Yup, it's little Lee Apparently won 4, then didn't win in 5. He's still marmite or something that rhymes therewith. https://www.otib.co.uk/index.php?/topic/197324-can-we-just-be-honest/
Unreal how he consistently has these streaks. I give him some credit for the turnaround in our form before he left, but all the evidence suggests it would have come crashing down again. (In some ways, it shows how good a job Hecky did to keep the winning form going until the end of the season). That thread is similar to here in many respects - broad range of opinions. One thst does stand out to me though is someone who sees their budget as "average" for the championship. It possibly is in some respects, but I also wonder if there are delusions of grandeur or a sense of entitlement now? They've spent a lot, got a lot in too, but seemingly spent millions on mediocrity. Sums up all that's wrong with the game tbh.
Johnson left us on 6th February 2016. We were 12th, 8 points off the play-offs, two games in hand on three of the teams above us, 1 game in hand on 7 of the teams above us, Bradford had played the same.We'd just won the last 6 league games on the spin, and only lost 1 in the last 12 games in all competitions, which was against eventual champions Wigan. Hecky did well when he came in, but 5 points off the play-offs, assuming we won our game in hand, is hardly no chance, particularly with the run of form we were already on.
I agree that had he stayed I'm sure we'd have faded rapidly and ended up in mid table. By leaving when he did, I'd argue we were left with a chance. Hecky's run though was incredible, and underestimated, 12 wins and 5 draws out of 20 matches inc the play off games. One of the most consistent runs of form we've ecer had I'm sure. Made up the 7 point gap between us and the 6th placed team, some going considering that there were 7 or 8 other clubs between us and 6th place when Johnson left.
Joe Pasquale sounding shitehouse. My least favourite Barnsley manager. Seems a nice bloke but talks a better game than he manages.
Exactly we were twelfth. Look at the run form we had and we only scraped in by means of a superior GD of plus three. It was a Herculean effort. A once in a blue moon event. If Johnno had stayed we'd have finished about where we were as there would have been another eight game winless run.
We need a memorial statue somewhere in town to recognise this, the children of the future will need to know. We can't let it become just another footnote in the history of Barnsley Football Club.
Conman. Simple as. Never yet seen a spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation that can tell you if a player can trap a ball.
Question never to be answered. Would little Lee have achieved promotion and won the JPT had he stayed? I think he may have won the cup, but would have tinkered his way to falling short of the play offs. It took a ridiculously good run to get there in the end, and the afterburners didn't really come on until wigan away on the last day. Ironic really. Johnson is bang average at best. At worst a total con man, but still in work and well thought of by his sycophantic fellow pros, having achieved nothing, whilst Hecky, with a promotion and a JPT trophy in his managerial CV is out of work.
Something that often gets overlooked from that season is we ended up with Josh Scowen & George Williams as full backs for the last couple of months due to injuries. I personally think a big part of them been a success would’ve been having a former full back managing the team who knew the role & improved Williams & helped Scowen learn a new position. If Johnson didn’t leave & Hecky continued to coach the youngsters would we have coped? I think we’d have ended up with Nyatanga at left back & things would’ve probably worked out differently. Don’t think Johnson’s doing a bad job at Bristol but he’s not doing a good one either. They’re probably about where they should be given their budget & quality of players
The reason being that Lee's future was decided by a club, that, due to history wanted him, and a club that saw an opportunity to get rid....Hecky though just made a very poor decision, I doubt anyone thought he'd be successful enough to get much more time than he got.
It's utterly ridiculous to try and categorically state we would or wouldn't have got promoted if Johnson had stayed. Nobody knows. Full stop. What I will say is that by the time he left a squad that had massively underperformed had got its act together and done the easy part in overtaking the back markers in the field. It was an incredible achievement to then go on and gradually overtake the teams in the top half who were racking up points themselves on a weekly basis. To hold their nerve and make it into the play off places then blow away Wigan, Walsall and Millwall must be one of the finest efforts of any Barnsley team on record. For that Hecky and the players deserve immense respect.
Oh I think we do mate, we wouldn’t! he would have either bottled it or tried to get ‘clever’ and mucked it up. His seasons follow pretty much the same pattern
Personally I'd say you can only judge the quality of a manager over many years. In the short term, there's lots of other stuff going on that can skew the statistics. I still think there's only a few out there who can be said to have had a noticeable impact wherever they go. My own feeling is that the arrival of Adam Hammill, who was fired up, positive and had something to prove, irrespective of the manager during that time, was the main catalyst for our success. Suddenly opposing teams had to think about doubling up on him, which gave all our other players an extra 10% of space to play and their performances improved. I'm not sure it mattered who was in charge then but we'll never know.