Think we missed a trick with the gifted but diminutive Bannan. Saw him playing for Villa at Spurs a few years back and the constant chant of "Why's the ball boy on the pitch?" certainly put him off his stride.
Should Jackson be in charge next season? I don't think so.
Two questions.... 1. Who is an available manager that is proven to be better? 2. what good does it do to have our 4th manager in three years if the players are not very good?
In the great football economics book "Soccernomics" it discusses a unique British belief in the "saviour manager." That if a club just had the right manager they would start winning. No other football country is so entrenched in a myth that had no evidence behind it as this and England has by far the highest manager turnover of the major countries in Europe.
We went up to the Championship because we had the 3rd highest payroll in League One and went down the next year because we had the second worst in The Championship. It was not the manager. It was the quality of players. It was always that simple.
Spurs will never win anything because their payroll can't compete with Liverpool and ManC. No manager can change that but it does not stop them from trying! Over and over. With the same results. For the same reasons.
There is no manager out there good enough to bring THIS club up. Period. If they were that good they would not be managing in League One, would they?
Over time, club success follows their payroll ranking. Not managers. Payroll is determined by owners. Therefore owners matter a lot more than managers. How well did Chelsea do before Roman arrived? How well have they done since? How well will they do with him gone? Think about it. How many different managers have they had. Did the managers matter or Roman? The answer is Roman.
It's not the manager that wins or loses matches. It's the players. (At least over the long term.) And the player's wages pay for their quality. And the owner pays those wages. Over the long term if we want to win we need a richer, better owner. Who then buys better players.
The manager for the most part is not where our focus should be, in my opinion.
We are well enough resourced to get out of this league. We need stability and strong leadership. Something it looks like we have been missing of late. I am not talking about managing the team either. Jacko needs to set out his plan and unless it is clearly crazy, which it won't be, he needs to be backed.
We are well enough resourced to get out of this league. We need stability and strong leadership. Something it looks like we have been missing of late. I am not talking about managing the team either. Jacko needs to set out his plan and unless it is clearly crazy, which it won't be, he needs to be backed.
Yeah, maybe we are.
But then we're also just one of maybe a dozen clubs in this League of which you could say the same? That's also a big part of the issue. We're not the only big fish swimming in this pond.
They can't all win promotion, there's only 3 places up for grabs.
Meanwhile, our current position in the League table proves that we've underachieved. The way last summer's recruitment unfolded and the subsequently hopeless start to the season has proved that - and that millstone is still firmly tied around our neck.
There's things that need putting right. Until they are put place, we need to manage expectations. That's not easy though, until we can see the green shoots of progress.
Bowyer, Adkins and Jackson all went on great runs where we looked, if not world beaters, promotion material. But all three of those runs ended suddenly, to replaced by a run of games where we barely looked like scoring.
How?
Well, injuries played their part (didn’t we have 14 or 15 of the squad injured in the Championship?) so is it just a case that the squads have always lacked depth?
Not sure, but perhaps our recruitment hasn’t paid enough attention to players’ fighting qualities. Not saying we need a team of lumps, but it seems to me that heads drop all too easily at the moment.
Adkins' run went to the last game of last season. The problem then was that change was needed more quickly. Then this season there was a crazy view we could be succesful using our u-23s. We started the season as weak as we ever have and we have been recovering from that.
Adkins did what a lot of managers do and lost the plot. But I believe he had also signed up to a system of playing that did not suit the players that had and did not have the power to change it. Roddy may have been behind that, but ultimately Sandgaard has to be to blame.
Then Jacko took over with a formation that suited the players we had but injuries have stoped that. Simply because we rely on too few players and we are over reliant on our forwards for our goals which buggers you up when they are all injured.
Simply, Sandgaard has to stop making these mistakes. And he needs to trust and back Jacko to put it right in the Summer. Unlike some, I don't think it needs as many changes as they might think. We need to lose the hangers on and bring in hungry, not injury prone, players who are decent at this level and know where the goal is. And this applies to midfielders and defenders too.
We are well enough resourced to get out of this league. We need stability and strong leadership. Something it looks like we have been missing of late. I am not talking about managing the team either. Jacko needs to set out his plan and unless it is clearly crazy, which it won't be, he needs to be backed.
Yeah, maybe we are.
But then we're also just one of maybe a dozen clubs in this League of which you could say the same? That's also a big part of the issue. We're not the only big fish swimming in this pond.
They can't all win promotion, there's only 3 places up for grabs.
Meanwhile, our current position in the League table proves that we've underachieved. The way last summer's recruitment unfolded and the subsequently hopeless start to the season has proved that - and that millstone is still firmly tied around our neck.
There's things that need putting right. Until they are put place, we need to manage expectations. That's not easy though, until we can see the green shoots of progress.
We should be top 6 though. It's not just the Sunderlands and Ipswichs above us, it's also Plymouth, MKD, Oxford plus the genuine minnows like Cambridge and Accrington
We are well enough resourced to get out of this league. We need stability and strong leadership. Something it looks like we have been missing of late. I am not talking about managing the team either. Jacko needs to set out his plan and unless it is clearly crazy, which it won't be, he needs to be backed.
Yeah, maybe we are.
But then we're also just one of maybe a dozen clubs in this League of which you could say the same? That's also a big part of the issue. We're not the only big fish swimming in this pond.
They can't all win promotion, there's only 3 places up for grabs.
Meanwhile, our current position in the League table proves that we've underachieved. The way last summer's recruitment unfolded and the subsequently hopeless start to the season has proved that - and that millstone is still firmly tied around our neck.
There's things that need putting right. Until they are put place, we need to manage expectations. That's not easy though, until we can see the green shoots of progress.
