I suspect it’ll be fairly similar stylistically, but he’ll hopefully have better quality players to implement it with. If he had half a dozen new players who could each “raise the floor” as he says, it would probably be a little easier on the eye by proxy of being more controlled and better drilled. You can already see the differences between Bradshaw and Harris, in terms of the former being much more clever and able to keep the ball and link play very intelligently, so I think it’s fairly easy to imagine how a few similar improvements across the pitch could make things look a lot tidier. I think we’re very much in a “needs must” situation right now.
I appreciate that others will feel differently, but I’m really not bothered about being served up champagne football. Yeah, it’s been a bit grim and bumpy at times, of course it has, but overall I’m enjoying visiting proper clubs with proper grounds, and being sat in a sold-out stadium with a packed away end every home game. Maybe that’ll wear thin eventually, but right now I’m very happy to be going to places like Stoke, Norwich, and Sheffield Wednesday while seeing us come away with results, and watching us turn over the likes of Sheffield United, Watford, and Blackburn on our own patch. I’m really chuffed to see the team I support holding its own, one division below the Premier League, after a quarter of a century away. Nobody gave us any credit, any respect, or any chance of surviving this season, and we’re proving them all wrong. That’s my enjoyment.
I’d much rather watch us scrap it out at Leicester and Southampton than go back to Lincoln and Stevenage, so that we can pat ourselves on the back for having 60% of the ball and loads of completed passes. I’ve been there and done it, and I’m not that keen to do it again. Give me West Brom over Wigan, Middlesbrough over Mansfield, and Birmingham over Burton any day.