A few things to address further here.
Challinor's teams that I've seen in the past and this season seem to be set up to have a go. I'm not certain that he would get better results in the short term, because of the lack of quality in our forward line, but if we've made more effort to attack, then the crowd may be more forgiving, having seen a decent game of football, even if the team ultimately fall short. When we set up and play as negatively as we did v Sutton, off the back of a couple of league defeats and after an alternative option was shown in the Oldham Pizza Cup game, then there will be much less tolerance shown when we don't get something out of the game. You can't expect quality defending every match. The last two home league defeats have been really poor to watch. While Northampton looked a fairly decent team, Sutton seemed more mid-table fare and setting up to contain them and hope for a moment of magic and no defensive howlers seemed both too cautious and optimistic.
I agree that the summer recruitment was appalling and Micky's role in that seems to have been limited. The team is lacking both in attacking fire-power and any pace, yet we persist playing with one-up, a non-scoring rookie striker and haven't even given the only forward with any pace (Walker) a place on the bench. Meanwhile Feeney, who many on here thought was lucky to get a deal with Rovers gets regular game time and Mcmanaman, despite some indifferent, verging on disinterested performances is a regular starter. Micky needs to shake some out of their complacency and make use of all the squad, we are playing nowhere near well enough for the first team line-up to be virtually a closed shop.
At the start of the season, my thought was this was a squad capable of making the play-offs, probably better if we recruited a decent striker. Unusually for me, that assessment was way too optimistic and I now feel mid table is as good as it gets, fear there is a danger, where some of the better players to be missing, that we flirt with relegation. Reality is needed about the transfer window, it's unlikely that we'll bring in a striker that transforms our attack and it's unrealistic to expect we beat Orient and get a decent cup draw as the strategy for squad improvement. MM has a history of turning round sluggish starts during his time with us, but can that be achieved with a much more limited infusion of new blood?
I doubt that anyone at the club would admit that mid-table was an acceptable finish, but wouldn't think that was a sackable offence by any stretch. What might be is a continuation of the negative football and losing at home, because as we saw with Hill the Palioi took action when they saw how big the disconnect was, with season card renewals at stake.
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