The thing is with our last 3 managers, they were all setting the team up in ways to perform against significantly better opposition.
Pulis it was ugly at times, but highly functional. Football was a little different, the style in which Pulis played didn't have to contend with the premier leagues high pressing game.
Hughes, even at the end, you could see what he was trying - but the situation with the squad was bizarre and who was truly at fault for that we'll never know.
Lambert, reverted more to a Pulis-style functionality, but may not have been the right man. There was a definite plan, which could create chances albeit in limited fashion.
Rowett has come in and I can see what he's trying to do... I just can't see why he's trying to do it. Championship teams are now pressing high up the pitch, I don't know the stats for all teams, but we seem to be the team with the deepest defensive line in the league before we put pressure on the opposition. This is just pretty outdated thinking.
The lack of movement in the middle of the field is entirely down to Rowett's set-up, at least during the better times under Hughes and even before the mishaps of last season we'd see more lateral and vertical movement in midfield with players like Assaidi, Moses, Odemwingie, Arnautovic, Shaqiri. We still have players capable of it in Ince, in Berahino, in Bojan of course, and even Afobe is capable of good movement. Yet it seems like the plan is for them to not do it.
I've said it elsewhere, but we get this situation that happens game in, game out at the moment.
We get possession. The team switches to a 3-4-3 which is ideal for a fast build up, and to get the ball forward there's no two ways about it.
However, there is this enormous gap between the defensive 3 and midfield 4. Because it just takes 3 men stepping up from the opposition to negate it. Now "negative" Birmingham did it fine, people saying they were playing negatively but they were pressuring us in our own half. We don't even pressure teams in our own half. Sheffield United shut it down flawlessly as well. In fact, most teams have dealt with it fine.
There's plenty of solutions, but this building from the back and letting the opposition get entrenched, it's a relic of football thinking from a decade ago.
Effective teams win the ball back high up the pitch, or at least have a plan that can get the ball and players forward. Rowett does neither. Maybe he can change, maybe he can learn, but he's supposedly a man big on his data, yet doesn't seem to understand the data that makes the successful teams successful. We have seen that when we're losing, pretty much no team so far in this league can cope well with us attacking in full force. Maybe West Brom but then they're used to defending at a higher level. Our one big asset, is that seemingly with the shackles taken off the attacking talent is still there. We've lost Shaqiri and we've lost Arnautovic, but the players who remain are still more than good enough to carve teams up at this level. Rowett literally keeps it restrained until he hits the "in case of emergency break glass" button.
I can see a situation in which come Christmas day we're on 26/27 points. That's a pretty worrying thought.
While we're not as wasteful on the wages as Newcastle were when they came down, and there's some semblance of intelligence somewhere that put relegation wage drop clauses in our player contracts (otherwise we would have by far the highest wage budget ever seen for a championship team) this is still the most expensive squad ever to play in the championship. This isn't a Newcastle style penny pinching chairman who got it wrong. It's not a Sunderland style financial meltdown led us to here. Nor is it a budget Wigan approach that led to us coming down. We didn't do what Burnley initially did and refuse to invest in our squad, we didn't do what so many of the other teams who have been relegated have done.
We're sitting here now, in the championship, with the most expensively assembled team to ever play in this league. That's the reality. It's arguably one of the best teams to have come down to this level as well, and we genuinely see that when we attack. The sad thing is, attacking football is limited to being 1 goal down after the 80th minute or 2 or more goals down before the 75th minute.