Hello Jerome - I wasn't at the game today - in fact, I only get to a few each season so my understanding of the situation comes mostly from yourself and Radio Ox. So I wanted to try my view with the acknowledged expert, Paul B, please.
It seems to me that Robinson knew that last summers recruitment had not gone as well as he expected. That he decided to gamble by setting what he had up to play fine football and convincing them that they were world beaters. When this didn't come off, he faced the dilemma - how to turn over-confident , arrogant but fragile players into something more pragmatic and hard headed. Somehow, you have to reduce their over-confidence without reducing their confidence. I don't think he has pulled this trick off.
Do you recognise this reading of it at all or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Don't know about acknowledged expert but I'll give it a go. After some contemplation I’ve got a somewhat different view. Confidence is a good thing. Over confidence is a bad thing. But I don’t recall seeing any of the latter. Recruitment did go wrong – massively so with Sam Smith. But I think KR had largely planned to build the team attacking wise around the recreation of Samir Carruthers / Robbie Hall partnership he had at MK Dons. Hall of course already being here. He featured in the first two games and hasn’t been seen since. His injury record was known when he was brought to the club back in 2016. Was KR unlucky with the Carruthers injury too? A risk too far? That left him to produce a new plan, one without a striker that could strike.
I don’t think the players are fragile. Jamie Mackie, Curtis Nelson, Cameron Brannagan certainly aren’t. If we were fragile we would have been getting turned over by two, three, four goals on a more regular basis. We did of course look fragile after those early games against Barnsley, Fleetwood and Pompey. Since then only Plymouth have humiliated us.
Comebacks such as against Sunderland and away at Fleetwood show that we do have the ability to dig deep. There is of course the counter argument where we have let leads slip, particularly the 3 goals at Scunthorpe. Perversely though I take quite a lot of heart from that game. Having let in three in a mad six minutes it would have been quite easy to have collapsed completely and conceded another two or three. We got it back together which spoke volumes to me.
This doesn’t mean I’d place a bet on us staying up. But I don’t think we’ll go down with a whimper.