The longer we're down here the harder it'll be to get up.
A bystander who witnessed today's capitulation would see that set of players and current set up is not likely to be conducive to attaining the "top 2" target of next season or even the unfavourable lottery of the playoffs via top 6.
Sandgaard may have been naïve and lacked insight in the past couple of years about the challenge he took on but he's no fool and he's been engaged enough in our club in this time to know that what he and we have seen today and for vast patches of this turgid season is a long way off where we all want to be.
He had no choice in the climate of back then to appoint Jackson whose caretaker heroics took the heat off the whole Adkins disaster and we had "one of our own" turning things around. The calls from many of us (the vast majority?) including myself as well as Curbs, Minto, Quest pundits and the wider football world to give him the permanent gig made it it taboo to consider anything else short of prising Klopp or Guardiola away from the north west.
Anything different would have likely seen a mutiny and a loss of the remarkable amount of good will TS garnered when he rode in and saw the wrong uns off in style and gave us a semblance of hope for a more optimistic future. For whatever reason, players giving up, not being up to it, a limited manager, other clubs sussing us or a combination of elements of all but it is clear that we need significant change to have any chance of avoiding another season like this let along finish in the top tier of an increasingly competitive league where we are decreasingly a big fish in a small pond with each passing season and the arrival of bigger, hungrier and better equipped fish.
This transfer window and pre season is arguably the most important of our recent history....get it wrong...or anything but utterly perfect...and our slim chances of escaping this league next season becomes infinitesimal.
The natives who are demanding at the best of times and still stuck in the Curb's era and we will likely struggle to acclimatise to the fact that we are now an established 3rd division team in a fantastic, rented ;-( , stadium and many will vote with their feet as is natural attrition when you establish yourself in a lower tier with little prospects of changing things.
Also I can't imagine TS will be keen on losing his fortune each season with little prospect of a return or success indefinitely so he will be keen to get things right as soon as possible. Despite admirable notions of being in it for the long term wealth is finite and 3rd division football clubs with expectant fan bases are money pits.
Dilemma for Tommy tonight is where do we go from here. Do he or his senior management have the insight or knowledge to identify and entice a new manager who will turn things round and bring in a squad of players and mould them in the next 8 weeks to promotion hopefuls?
Jackson and Adkins haven't been able to get a consistent run of form out of this set of players and therefore logic suggests it will require such a revision. Or do you twist again that another man could shape a team of winners out of a bunch of players that have whimpered their way through the majority of this term.
Does he stick with Jackson as rigidly as the latter does with his failed 3-5-2 at all costs approach and gamble that investing a substantial budget into revising a squads will be a wise one given the relative inexperience and questionable tactical capability he currently has in the number 1 role along with a coaching team that have not necessarily inspired beyond our affinity to them as Charlton legends of yore?
Does playing it safe and giving fans' favourite JJ this most important of summers and funds to shape his squad pay dividends or backfire and come October a new man is inheriting what has been assembled to try and eek out something better.
It is a huge dilemma for TS. I don't know what to do and I've followed us inside out for 35 + years and it's not my cash that will be burned or me facing the fan feedback if success proves as fleeting and evasive next season.
I don't envy him tonight.
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This season's squad was woefully short of the required standard. I (and others) were aware of this well before Christmas and said so. No hindsight here.
For all that he was the people's choice, would Jackson have been given a League 1 manager's job at any other Club?
Sandgaard needs to realise that his decision-making is not good enough. A string of failed appointments (Roddy, Adkins etc).
Here's how to fix it:
1) Lose the arrogance, Thomas. You need help. And that help is not a threat to your ego or machismo ... it is help that you patently need in order to have any chance of success in the football World
2) Get some people around you who know Football and who know about players. Forget about the Powerpoint slides and business cliches. Not Skiverton and De Souza ... get some proper quality people in. Maldon & Tiptree? Fuck me.
3) Buckle up and spend the money that is required to fulfil your stated objectives. History doesn't smile on those who promise and who then fail to deliver. You are more Trump and Boris than we would care for
4) Take this thing seriously or get out. You have nothing to sell and you have committed any future buyer to some ridiculous rental agreements. You need business advice too
In some ways it's easier to inherit a squad because you all know you are stuck with each other, than be given players who you didn't want and who know you didn't want them.
All Thomas needs to do is what he needed to do last summer. He made a pigs ear of that.
Pick a manager and let him manage. We don't have the expertise, despite what Thomas thinks, to have "head coach". Hard shot or not.
Until that happens it doesn't matter who the manager is, they will fail, and fail quickly.
If we have a repeat of last summer we will get the same result. A new manager by bonfire night and a 4th season in league 1.
I have zero faith that the "senior team" will get it right. Until they do there is no dilemma.
I agree it's now time for TS to realise he has bitten off more than he can chew and he has to either shit or get off the pot. Yes, you could get lucky with a few shrewd signings, scrape into the play offs & win them. But generally you need to spend money to assemble a good squad of players & last seasons meagre signings showed how not to do it. There has to be a radical change if thinking & if that doesn't happen I think next season will be more of the same.
So, if he is going to keep Jacko as manager he has to back him 110%......and if Jacko then fails there can be no complaints as to who is to blame. Sign your no 1 players in the positions you need & bring them in early. That means spending big & not waiting around until mid August whilst the player mulls over their options. Easier said than done perhaps but Wigan & MK Dons done it.
352 is clearly what he wants to play, but throughout the season we showed just how inept we were at it, inherited squad not withstanding.
