The Long Term Under Johnno

Conan is not wrong to quote Coventry's turn round in fortunes, but I would think Mowbray will be on at least 3x the money Johnson's on, plus a higher wage bill for the playing staff.

 

I'm sorry but I intend to avoid your question.

You see managers should not be judged on the basis of results alone, and I have not mentioned results at any point. To take logic to its ultimate conclusion, a manager is successful if he increases the value of the playing staff each season (as adjusted for by transfers in and out). In theory, this takes judgement away from the supporters, whose judgement is notoriously flawed and biased, and places it back into the marketplace. Before you go bananas, this is clearly not possible, but it illustrates a problem with concentrating on results alone with no reference to other factors.

Another statement that boards often make when they get rid of a manager is to say that the manager had lost the players. Clearly the fans are in no position to make that judgement, but from the outside, I see no sign that this is a reason for our current problems.

I would hope that the board would look at a number of other factors before they make the final decision to sack a manager, only one of which would be results, but ultimately, it is not my decision and it is not your decision. It is a decision from within based upon any number of factors, current results being just one. I am happy that I do not have to make such a decision, because I do not have enough information to do so with any confidence. And I think the same is true for all supporters. The difference between us is that I have a lot more patience than you do, and I think that that might be because I am of the belief that patience is a lot more vital to our chances of long term success than you are. I am of that opinion, because of my studies of the past reveal that good teams are built slowly and with limited change each year. I believe that this is the single most important pointer to success, and that most managers were simply in the right place at the right time, when success arrived. I arrived at that conclusion by looking at the past, and it was reinforced by Danny Wilson's short tenure on his second visit.

So I have avoided your question, but I hope that you agree that my reasoning for doing so is valid.

 

It seems a strange argument to think that results are not how you evaluate a manager. In any managerial role in any organisation you are judged on results. Generally if you are successful your players will increase in value. If you lose every week it is unlikely to add value to those players. Most of our team seem to have gone backwards in terms of development rather than forwards. We have also ditched players with obvious development potential such as Berry and Lalkovich presumably as the manager thought that developing them was beyond his talents.

If I were randomly appointed manager of Arsenal tomorrow and got them relegated to non league in 4 years playing almost unwatcheable football would my tenure by judged a success or a failure regardless of my fielding a settled team.

For patience to be the only plan is as near sighted as sacking your manager every 5 minutes and just as blindly doomed to failure. You have to appoint the correct personnel. someone like Machin came in and made an immediate impact by signing players like Taggart and Fleming and making them better. He took a losing team instilled defensive responsibility and moved us forwards. This happened within weeks of his appointment. Machin would seem to be a very poor comparator for Johnson. Johnson came in took a reasonable settled side dismantled it made some awful signings and made an average team into a poor one. Machin was an established coach had been unluckily sacked by Moan City and was both experienced and clearly comfortable in his role. Johnson seems the opposite to this. The more I see of him the more unsuited he seems to the role. From my point of view if we continue with him I would expect relegation this season then the dismantling of the team with Winnall, Scowen, Hourihane and Hammill leaving so not sure how that would achieve a settled side.

 

I fully accept your reasoning but to use your parlance in a results based business, those results are the primary indicator of success or failure.

You might be right on the patience front. I'd have been very happy to give DW more time. Lots more. I was nonchalant towards LJ but alarm bells started to ring when I watched him throw away two points at Notts County away last season by his failure to recognise and counter County's tactical changes and instead keep trying to play the way he wanted and bore us. In a world today where there is so much demand on my time and money it is not a game I can play ad infinitum.

If that makes me a poor fan so be it. I've enjoyed very little of the season so far, I've listened to the manager tell us we aren't used to small technical players, that they can't play 442, that results don't matter as long as performances are good and frankly I've been bored to tears. Yesterday I took my little girl to the cinema for the first time and she thoroughly enjoyed herself, therefore so did I. It would be quite easy to walk away from it and find new things to do. The only two things that keep me there are spending time with mates/dad/brother and the blind hope it might just become enjoyable again.

