SonkORLY?, wind your neck in a bit, mate. Recently, Ronnie has set the side up with two big men up front but when the rest of the team have been hoofing it up, he hasn't changed it either by removing one of the two target-men or the players responsible for the aimless punt upfield.
As an aside, what if Ben Burgess hadn't thrown in the towel and we'd not got Cassidy back for the first half of the season? It could have been worse...
Regardless of funding, this is a very weak L1. Sheffield United looked very ordinary and they are one of the money bags sides. Doncaster, Yeovil and Brentford haven't looked that much better than us. Walsall, with a smaller budget than ours are near level with us. I find it incredibly frustrating that we sem to have blown a chance of going up, which may not come again anytime soon.
I am not sure who the second big man up front you refer to is, as Sidibe generally started with Akpro who is 5' 7''.
I agree completely with Sonkorly that the increased use of the long ball was indicative of a lack of confidence, with players going for the easy option rather than playing through midfield, rather than being something that was encouraged by the manager. I can remember numerous games, including Sheff Utd, where Ronnie berated the players for playing too long and 'giving the opposing centre halves a headache'. Sidibe was by far the most capable and experienced striker available to us, so we realy did not have the option of dropping him and playing Amoo / O'Halloran, as neither of those two had performed at the level we needed.
Your comment regarding Ben Burgess seems a little unfair. Rather than credit the manager for bringing in Cassidy and playing a style of football that had us top of the league for six months, you criticise him for signing a player who never started a game for us.
Whether Sheff Utd, Doncaster and Brentford looked spectacular when they played us is not the point; they have got massively bigger squads to cope with injuries and players losing form than we have.
There are three teams in the top 8 with low budgets. We are second of those three teams. Just because it is possible, in an exceptional season, for a low budget club to reach the play offs does not mean it should be expected, or that finishing 7th is not an achievement for those clubs.
Incidentally, Walsall had a dire run of form in mid-season of 15 games wihout a win, which just shows how difficult it is to achieve consistency when you don't have money. I don't see Dean Smith receiving too much criticism at the moment; the fact that their wins came at the end of the season and ours came at the start is irrelevant.