Definitely possible. However I can’t see him getting a championship job and so top end league one seems most likely
If they can settle their differences and compromise for both parties I think this would be massive.Oakwell would be rocking and mentally Evatt would shat himself.
I’m not talking about appointing someone that would likely leave at some point if a better offer came in. I’m talking about reappointing someone who lied then jumped ship. I think it’s all academic though. I don’t think there’s a cat in hell’s chance the Club will have given it a seconds thought.
For me we definitely need a new gaffer in before Friday hopefully a new voice with a few new ideas might and i say might make us harder to play against although i realise it’s a big ask.
I personally don’t buy into the “he lied” stuff. He said the same thing every head coach at every club says. It was obvious he’d leave if a better offer came in, why wouldn’t he? I would, you would. Just seems a bit silly to use the fact that he’d be off for a better offer as the reason for not hiring him when that’s the same thing any head coach would do. This is the whole reason for the club having a philosophy across the club and hiring a coach to fit that rather than letting a coach decide it all. It just doesn’t work in our position when a coach is off just as quick if not more so than players.
I think he went a bit further with his "here for the long haul" stuff. Maybe it was naive to say it on his part. Maybe it was naive for many of us to buy into it. Either way, it felt a bit different to what head coaches usually say, especially as he seemed connected to the fan base in a way most other head coaches at Oakwell haven't even tried to be.
This is how I see it. I voted no on the poll, but to be honest the Nathan Jones comparisons have made me think about it some more.
Let's not forget, he had a championship/premiership defence & goalkeeper and still failed to get us promotion
I'd at least like to maintain the pretence that the manager we appoint is intended to be in place for at least the next three years. That has been one of the key issues holding us back as a club, we need consistency. I thought we'd get that when we appointed Duff, and I was gutted when he left. It was one of the reasons I was in favour of keeping Collins. If we appoint Duff again it's all for nothing, just waiting for him to bugger off.
Unless he's now realised that the grass isn't always greener, and staying somewhere he's appreciated and can build something might actually be attractive. Again, see Nathan Jones. Or Hammill.
Unfortunately, will just not happen bud. Either he will do well, lie & then leave or we will have a relatively 'unsuccessful' (despite being in the playoffs) season and the board will sack the manager due to toxicity/what the fans want. As someone mentioned, our fans seem to think we have a right to be in the championship, so even if we wanted to build a successful medium/long term team, I don't think fan reaction would allow it
I find myself looking to be re-apppinted. I'm currently bereft of all pintages. A double re-appinting post haste please bar keep.
Slightly different in that Jones had spent three years at Luton, so you could reasonably argue he'd shown some loyalty and commitment to building the club. I'm not saying never to go back in any circumstance, but if we did appoint him I'd be expecting to have this conversation again next year. I think fans will buy in to a medium/long term build if they see improvement on the pitch. People would've been happy to continue under Duff despite not going up last season, I think people would've been happy with Collins if the defence had shown any kind of improvement, and players weren't actively regressing.
This warrants further examination. Our OP posits the question whether we would be pleased with our manager being 're-appinted,' and subsequent posts question whether he might wish to be so. In order to be re-appinted, one must first have been 'appinted.' Say for example, I met thee in a boozer, you might offer to 'appint' me, and the usual niceties would ensure. At some point in the next 15-30 mins, one of our glasses would empty, and clearly at that juncture it would be my responsibility to 'appint' you. Naturally having exchanged 'appintings,' we might continue to engage. Certainly, to avoid doing so would involve a breaking of convention that would involve a level of discomfort that I myself am unable to initiate. I think I would need to be emitting some kind of terrible stench, or you would need to have expressed some significant Tory sympathies to have broken protocol at this stage. Then the crunch occurs: do we go our separate ways, or is it time for you to be 're-appinted?' If we consider that the pair of us have now consumed either a) 2 pints, b) 3 pints because this all followed me buying the first one or c) more than 2 pints because we'd both been elsewhere beforehand, I think the answer is comprehensive in any case: YES: you should be re-appinted (notwithstanding any scent/Tory issues). Therefore, I think I'd be delighted if Duff came back.
This is a pointless poll because I think there is zero chance of the board offering Duff the Job and a similarly zero chance of him being interested. And even if he was I think our new DOF wouldn't want us to go back to playing like we did a season ago. Despite having success with a high energy pressing game under Val and Duff ( and Stendell) we seem desperate to play Barcelona style out from the back - the style that has failed under Schopp Poya and Collins. It looked like it might work for a while under Collins but the Defence we have just isnt good enough to play that way and we have been found out. Same reason we wont appoint Colin for the playoffs as he wont do as he is told
This is the problem when you have folk making decisions who know diddly squat about football. Just leave it to the people who know what they’re talking about. Who is this actual DOF ?