OK, first off, this is not the beginning of a Dolan out campaign - far from it - but I have to let off steam on what I consider a worrying and inexplicable trait of King Pat. It is hard to bring these things up when the team is doing quite well, but I raise the issue in the context of how much better the team could be doing if the issue didn't arise at all.
Dolan has rightly experimented a little so far in attempt to find players who could play in areas where the squad may be weak, but I think he has gone a bit too far.
Last night he played U21 star centre back Kevin Murray on the wing. For the last few weeks he has played centre back / left back Hedderman on the wing. Neither player has been effective in this position. You can argue that there are no better alternatives in the squad, but I don't think this argument would stack up:
To play on the left we have Woods, Warren, Doyle
To play on the right we have Colin T, Doyle, Greg, Warren, Mucka.
The likes of Warren and Mucka may not be considered preferred First 11 players, but they have to be better wide players than any of our centre backs. If Dolan was impressed with 11 centre backs in training, would he play them all!?!
So why are lumbering, immobile giants playing out there? They offer nothing in attack and I'm not sure that they have the postional awareness to track back properly. Hedderman is like a dazzled rabbit when he gets the ball with some space ahead of him.
What makes this even worse is that Dolan has left Greg O'Halloran on the bench for the last two games - in both instances even using Murray and Hedderman ahead of him as subs. I can just about buy the loyalty argument about Colin T and Conor keeping Greg out of cente midfield for a couple of games, but dropping Hedderman and replacing him with Murray instead of Greg makes NO sense. A while back Michael Buckley was the answer to our prayers, now it's supposedly K Murray...
I was not at the game last night, but by all accounts City should have won it over the 120 minutes. But they didn't. Against a mostly second stream St Pats team. Murray had a poor game according to my "man in the ground" and I'm not surprised given the position he was asked to play in. At the very least, why wasn't Colin T out wide and Murray in the middle??
I would say that CCFC are underperforming opposite their real potential due to these poor selection choices. The team is not being played to its strengths. This could become the difference between winning the league and coming second or between qualifying for Europe and missing out. It may already have cost us a place in the league cup final - more attacking options out wide last night could only have increased the chances of breaking Pats down.
Overall, of course, I'm very happy with the progress under PD, but this obsession of his will cost us on the pitch. The superb performances of a core number of players have covered most of the self-imposed cracks, but that can't continue indefinitely.
