow very naturally but our defence, for a huge part of the season has been a big big concern. We were remarkably compact when Ryan first cam back from injury but since he limped off against Leicester, we have been awful at the back. We need to bring in 2 young & fast full backs (Johnson can be backup) & an upgrade on Wolly to partner Ryan. Bojan, if he wants to play, has got to start helping his team out defensively. Shaqiri too, although Shaqiri does put a shift in occasionally. And btw, Imbula has also got to do much more when we don't have the ball.
4) We desperately need to sign a striker like Mark Hughes, a winner who would give as good as got, with legs like tree trunks knocking centre halfs all over the place to volley one in.
5) Cut out the dead wood but always keep the leaders. Do we really need players like Ireland, Adam, Diouf, Crouch etc. They're either past it or simply not good enough. And if Arnie isn't willing to sign a new contract, sell him before it causes more problems in the dressing room. SJW has to stay at the club, though.
6) Bring back the Brit of old with increased decibel levels.
7) Give some of the kids a chance. Young players will run their socks off for the team & they'll get the crowd going. It might not be a bad idea to test a couple of them out against Citeh either. To be fair, I've been watching Moha recently in the U21 games & he hasn't impressed me at all so I'm not surprised that the coaching staff haven't given him a chance in the first team.
8) Bojan & Affelay can't play together. It's either Bojan or Affelay & considering that 95% of Affelay's passes are backwards, just putting additional pressure on his defenders, I'd be tempted to stick with Bojan for the time being, although Bojan has to start defending for his team. It's completely inexcusable how he doesn't even bother to track players around him when we don't have the ball (not that Affelay is any better at it). And Bojan has to be physically stronger. He gets muscled off the ball far too easily.
Did I miss anything?
