The two changes completely unbalanced our midfield and attack.
Nichols was box to box, but also wing to wing - he was charging around the place, often quite close to a player with the ball, which closed down the passing options. Sarpreet tends to drift into spaces which means the opposition have to keep an eye on him - and meaning there wasn't always somehow a spare WSW player to shift the ball to, leaving Mandi, Rufer and Nichols in a tight group while they galloped off upfield.
It also meant that Mandi and Rufer were pushing up a bit into the space vacated by Nichols, and all it took was a simple ball to have both of them on the turn - I can't recall how many times I saw both Rufer and Mandi heading towards our goal, chasing down a Wanderers player, in this game. Rather than shielding the defence, he did more running in this game, that's got to have a big impact on Mandi's overall ability to last out a game.
With the midfield out of sorts, Burgess was having to cover Cacace more often - meaning Roy was often by himself up there, with a weird mix of midfielders and attackes slightly out of position and exploitable as a result. Williams so far doesn't seem as adept at Burgess at surging forwards with the ball at defenders, but he's much better at occupying a defence and pinning them back with his presence - he and Roy keep defenders occupied, which gives space for Singh, which gives space and time for Mandi and Rufer.
It was troubling, because it showed that our team really starts from the front and if you make small changes to the forward line - the defence is exposed.
Last night reminded me a lot of last season - we didn't look like a coherent unit, which is weird because we did for the first two games.
This is a really good post. I agree and would add that
1 our conditioning is not the best (not just Mandi),
2 cohesion is severely lacking
3 the deep defence compounds my first point (Mandi and Rufer have to cover BIG yards)
I'm disappointed by point 1, but see good reasons for points 2 and 3