Why I still back Keith Hill

Before anyone accuses me of being off my head, this is what I saw today.

I saw a very tall Wednesday outfit set up to play very direct football. I saw Keith pick a team to play exactly the same way and not surprisingly, I saw Wednesday dominate the first 45 minutes because they can play that way and we cannot. When Perkins came on, he changed the way we played, and at last there was hope, if not width. However, Keith went to 3 up front and the game was up. I saw mistakes galore from the manager, who seems to be losing the courage of his convictions and moving away from his style, the style he swore he would always keep. He is under pressure, and I think that it is affecting his judgement. In spite of what he is saying, I think that he is feeling isolated, and I guess he feels that the fans want him to go. Perhaps the only reason that he has not gone is the £250k that is would cost the club to pay up his contract, and the contracts of all of his staff, and the fact that without a change in strategy, there will be no happy endings even if he goes.

I recognise all of this, and yet I think that he ought to stay. Am I mad.

Well, I have already given my first reason in the previous paragraph. My second reason is that this manager had a good record at his previous club, so I have no reason to think he is a total numpty. My third reason is that we have changed managers too many times, with no sign of finding anybody more capable of managing a club which is so handicapped by under funding.

Do not get me wrong. From what I have seen recently, we look favourites to go down. I am not looking forward to the prospect of division 1 football any more than the next fan, but in my opinion, it has been a struggle ever since we achieved promotion, and the real reason is that we were not ready for promotion, and we have not had the investment to make it work. The club has to stop this merry-go-round of managers, so why not stop it now. Sometimes the fans too have to man up and take it on the chin, just like most have been calling on the manager to do. This is when supporters find out just how strong they are, when in spite of it all, when it is so easy to criticise and call for the manager to go, they retain their optimism, and they retain their strength, and they retain their support for a manager in trouble. I am sure that he would draw strength from the support.

My thoughts and my opinions, but Keith Hill continues to have my support at least.

 

Fair play to you for stciking by your beliefs. Problem is that we don't beat any type of team at the moment. I'm not sure what people think is going to suddenly change to rectify that.

 

Very well put that, and I have been using the same logic to come to the same conclusions over the last weeks and months as people have been steadily losing faith. On balance, just, that's probably still my view but it's starting to become a view borne of desparate hope now rather than conviction and I can easily be persuaded to join the crowd on the other side of the fence - today's performance can't be defended.

I am desparate to lose the habit of changing managers because we know it gets us nowhere, but but but...what if we have just got a bad one?. That would mean that keeping him would get us nowhere either?

Is keeping a manager who is in danger of being proven to not be up to the task worse than swapping him for yet another new manager who will probably not be able to rescue us with our financial constraints?

Thing is, my view is that Keith Hill has done a decent job up to this season in identfying players who could come in under massive budget constraints and do a job, and if we kept him and if we went down, I think he'd be a decent boss at League 1 level. But, the flipside of that is that he will have long since lost the fans by then.

I don't know what to think any more - all I know is that things look grim and I wouldn't put money on us avoiding the drop, even with half a season to play. Today was pivotal.

 

The thing is, Danny Wilson was our last successful manager. He left because even though we had averaged gates of 18,000 in the year before, he could see that we were not a club with the potential to sustain the momentum. He knew that there was a good chance that we would be going backwards after our spell in the Premiership and he did not want to miss his chance of moving to a club that he thought had more potential. Since he left Barnsley, his career has not exactly gone from strength to strength, has it. Perhaps, even Danny Wilson needed a huge slice of luck. Since Wilson left, only Mark Robins has managed to walk away, and he did so because he thought that the budget was not large enough to enable him to compete in this division.

The season that Barnsley were promoted back to the Championship, they finished in 4th place. They beat Huddersfield (5th) and struggled past Swansea (6th) in the play offs. Even though we were clearly not ready for the higher division, as far as I can remember, we only bought McIndoe before the following season began. We all remember how that finished as McIndoe jumped ship at the earliest opportunity, and that is how things have continued under successive managers. We have brought players to the club who have generally not improved us and we have struggled to compete for wages with the rest of the division, never mind the Premiership. As a result, even when we have stumbled across players with talent, they could not wait to leave, the latest being Drinkwater, Vaz Te and Butterfield. It is difficult for me to see that this situation will be changed by once more changing the manager. After all, we have tried that the last 10 times with no better outcome. Furthermore, when we do manage to land on a good one (or perhaps just a lucky one), the odds are that he will be gone just as faster as a bad one.

