Last night (well, our streaky form all year) showed how vital Long is to the shape of the team. Ruffels role is so much clearer when Long plays - pace down the left, support from LB, create overloads on the right with Henry/Lee/Long link up. Blackpool are an excellent side, and the only way we could impose our playing style over theirs was to perform to our maximum level. That was not possible without Long.
The scary thing though, is that it could have been others as well. If Atkinson or Moore were injured, could we still play the same way? Our midfield massively lacks the power and drive McGuane gave us when we come up against the top teams. Who’d play left back if Ruffels was out?
We are so close to being good enough to go up. Frankly the really difficult bit of signing or developing Championship quality players as a L1 club has been frequently achieved. The seemingly more straightforward element of signing vaguely competent back up for these we’ve got horribly wrong - no cover in key positions and the quality outside of our best team is extremely limited.
Most clubs in our division will be signing half a first team this summer, we need to fix our substitutes bench so we don’t have more wingers on it than full backs in the entire squad. That’s an excellent starting point, but means nothing if KR doesn’t finally fix the issues of squad depth and balance.