welcome to transition season.
I thought last season was transition season? We realized we needed Alonso and Arbeloa but didn't do anything about it, hence our transition out of the top 4.
Now we seem to have bought some players to help, but we still aren't doing anything about the problems on the pitch. I enjoyed his approach to the Europa games, but I'm concerned that we will only see that kind of freedom outside the Premiership. I had hoped that Cole's suspension would give us the impetus to blood Pacheco and maybe give Babel a go, but we stuck to the tried-and-tested-but-failed approach from last season. Lucas + another DM = EPIC FAIL, can we not realize this already? Can we really have done much worse than 1-1-1 with Pacheco in the hole and Gerrard as CM for those three games? I certainly can't agree with the approach that we should let the entire game pass us by before making a substitution.
I mentioned in a different thread the key to league positions is how many games you win, so going out to try to draw against a mid-table team like Birmingham has no value. In a game where we would be happy with a draw, I would expect a bit of enterprise at the cost of the occasional point; they say 'fortune favours the brave' for a reason. I would definitely prefer to draw 2-2 than 0-0, or at the very least score one and dare them to beat Reina twice. There's a line between defensive and tentative, and right now we may be on the wrong side of that line.
I'm certainly not calling for Roy's head - I'm not sure I'd start until February unless he completely screws the club up before then. He has time, but he does need to show he knows how to use it.