I suppose with a player like Adam Hammill in the squad that is more likely than it was...

I'd like to agree that teams can be built over time to succeed but no manager at Oakwell will ever, barring an ownership miracle, have that luxury. Anyone any good will be gone in no time and then we are left with loans and the nearly men.

 

Great points about Mel. He saw that he issue was an inability to defend so went about fixing it. Johnson hasn't been able to do so so far...

 

This may seem pedantic, but if you are a manager of say a sales team for example, and you focus your team purely upon the revenue that they earn to the exclusion of everything else, you will find that other aspects of business performance are affected adversely. For a start, they will discount more and more heavily, they will have no interest in quality or performance. They will care only about the thing that their bonus motivates them to be worried about. The clever management motivates its workforce across a range of targets that are important to the business.

In the same way, the performance of a Head Coach should be judged across a range of targets so that the club does not focus his attention on one thing above all others. For example, if points count for everything, no manager will want to sell one of his better players because he will realise that his team will be poorer for it and his points return will be reduced. However, the club will sometimes decide that it is in the best interests of the club as a whole that the player is sold.

My focus is not on patience alone. My focus is on the gradual improvement of the team, which is only possible over time, and which is not possible if we start with a new manager every 12 months. Machin only just stayed up that first season. I can remember a 1-0 win at Middlesbrough late on in the season, which was achieved with 5 centre backs in the team. Machin gradually changed that team over 4 seasons, selling players in order to fund that team building and selling Carl Tiler in order to fund the building of the East Stand. At the end of that 4 years, he was sacked after a 6-1 defeat at Newcastle. Danny Wilson took a further 4 years to build the rest of the squad that got us promoted. So it took 8 seasons of patience to move from a team that looked like going down to arrive at a team that finished second and were promoted.

There is a group of people on here who believe that process is possible in under a season, and that any manager who fails to achieve this should be sacked. I am not one of those, but equally, I do not believe that we will go down either, because I am certain that there will be improvements in January. Because I do not believe we will go down, I refuse to accept any consequences that may or may not stem from that event.

 

I think you fail to remember the impact Mel had. We were just as doomed that season as when Flitcroft pulled off his great escape it was just a lot less dramatic. Compare the pivotal signings of Mawson and Taggart and you have likeness and darkness. Taggart came in offered leadership, ability and changed a losing mentality into a winning one Mawson has had no such impact. There was an Immediate improvement and this as built upon in his second season where we outperformed expectations. I believe from a couple of players who I'm mates with that the health of Mel's wife maybe affected his performance towards the end which is unfortunate. In Mel's second season we were flirting with the play offs in the league above playing some good football in Johnson's we are a league below flirting with relegation to the basement division. So perhaps not the best comparison. Johnson had little or no impact and his second season pales in comparison

I agree about continuity. These days that comes neither from players or managers (for various reasons) it is virtually impossible to 'build' a team over 8 seasons. Most of our team isn't even 'ours' to build with. It comes from having a strategic plan and direction led by the management team. I believe that we have got this. Players and management can add value to thus long term plan or stymie it due to a lack of ability. For me it appears Johnson is following the second path with no signs of improvement in any area during his tenure. A team deservedly at the bottom of its division should never think relegation is jot going to happen.

 

Will you guarantee Chelsea with Mourinho will finish higher than Leicester?

 

I completely agree with the first part of this which is why I want Johnson out.

Let's look at other things other than points on the board.

Smith, Mawson, Roberts, Davies, Townsend, Scowen, Winnall all gone backwards under him.

Not blooding our own academy players.

Not had any injury crisis'.

The only signing we know he was behind has been awful in Wilkinson.

 

I'll guarantee they won't.