We should be top 6 though. It's not just the Sunderlands and Ipswichs above us, it's also Plymouth, MKD, Oxford plus the genuine minnows like Cambridge and Accrington
Of course we should. That's the least of our expectations.
But we were truly buggered during our first dozen matches. There's been reasons for that ..... but the bare truth, we've never recovered from that and it killed our season right back then.
BTW Don't underestimate the likes of Oxford and MKD. They've developed a style of playing during the past ffew seasons and team building accordingly. All on a more sensible budget according to their means. They're already much further down the road than we are.
And Plymouth also. How the club in a major city like Plymouth with such a large captive population and catchment area has so massively underachieved over the years is a mystery. If the club is successful, the support is there in numbers. They could and should be the size of Charlton. But they slumber on.
We also underestimate minnows at our peril. Minnows will always have a day in the sun. Most years a minnow comes through to be a dark horse. They have good seasons because they are tight knit, proper team ethic and a manager who has his finger on the pulse.
Should Jackson be in charge next season? I don't think so.
Two questions.... 1. Who is an available manager that is proven to be better? 2. what good does it do to have our 4th manager in three years if the players are not very good?
In the great football economics book "Soccernomics" it discusses a unique British belief in the "saviour manager." That if a club just had the right manager they would start winning. No other football country is so entrenched in a myth that had no evidence behind it as this and England has by far the highest manager turnover of the major countries in Europe.
We went up to the Championship because we had the 3rd highest payroll in League One and went down the next year because we had the second worst in The Championship. It was not the manager. It was the quality of players. It was always that simple.
Spurs will never win anything because their payroll can't compete with Liverpool and ManC. No manager can change that but it does not stop them from trying! Over and over. With the same results. For the same reasons.
There is no manager out there good enough to bring THIS club up. Period. If they were that good they would not be managing in League One, would they?
Over time, club success follows their payroll ranking. Not managers. Payroll is determined by owners. Therefore owners matter a lot more than managers. How well did Chelsea do before Roman arrived? How well have they done since? How well will they do with him gone? Think about it. How many different managers have they had. Did the managers matter or Roman? The answer is Roman.
It's not the manager that wins or loses matches. It's the players. (At least over the long term.) And the player's wages pay for their quality. And the owner pays those wages. Over the long term if we want to win we need a richer, better owner. Who then buys better players.
The manager for the most part is not where our focus should be, in my opinion.
Great post. Couldn’t agree more. Robinson, Bowyer, Adkins and JJ are all probably much of a muchness in terms of managerial ability with each having their stronger suites but none of them are going to turn our squad into the next Man City.
What does make a difference is recruitment - buying the right players (not wasting money on the likes of Kirk) and getting loan players who will make an impact - Bielek, Cullen, Gallagher etc
If only getting players like Bielek, Cullen & Gallagher on loan was easy ;-) Kirk would have been a good target if he had fitted our system. But which of us was saying that at the time?
Comments
1. Who is an available manager that is proven to be better?
2. what good does it do to have our 4th manager in three years if the players are not very good?
In the great football economics book "Soccernomics" it discusses a unique British belief in the "saviour manager." That if a club just had the right manager they would start winning. No other football country is so entrenched in a myth that had no evidence behind it as this and England has by far the highest manager turnover of the major countries in Europe.
There is no manager out there good enough to bring THIS club up. Period. If they were that good they would not be managing in League One, would they?
Over time, club success follows their payroll ranking. Not managers. Payroll is determined by owners. Therefore owners matter a lot more than managers. How well did Chelsea do before Roman arrived? How well have they done since? How well will they do with him gone? Think about it. How many different managers have they had. Did the managers matter or Roman? The answer is Roman.
But then we're also just one of maybe a dozen clubs in this League of which you could say the same?
That's also a big part of the issue. We're not the only big fish swimming in this pond.
They can't all win promotion, there's only 3 places up for grabs.
Meanwhile, our current position in the League table proves that we've underachieved.
The way last summer's recruitment unfolded and the subsequently hopeless start to the season has proved that - and that millstone is still firmly tied around our neck.
There's things that need putting right. Until they are put place, we need to manage expectations.
That's not easy though, until we can see the green shoots of progress.
Adkins did what a lot of managers do and lost the plot. But I believe he had also signed up to a system of playing that did not suit the players that had and did not have the power to change it. Roddy may have been behind that, but ultimately Sandgaard has to be to blame.
Then Jacko took over with a formation that suited the players we had but injuries have stoped that. Simply because we rely on too few players and we are over reliant on our forwards for our goals which buggers you up when they are all injured.
Simply, Sandgaard has to stop making these mistakes. And he needs to trust and back Jacko to put it right in the Summer. Unlike some, I don't think it needs as many changes as they might think. We need to lose the hangers on and bring in hungry, not injury prone, players who are decent at this level and know where the goal is. And this applies to midfielders and defenders too.
But we were truly buggered during our first dozen matches.
There's been reasons for that ..... but the bare truth, we've never recovered from that and it killed our season right back then.
BTW Don't underestimate the likes of Oxford and MKD. They've developed a style of playing during the past ffew seasons and team building accordingly. All on a more sensible budget according to their means. They're already much further down the road than we are.
And Plymouth also. How the club in a major city like Plymouth with such a large captive population and catchment area has so massively underachieved over the years is a mystery.
If the club is successful, the support is there in numbers. They could and should be the size of Charlton. But they slumber on.
We also underestimate minnows at our peril. Minnows will always have a day in the sun. Most years a minnow comes through to be a dark horse.
They have good seasons because they are tight knit, proper team ethic and a manager who has his finger on the pulse.
Kirk would have been a good target if he had fitted our system. But which of us was saying that at the time?