If the board had appointed Danny boy instead of Morais,would he have kept us up? Tough ask,with just a few months to get acclimatised to English football in a relegation battle,but I don't think he would have chopped and changed as much as Morais,and might have settled on his best team sooner. All purely academic now like,but an interesting poser.
Seeing as the line was so so fine, I reckon he may well have. If only on the basis that he's got the players onside, whereas Morais turned them completely against. We'll never know though, but I'm very glad we haven't got Morais this season.
Don't get me wrong, the worst managerial appointment in the history of the club was Morais. However, he also got lucky. Sheff Utd absolutely battered us, they were 100 times the team we were, yet we beat them. With Stendel in charge, they wouldn't have been, we would have matched them much better, it would have been a much closer game, but they would have probably won because they had better players. Maybe he would have had some luck too, and maybe he would have got us out of the mire, but for me, the reality of the situation is that the players just weren't good enough and which ever manager you pick you're going to be struggling.
Better to have Brian The Blade as head coach rather than Morais. People needed holding accountable for putting him in charge in the first place. Nothing about his career before us said he was the man to keep us up.
I don’t think so. There’s always the chance, and I think we would have played better than we did under Morais. But overall we just weren’t good enough. Had we kept Harvey Barnes then coupled with better management we may have stayed up. However the championship was just a step too far, and too quick for too many players. However I do think that a lot of those players improved over the season. And I think some are continuing to improve this year, albeit against weaker opposition. If we were to go back up the key will be those players that can kick on further and bringing in players who are championship quality to support them, and letting those players who aren’t of championship quality, or won’t ever be, move on. I would say it’s half and half at moment. But there’s a long season left and as we saw with Mawson, Hourihane, Roberts etc players can improve rapidly with the right environment and confidence.
Considering just how close it was in the end and that despite having the worst manager in our history we were still in with a chance of survival going into the final game I reckon that even a half decent manager would have kept us up.
Correct. The club cat could have kept us up. And - if we had started this season with all the players that played for Barnsley last season (eg summer and January signings) and Stendel was now the manager then by now we would be top 4 in the Championship. Some big talent went through the club last season.
Crickey, that’s some statement! Any chance you could pick a best 11 out of last seasons players and we could compare them with current champ top 4 teams?
I honestly don't think Morais is the worst manager we have ever had. He wasn't great, but he was chucked into a struggling club in a new country. Sooner a million seasons of him than one of Spackman, Hodges, Parkin or Hilleh.
I’ve no doubts at all he’d have kept us up. We weren’t that far away from surviving as it was and Morais was woeful. I doubt Stendel would have put the best natural goalscorer we’ve had in years on the left wing; he’d have galvanised the squad rather than divided it, he wouldn’t have made baffling team selections. And as bad as the squad is perceived to have been, I think there were three or four that were worse. In mcburnie we had the form striker of the league, a good foil for him in Moore, and enough everywhere else. We should have finished above Bolton, Reading and Birmingham. A half decent coach would have got us above Bolton.
Morais was the absolute worst. It seems so odd that the current board who have got so much right in their short time at Oakwell would have got something so important so spectacularly wrong.
I reckon how baffling you believe a team selection to be is entirely dependent on results rather than the actual team selection. We've got the biggest brick sh*t house of a centre forward in the division, yet we're playing without wingers and five central midfield players. We've lost 2 of the last three playing with this set-up and the victory was anything but convincing. Lose the next couple playing this way and there'll be serious questions about what the hell Stendel thinks he's doing. Win the next two convincingly and the formation and team selection won't get a mention.
It’s my view that any reasonably competent manager would have kept us up last season. It’s also my view that any reasonably competent manager will get us promoted automatically this season. Anything other than that will be a failure. So I’m hoping the answer is yes.
Easier to get players on side when you’ve had a summer to train with them, and you’re in a lower division and winning.