Although we obviously need another striker I'm not sure Marriott is the answer. It's not that I'd be unhappy with his experience and poaching ability, and initially I thought that's what we were lacking up front as well.
After watching the Cambridge game, I thought Harris had the potential to be a handful, his movement off the ball to get in behind is good and he's seriously quick. What good are those traits when we are playing a team with 10 men behind the ball and we're in a tough physical battle on a small pitch?
It was screaming out for someone to hold the ball up and bring in Rodrigues, Goodhram, Browne, Brannagan etc. I think we need a physical target man who the others can feed off, much like Ryan Taylor. Sometimes we would make 20 passes without making any progress, whilst Cambridge would stick it into their target man, pop it off and be attacking our back 4 in 2/3 passes. We need to be able to mix it up otherwise we become slow and predictable andf that's easy to defend against.
A couple of fullbacks who are willing to overlap to the byline would stop our wingers getting doubled up on. If I had the time I could screenshot so many occasions from that game where Browne held the ball on the wing, drew their full back miles out and left acres of space to exploit down the wing, only for Brown to sit behind him like a statue only wanting a back pass where it then ends up with our centre backs after that and they get back into shape. Will hold judgement to see if Stevens can do that on the right as Sam Long was equally scared of getting forward and seems a shadow of the marauding fullback we saw he was capable of once.
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