Cast your mind back to August/September when Pablo Counago was having a bad patch and was slated by Royle for missing non existant chances, and then was subsequtntally dropped from the team because of his poor form.
Darren Bent and others also followed this pattern, and seemed to be getting unfairly slagged off by the blues boss. However, then Shefki Kuqi arrived on loan, and whilst playing some good games, even the bad ones from Shefki, with bigger missed chances than Counago and Bent seemed to not attract cricticism from Royle, a hypocritical peformance if there ever was one.
So then a few weeks back, Pablo returned from injury whilst on a hot streak of form before the injury and the assumption was that he'd go straight in the team. You couldn't have been more wrong, Pablo has not got a look in of a start since recovering from injury, despite the poor peformances from Shefki Kuqi of late.
So, it's now four games since Shefki has had a decent game, a pretty generous ammount for a player that has been playing so poorly of late, and an amazing 10 games since he last scored from open play, but Joe Royle continues to back the Finnish striker, and shows no sign of dropping the player who is ultimatley the most off form player at the club.
Meanwhile, Town's top scorer and the 100x more skillfull talent that is Pablo Counago continues to remain on a bench, for a reason that the majority of fans are still trying to work out. Goals have not flowed of later, so surely you bring your top scorer back most would say? Well no, not in Joe Royle's case anyway.
Shefki can be a good player for the club, and I would love him to prove me wrong today and score a hat-trick, but however much I wish this would happen, it's unlikely, and any other striker in the current form that Shefki is in, would surely have been dropped by now.
Royle needs to hope that either Shefki hits form pretty soon, or change things, because if he continues to play Kuqi over Pablo, and the results continue how they have been, Royle's poor team selection could have a disasterious effect on Town's promotion challenge.
Rumours will also start flying about that Pablo may leave in January, should this be the case, although it has been confirmed he won't be sold in previous months, our club will surely have comitteed suicide and can give up any hopes of promotion that may still be there.
Ideally, despite the above, the strike partnership would be Kuqi and Counago, who have worked together well so far this season. However if the choice was between the two of them, on a skill basis and goalscoring basis, Counago would win hands down.
Remember this article is a personal opinion article and is not a standard news article therefore the views represented here do not necessarily represent the views of the entire ITFM Staff