He is stubborn..it seems its his way of no way....as people have said time for the senior players to grow a pair
Yes, he is stubborn, but I think it’s a little bit more than just that!
Drawett became Stoke manager, and was given a war chest of £50M to spend on players to get the club back into the Prem! He spent nearly all of that money (£12M was spent on Afobe), but ultimately he failed in his task! He gets severe stick about it all, from the Stoke supporters to this day, and I’m sure that failure probably hit him quite hard. It was a dent to his confidence and his ambition (the latter was the reason he dumped Derby for Stoke in the first place), so between his Stoke sacking and getting the Millwall manager gig, I think that loss of confidence started to get worse!
Many on this forum (including myself), believe that Drawett’s good managerial start with us, was more down to his assistant, Callum Davidson, than to himself, and this was proven when Davidson left to manage Scottish side, St. Johnstone, because Drawett became less gung ho in his attacking approach, and much more defence minded!
Why was this? I think Drawett realised after a few months of becoming our manager, that there wasn’t many in the squad that he could say were consistently great Millwall players. He knew he didn’t have much in the way of money to spend on improving the squad (there was no money safety net that he had at Stoke - where if a player wasn’t working out, he could just splash the cash and replace him), and I think that’s when the panic set in!
Drawett had always been a defensive manager, both at Derby and at Stoke, but now, with no money to improve our poor forward line to get the goals, he panicked and fell back on the one tactic that had never deserted him: defending! He realised that with a strong defence (which we had), if they could stop the opposition scoring, there was always a chance our midfield or forward line might nick a goal and win the game! It’s a tactic that he’s still using today, because he doesn’t have the confidence in his forward line, but more importantly, he doesn’t have the confidence in himself to change tactics when needed, or change formations when his one isn’t working out! He’s like a rabbit caught in the head lights, not knowing which way to jump when the juggernaut is bearing down on him!
If he wants to improve as a manager, and kick on, either with us, or another club, he has to get that confidence back! His lack of it has already seeped through to the players, and in some games this (and last) season, some of their performances was absolutely dire to watch! It shouldn’t be down to the players (or supporters), to tell a manager where he’s lacking, and how to rectify things to improve said players and win games! That’s Drawett’s job - the one he gets paid the big bucks for!
I just hope that the short time the players had in the 4-4-2 formation on Saturday, where they were finally playing the Millwall way of old, will give Drawett the confidence at last to continue with that formation. The team will get injuries during the winter, and if we are still in or around the play offs at the end of December, but missing a key player or two, I just hope Drawett can convince JB to splash a bit of cash to replace those players and improve the squad further, so we can keep the momentum going and cement our place in the play offs, by the time the last game of the season rolls around!
Anything less from Drawett and the players, will be seen as another season failure. They have to pull out all the stops to avoid that happening!