The biggest problem for BFC is the lack of support. It is this lack of supporter that will prevent us establishing in this division, and it is this lack of support that will drive away any potential investor. After all, why would anyone invest in a company with so few loyal customers. Whatever anyone says about good managers and bad, the best managers during my time watching BFC (with the notable exception of Wilson) were those who were better supported financially.

 

Finally a common sense thread. Without meaning to be disrespectful I think some of the responses also reveal a problem with football fans today generally. It shouldn't be about losing faith with a manager over a number of weeks, it should be years, it takes 3 minimum to build a team but we never give anyone that chance.

 

Well said - I'm still in with Keef despite all the criticism and do think he does try to adapt to the way other teams play. Yesterday was bad for morale, but I am consoled in the fact he is trying to make BFC a better team and still feel we will survive this season - provided we keep. Change will be no good again and has been said - who HAS been successful for our club this century???
Just watch - we'll go and beat Millwall next week!!!

 

I have some sympathy with this view. However, I'm a long-term ST holder who couldn't be bothered going last night because I knew what to expect (third match I've missed this season for the same reason). It could well be that League One (where we are surely heading) is our proper place in the current football hierarchy. I just wish that Mr Hill would stop talking our club, and its supporters, down. If you constantly point out to people the lack of rationality required to be a hard-core supporter of a club like ours (shell out your money based upon habit or blind optimism) then they may take the hint. We've already lost the non-core of course.

 

But we're not actually building Knowlesy. We are getting worse. I agree that football fans are too impatient these days but Hill's record has been shocking for a full calendar year now - where do you draw the line?

 

Dave Bassett took us to the play off final in 2000.

 

Aye, reighto, and santas real! More chance of platting fog than getting 3 points at millwall!

 

Danny Wilson left because it was Sheffield Wednesday.

 

Not Hills fault that we can't score. Chances were there.

I know it's not a popular view, but Hill is bringing the kids through and it we get relegated and income reduces by £3ML then he is probably as good a manager as we could expect, to bring us back.

We are above our "station " at the moment given income etc.

Don't think a change of manager will help

If a takeover is in the offing again i can't see any manager wanting to come in on a short term project.

I'm still with Hill

 

Which kids is he bringing through? Stones? That's one. Where are the others? Remember that Noble Lazarus played his first game for us 2 managers ago. Danny Rose played for us long before Hill too. Hill is bringing through only rochdale rejects.

Hill picks the team, he selects the formation and of course it is his fault that we play a style of football that creates next to no chances and when those chances come the strikers are so far out of position due to his bizarre formations that the chances go begging. Our best striker spending more time next to the corner flag than the 6 yard box is Hills fault.

We are NOT above our station, we are in the league we should be in based on the fact that we got promoted to this league. If football tables were decided on budgets then 99% of the football league and premiership are in the wrong position. Simple fact is that the table is decided on points, not pounds.

Nice first post by the way, which member of the hillcroft team are you?

 

More seasons at this tier of footy than any other club by a county mile. This is where we belong. Trouble is, you bring in smaller minded, lower league board members from the likes of scunny and thats where you end up!!!

 

It's not a lack of support its a lack of direction and nouse off the field. Personified by "beat the bookies"

One man to blame.

 

Forget about all this 12th man codswallop, lack of home support means less revenue. Less revenue means less money for player's wages, less money for player's wages equals inferior players and inferior players equates to a lower league position most of the time. I know that you would like us all to disagree these fundamental truths, because then everything that goes wrong can be laid at the manager's door. However, I do not think that you can exonerate the supporters who no longer attend games from the malaise the club finds itself in. In most senses, supporter means that you support through the good times and particularly the bad. Those who attend only when things are going well are not supporters, they are customers. A customer can take their business elsewhere, a supporter would not dream of it.

 

I'm one of those awkward types who believes the new millenium started 1st jan 2001 and 2000 was the final year of the previous century. It's my rational non excitability in dealing with numbers. Therefore our most successful manager of this century is either Andy Ritchie or most likely Simon Davey, depending where you place your values of success.

 

Funnily enough, the team at the top of the league get nowhere near the biggest gates and their manager has been in charge for about two minutes.

 

We have only Danny's say so that the outcome would not have been the same if another Premiership club had been the one to come calling, but that was not my point. My point is that any manager who is an unqualified success at BFC will attract clubs, with more money than us, who will be only too happy to take him off our hands. The only difference is that if he goes, we pick up £250k and if we sack him, it costs us £250k. That is how it is for the small fish such as BFC.

 

In that case, you're mental.