The BBC report for the QPR match last night said “there were plenty of positives for Paul Hart to take from this game”.
I’m not sure what match they were watching, but the only positive that I could think of was that he’ll probably not be in the job long enough to have to worry too much about what’s going wrong.
Not that it is entirely his fault - the situation off the pitch at QPR is a complete joke - but unfortunately one has to say that Hart has had no discernible positive impact since coming in, and in fact we seem to be going backwards.
The progression of the team over this season might be described as follows:
Under Magilton:
Under Hart:
Under Magilton we appeared to have the basis of a plan. We were distributing the ball from keeper to fullbacks, to midfield. We were generally solid and well marshalled at the back (until Fitz Hall got fit and returned to the side, at which point everything went tits up). Our holding midfielders did a good job of protecting the back four. Our main downfall was Faurlin’s over-eager passing (he has a bad tendency to hit blind first-time passes), plus a large dose of over-elaboration by our creative players. That was serious, but could have been fixed with some coaching.
Now, the keeper and defenders are back to hoofing the ball up front, and look to be playing to no plan at all. The central midfield seem to have lost their composure, and the creative players are either not getting picked, not getting the ball, or appear to have lost their touch (or possibly the will to live).
Dire stuff.