 

I'm not sure how anyone can be passionately in favour or against Johnson staying, unless you are an insider and know for sure that the majority of decisions that have led to our current predicament came from Johnson himself. He was hired as a coach and not a manager, and the fact that he is still in situ suggests to me, among the people who really know how the club is run, that the responsibility is not entirely his.
As such, I'm happy to chalk the last few months up as a collective failure and give everyone at the club a chance to redeem themselves.
After all, the team doesn't look like a League 2 team in waiting. Our midfield in particular, if we can keep Hammill and keep Ryan Williams fit, looks strong. We may even be going to Wembley. A strong aggressive striker, and the same at centre back and we'd be ok. I was hoping for us to be pushing the top 6 live everyone else, but then so probably were Sheff Utd.

 

Point out the weaknesses as much as you can - you have yet to do so.

What I am trying to explain to you is that looking to the past is pointless because the game has changed so much. The way clubs operate, agents, the attitudes of players and the ambitions of owners are completely different to what they were in 1968, 1978 and even 1998.

Patience is not the key. If a manager doesn't show he is up to it in the first six months they are under pressure at best and sacked at worst. This is modern football. I chose Coventry as an example because they are top of the table and have done so in a way that you do not think is realistic. They are showing it is.

Here is a list of current football league managers. Six have been in charge for four years. This is modern football.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_Football_League_managers

 

Well, we know for a fact that he wanted Connor Wilkinson. Int that enough?

 

If you are not being selective in your choice of comparators, why did you chose Coventry and not Yeovil, a team that were relegated with us from the second tier.

All that has changed is that the fans have become less patient and football club boards less able to cope with their demands. Freedom of contract is not new, agents are not new, greed is not new. There are still 11 guys on each side. So what has changed?

If everything has changed, as you insist, what are the new rules. Does every club that does not get promoted have to sack their manager every season, or is it just us. Because if they do, then we should definitely do it differently, because the key to success is not doing it the same way as everyone else. The key is doing things differently. If doing things the same way as everyone else is the key, what is there to differentiate us from the crowd. Why should we be successful if we are required to do things the same way as everyone else. Why does doing things the same way as everyone else indicate to you that we deserve to stand out from the crowd, to have success when everyone else deserves to fail. You are mistaking the herd mentality for individual thought and action.

I am not interested in what the herd mentality is. I am not interested in your opinion that the game has changed. I am interested only in doing the things that I believe will be successful for my team. All you are interested in doing is what you perceive everyone else is doing, of staying within the herd, of being like the latest team at the top of the league. Whoever that team might be. It does not matter because next week you will be quoting a new team as an example of the team that we should be like. It is long past time that we started doing the right things, and not just the things that will temporarily satisfy the bloodlust of the loud minority. And you can quote me on that.

 

The logic of building teams slowly, adding a few players at a time is correct. However, LJ has used 30+ players so far this season, a lot brought in by him and now he wants to bring in even more because the ones he brought in havent been good enough, so that logic is out the window.

Also, building slowly is one thing. Taking a club who's budget is in the top 6 in the division to the bottom of the table is another.


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I would have said that Ritchie was a success for winning promotion, Basset took us to the play-off final and Davey/Robins were to some extent - they kept us up. Other than that, the other 10 permanent managers were pretty rubbish.

 

Given that Swansea, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Watford, Wigan and Blackpool (probably more besides) all reached the Premier league within 20 years of playing in the 4th division, you cannot guarantee that Morecambe or Accrington won't also. It is very unlikely, but with the right investment, a good manager and a lot of luck it is still possible for them to achieve that dream.

 

I've explained about a thousand times why I've chosen Coventry as an example.

You are clearly living in cloud cuckoo land and no post of yours can disguise this fact - regardless of the length. It's pointless "debating" with you.

 

Bookmark this thread and revisit in 20 years time. I'll guarantee those two clubs won't have got above League One. That wasn't really my point though.

 

Yeovil were over achieving in the first place by been anywhere near the championship.

Coventry are much more of a fair comparison.

Just out of interest could you tell me what Johnson's done up to now that suggests he'll be a success over a 4 year cycle?