Will a Jacko led squad, with his recruitment, lead us to the championship? I doubt it, based on his inability to adapt and change according to the opposition.
I am in a position where I don't mind if he stays and builds his own side, but equally if he was replaced in the summer, I honestly couldn't give a toss, he has been the epitomy of mediocre so far
I suspect Sandman wants a yes man. Adkins and JJ aren't disagreeable personalities. Adkins was an excruciating Blair character. And JJ just doesn't have a personality at all.
I wonder if a Ferguson, Keane or Terry type character came along whether Sandman would overlook them?
There are many very good managers out there. It's time to hire one of them. No Blairite cack, no "but I was the captain here so I must be a good manager" cack. Just a very good manager and motivator of men (however disagreeable he may be!)
But sure, he used to be the captain, so lets give him another window to show his incompetence.
By game 5 of the following season we were top. By 46 we had a record equalling 101 points in a league that included both Sheffield clubs, Huddersfield and an upward trending Bournemouth. Most other seasons the 2 Sheffield clubs would have won the league with their respective point hauls. We pissed it.
The following year we finished 9th. This still stands as our best league position since 2006/2007.
Maybe this disaster of a season is JJ moving from one balls up to another. Maybe he's seen how you get out of this league and take a run up at the next one.
This squad is absolute shit. To me, the manager looks like he's trying to emulate the success we've had in the past.
Im backing JJ for next season, I understand what “outhisdepthmeans” I just don’t agree with it at this point.
He inherited a shite squad full of demotivated players, from a manager that just bought players without knowing his formation never mind XI.
Ill take the arguments against JJ being here next season as some have reasonable points, but unless you think this current squad is good and JJ has just not made the most of it, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense, if the squad is totally shite which most agree on, how can you blame JJ? Apart from not changing formation, but they’re still shite in a 433 or 442, we’ve still got largely anonymous midfielders and slow defenders either way.
Steve Avory perhaps.
Time for TS to make his choice.
He didn't know his best XI because half his squad turned up not match fit (including Purrington and Gilbey) after the season started. We were still basically having our preseason in September.
He deserved the sack for the Bolton, Lincoln and Accrington performances, or non performances, but I don't think he had a "fair crack" and any manager would have struggled in the circumstances.
The stuff about not picking his own players is terrible if true, I’m not sure on the substance of it, not saying you’re wrong but is it concrete?
Things are far from great under Jackson but he did so much better than Atkins, all circumstances considered.
Flat 4, 3 center mids, 2 wingers and a center foward.
I can tell you with 95% confidence that at least 1 player we signed in the summer Adkins did not want at all and the player knew that as well. We also renewed a contract for a player that Adkins had already told would be released.
All footballers are over paid at least a little bit, but our squad of players aren't machines. They are just people.
Don't over exaggerate on the negative aspects. You will be doing yourself and the club no favours.
It's frustrating, yes, but the season was more or less already over after just 20 games. We started off very badly and it's good news that we eventually just finished midtable.
I completely agree that all managers should have direct control over incoming and outgoing transfers. That way, the individual will be fully invested in the job with the required control, and it will mean so much more.
The head coach thing is a load of bollocks and it only causes problems....like it has done every since Dowie got appointed!!!
It seems to me that if Jacko Is the one to carry on leading us, it’s what he needs to do because something is deeply wrong within the club.
We went on a great run at first, sounds of things that could’ve been achieved by anyone who came in but it is was Jackson and so he got the job.
We then had a horrible run of form for a couple of months that coincided Covid throughout the squad and injuries to key players where we had Stockley, Washington, Inniss, Fraser, Forster-Caskey, Blackett-Taylor, Lavelle, etc all out at the same time.
By the time they’re back, the season was pretty much done and dusted. We couldn’t achieve anything incredible by getting top 6 and we were not going down.
The level of uncertainty throughout the club has gone on for so long that it’s not helped anyone. Not the results, not the confidence, not the crowd, not the manager, not the players. That was finally brought into discussion yesterday by Jackson as a reason towards the awful performance yesterday at Ipswich.
Jackson may well prove to be not good enough, or adaptable enough. Yet, he might just prove that he is.
He’s been badly let down by many of the players and the recruitment in January was poor on the whole. We signed two young players on loan who were nowhere or got nowhere near our first team. We signed Fraser who has had an incredibly frustrating time since his move to SE7, but will be good for pre-season. And we signed an influential Aneke when he’s on the pitch but weren’t on the pitch as much as we would’ve liked to help us, but that’s been done to death and people know my opinion.
Ultimately, Jackson’s had little help to implement his style, his philosophy, his ideas because the recruitment hasn’t allowed him to, and being mid-season when the goal was to avoid relegation with players who either aren’t good enough or not going to be here come July is difficult.
He has a huge few months ahead of him to get things right, but so does Sandgaard, so does the whole football club.
Recruitment planning and getting things sorted started a couple of months ago, at least. I think he’s worked hard enough and got us to a place enough where we can start fresh to be given to the opportunity for that to happen.
I reckon Sandy has good intentions for us but has either:
a) not got the necessary funds to supply what is needed, or much more damningly
b) is using CAFC as a plaything and was totally unaware of what was need to get us back on track. As @blackpool72 said way back when, he's bitten off far more than he can comfortably chew.
Rumours abound that he is looking to sell, that would not surprise me at all. The issue is, who else would be prepared to buy us ?. In the current financial climate, no-one is my guess