For me, it has to be the decision to appoint Les Reed as the successor to Dowie. I personally have no doubt that that one decision was the one that really finished off our season and our stay in the Premiership. When he was appointed there was still plenty of time to turn our poor start around. Putting the right man in place at that time could have made all the difference. Instead we had the embarrassment of Reading & Spurs away (got to be our two worst ever performances in the Premiership) and Wycombe at home!! It is easy to be clever with hindsight, but why Les Reed?
I am not trying to have a go at the board but surely a bit more time & thought should have gone into Dowie's successor??
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It was then compounded by giving him a permanent contract.
the goal that west ham got at Blackburn that didn't cross the line. Forget the enquiry, they would never of had their run if they had lost that game.
They would of been gone by now, we would of been out the bottom 3 if we beat Spurs on Monday, and we would of all of had a much more positive attitude.
on the field = our two points lost at fulham, with those two points (and plus one gd) a win could've taken us to 16th monday night and near safety, and not just joint 18th and then the daunting trip to anfield looking for all 3pts
ISLS- think that's an easy one to suggest and possible you are right- but we will never know.
It's also been said that Davies used that excuse for not taking the job after being offered it because he realised he was on a hiding to nothing by following Curbishley.
Who knows?
Good shout AFKA as well
Off- field the appointment of Dosie Dowie over Davies. Reed did not cause the problems that he inherited. Though this has probably worked out for the best anyway.
Pards was still at West Ham at that stage and there was nobody else decent around.
The board basically appointed Pardew almost as soon as they could.
The squad he inherited was poor, but his signings were poorer. The Les Reed fiasco compounded the problem, but look where we were at the time - same place we've been all season.
Billy Davies TURNED US DOWN (sorry, but some people on here don't seem to realise this key point)
Peter Taylor would have been woeful.
Phil Parkinson was denied permission to talk to us.
Alan Pardew was not available and did not look like being so either!!!
As Murray intimated at the FF, Dowie was basically the only option left.
For my money though, the club should have appointed Mark Kinsella as boss with Les Reed as his number two. I know Kinsella had no experience but, crucially, he knew the club and could have prospered in the same way Hughes and Coleman did when they took jobs with no experience.
Anyway, all water under the bridge now and what's betting we get Coventry at home as our first league game in the CCC?
Of course we'll never know exactly why, and we'll never know exactly what might have been, but I reckon we'd be in a better position than where we are if we'd stuck with him.
Still don't think he should've been appointed in the first place, but let's face it the whole season has been a fiasco from the Board downwards and we deserve (and in a way need) to go down :-(
Both young Chirps and his Dad accept full responsibilty for our demise this season.
at the end of the day we have been rubbish most of the season, in hindsight the appointment of Dowie was rguably a mistake especially given the coaching structure imposed on him, the decision to sack him on the back of what appeared to be a slow positive turnaround to the season seems odd even now - the farcical reign of the clueless Reed (and I still believe that Reed was instrumental in ousting Dowie) & even poor judgement from Pards in player selection in recent weeks has cost us
Some good points. probably agree with 85/90% of what you say.
Reed did "knife" Dowie as did Matt Holland.
To blame our possible relegation on the home match against Fulham as some do, is naive to say the least.
Can we PLEASE get the facts right about Billy Davies?
Richard Murray is ON THE RECORD at the Fans Forum saying that Davies was offered the job and he asked for 24 hours to think about it and then turned it down without giving reasons. However, the club later heard from Davies agent that he had turned it down because he did not want to follow on from a long serving manager like Curbs and he was also not particularly impressed with the squad Curbs had left behind. Nothing to do with the "structure" at all.
Also, Swordinhand has it BANG ON about the decline in quality of the squad over the last three seasons, we have gone backwards and the last two seasons under Curbs were just painful to watch. Sometimes it was hard to tell if we were really playing at home because we had 10 men behind the bloody halfway line.
Its a new era now and Pards has his chance to fashion HIS squad. The blokes record in the CCC is brilliant, four PO appearances in the four seasons he has spent there with Reading and West Ham and he will have around 15 million to spend rebuilding the squad. I am looking forward to seeing what he does.
I read it on the internet.
Letting Dowie spend that much, did no one think it might be an idea to save some of it until the January window ?!
No urgency from the players in crucial games. At times the players looked to be jogging back and forward.
Not killing games off. Fulham at home stands out for me.
Did he? Not what I've heard.
Did he? You know that as a fact as that's not what I've heard either?
Going to be a lot of blame and recriminations if, as seems almost inevitable now, we go down but that doesn't make opinions fact.
The board have to a fair share of the blame as it's the board that do the hiring and firing. So do all the managers/coaches to a lesser or greater degree - although Pardew has produced enough points in his time to have kept us up most likely over a 38 game season he isn't God and things he's tried haven't always come off. The players have to shoulder a large part of the responsibility as they are the ones out on the field.
I know who I hold primarily to blame but where does focusing on him take us. We have the manager we have and the board we have. The playing side will be changed around in the summer and we'll have a new set of problems to deal with and 46 (or maybe just maybe 38) games to win.
People I feel sorry for are the backroom staff likely to lose their jobs or be effected by other changes as they are blameless and have been doing a good job in difficult circumstances, often not on huge salaries, and in many cases because they are fans as well.
Depressed as I am after the Saturday results and knowing that while two wins are possible I will be glad when the season is over and we know our fate one way or another. Then we can move on.
Live, love, laugh and be happy (if at all possible)
Because that sparked the myriad of cock-ups which destroyed our season from the start, including the signings of JFH and Traroe, and ended in his dismissal and the elevation of Les Reed.
To be fair, a lot of fans (although I can honestly say I was not one of them) had been calling for him to do this but from that mauling at Man City it was obvious that those three were never going to cut it at Charlton, not least because of a single missing attribute: Character.
We got suckered into playing the Premiership glamour game when we should have really looked to cherry pick the best emerging talent from the CCC or the cast-offs from the top clubs, Ashton and Sidwell spring immediately to mind.
For me, that first post-Parker summer is something we have never recovered from and our failure to integrate these "name" players probably did as much as anything to convince Curbs it was time to go.
We need to really focus on getting the right type of players in, talent is important but we also need players who will dig in EVERY week and never leave anything in the tank.
Of course, most teams aren't relegated over the course of a single season, the roots of decline go back two or more. If you go back, being forced to sell Scott Parker is when our decline started, because Curbs wasn't able to deal with a transfer budget properly - look at what he's done at West Ham since.
But remember Kins and Kiely were bought outside the Premiership, and Murphy did some sensational stuff for us for a while, before his flawed temperament took over.
Spending £2m on Marcus Bent was Curbs' final and most damaging clanger.
The Murphy thing was crazy because we needed a ball winner in midfield to replace Parker and ended up buying a ball-playing creative who was largely ineffective (although he did have some very good games) because we could not get enough posession in quality areas to feed him because....we did not have a midfield enforcer. Funny thing is that if he had stayed he might have done really well under Dowie or Pards because they might have handled him a lot differently than Curbs.
As I have said before, we need to find our next generation of legends now and they are all playing in the CCC at some level, we need to identify them and bring them in.