Lets face it, he took the core of a group put together by Grant Thomas and the AFL (high dp's) added some plodder "role players", instigated a ultra defensive, forward press, game plan (which has since been overtaken), and not developed any new players (due to obvious circumstances).
He is coming into his fifth season at the club, and the list looks decidedly shabby and our chance at a flag is gone for the time being.
Under Lyon, our recruiting has been ordinary, we got SFA for Luke Ball, and because we had no depth when Lenny went down, we had nobody sufficently experienced to be our in an under player (Steven and Armo tried hard, and Polo tried but really, to kids and a journeyman
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
Our skills are appalling, our footspeed is ordinary, our kicking for goal terrible.
Why has Lyon not improved these aspects of the game (cj and peake have been brought in and Lovett was quick but really their deficiencies cancels out their strong points and speed - two more "role players").
Lyon has had four years to improve our players skills and I just cant see it. Even in 2009 and 2010 it was our structure and adherence to game plan more than skills that had us challenging for the flag.
Our forward line is now dependent on a 31 y.o. small forward to kick the bulk of our goals. Riewoldt is being killed by the flood/press and is being run into the ground. No wonder he cant kick a goal when he gets the flipping thing, he has had to run 150 metres on three leads almost every time.
Where is the development of our forwards? Where is the chop out for Milne and Riewoldt? Gamble, hardly, Schneider, up and down like a fiddlers elbow, Kosi? Hmmmmm
Stanley, Archer, Johnson and Walsh are all forward who got four games between them at the start of the year then dropped or in Tommys case didn't even get the chance to be dropped.
Why was this so?
Ross Lyon has superior strength in his gameplan and gameday coaching. The experts seem to think he is one of the best.
But, as we saw this year, you cant win games with gameplans alone. if you cant kick, run, or score as we showed this year it doesn't matter.
Can Lyon address our deficiencies with our current list? Hardly.
Doe he deserve the chance to develop the list, get our players to hit targets, and score goals?
Well probably, he has currency from his two GF attempts.
But we are now going into unchartered waters. Lyon has used and added to an already established list, can he rebuild and develop one?