Kenny Jackett, currently the longest serving manager in the Championship. He's been in charge at Millwall for 4 years and 3 months. In that time, he's saved us from relegation to League Two, achieved back-to-back League One Play-Off finals at Wembley, winning the latter, guiding us to promotion. In our first season back in the Championship, Jackett led us to a 9th place finish, missing out on the play-offs by just 8 points.
Many neutrals will read that and think to themselves, 'He's done a pretty good job there, hasn't he?'. Well, in fairness, yes he has. However, this season he is like a manager who has ran out of ideas. In this blog, I'm going to give you reasons as to why he's ran out of ideas. I've been a fan of Jackett, but now I'm seriously starting to doubt him. He has many faults.
We're candidates for relegation. All of our remaining home games are against sides in the top half. We have to play four of the bottom five away from home. We've lost 6 home games so far this season. The Den is supposed to be a place which teams fear, but this season it's been the complete opposite. In our last 5 league games at home, we have no wins to our name. In those games, we've only scored once but conceded 12 goals, six of which came in the drubbing from Birmingham in January.
Jackett from a tactical point of view has been an absolute shambles this season. We usually go with a standard 4-4-2. He's recently tinkered with that, going with a 4-1-2-2-1 formation. This formation is effective away from home, an example of that was the game against Brighton last week, which in my opinion was our best performance of the entire season. It's effective away from home because the formation can easily be adapted into a 4-5-1 when defending. 4-1-2-2-1 consists of a holding midfield player, two central midfielders in a free role, with two wingers supporting the lone striker. So when defending, the two wingers and two central midfielders can drop back alongside the holding midfielder to form a 5-man midfield.
This is where the criticising begins. The manager has begun to play that formation at home now aswell, in recent games against Derby, Bolton and Middlesbrough. At home we shouldn't be setting up to play negatively, especially with our current situation. We should be going for it, trying to get as many points as we can to pull away from danger. Last night against Middlesbrough, we played the 4-5-1 system for the entire first half, at home. I honestly cannot work that out. Want to know what's worse?
Jackett started with three, yes THREE strikers in a 4-5-1 formation. They were Kane, Keogh and Henderson. Kane started on the right-wing, Keogh began on the left-wing, with Henderson up top. How can you justify playing two strikers in midfield? It makes no sense whatsoever. In the second half, Jackett switched to a 4-4-2, pushing Keogh upfront with Henderson and moving Kane onto the left-wing. Is any of this making sense here? I didn't think so.
The left-wing has been a problem for us this season. Hamer Bouazza has been too inconsistent and far too injury prone to hold down a regular spot. Dany N'Guessan, our back-up, hasn't even started a game on the left-wing. He is a left-winger. Now your starting to see my point. Brian Howard, Scott Barron, Ryan Mason, Harry Kane, Andy Keogh. Those players have all at some stage, played a number of games on the left-wing. How many of these players are even wingers? How many? Oh right, none of them.
The Middlesbrough game last night made me wonder what on earth was going on in Jackett's head. I still don't know but what I do know is, something isn't right. James Henry was on the bench against Middlesbrough, a right-winger who can also play on the left. Jackett waited until the 83rd minute to introduce him to proceedings. In place of Kane right? You know, the target man who Jackett played in midfield all game. Surely it was Kane, wasn't it?
No. He took off Liam Feeney. Yes he'd been poor, but at least he's a winger. What chance did we have down the left with a striker there who lacks any pace? Not to mention the fact that he's only 18 years old and has no experience at all. We had no chance. It's no wonder why Feeney's performances have been poor of late. He's currently our only outlet so every team decide to double up on him. Yet Jackett still couldn't see this. He's a football manager with a vast amount of experience in the game, yet the 10,000 odd Millwall fans who attend games regularly can see what he can't.
Only time will tell what will happen with Jackett. It wouldn't surprise me if we go and get a result away at Burnley this weekend. As like I said, the formation we play is effective but only away from home. Kenny, take note.
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