Does anyone on here still think sacking Collins was a good idea

Bang on the money and folk wonder why we are towin' to attract a decent manager after the way Collins was treat, did the those upstairs think this would go under the radar with Coaches/managers both here and abroad? , I'd imagine unless one is truly desperate they wouldn't touch this job with a shi££y stick............sithi.

 

Poor appointment from the start. The problem isn't sacking him it's the joke of been unable to attract a new head coach.

 

Do you not think the two things might be related? That perhaps we can't attract a head coach precisely because we sacked the last one when we did?

 

I personally wouldn't have sacked him at the time, but understood why. The fans had turned on him and I couldn't see how to fix it. I was sat at Stevenage really frustrated with not just the performance but our toxic fans. At the end of the game it felt like a lot more than a minority joining with the Neil Collins your football is **** chant. I just don't get it, as it helps no one. The week or so earlier at home to Cambridge even in the family stand Collins was getting stick and boos.

I don't agree with it, but if Collins was the manager we wouldn't have sold anywhere near half as many tickets for the last game nor the home leg of the playoffs. If I'm truly honest with myself if we'd still had Collins as manager I'd probably not have bothered knocking off work early on a Friday picking my boy up from school and driving straight to up from London for the playoffs. We'd have watched it on TV and blamed it on being on a Friday.

The atmosphere at the start of the Bolton game was excellent. We arrived just after kick off (due to the stupid carpark rules.) We're usually in the ground early. So don't get hit by the noise walking in, but it was really impressive the best and loudest all season. Rightly or wrongly theres no way it would have been like that with Collins still manager.

So on reflection it it was the right thing to do to try and get us up. Even though I personally wouldn't have done it. I still feel the same.

 

Any particular reason you think it was poor from the start?

We appointed a British Coach (which has long been wanted on here), who uprooted his whole family and life from USA - which showed full commitment to the role (in my opinion). He was a young manager, who seemed full of enthusiasm and wanted to seize the opportunity.

He hired Jon Stead as his assistant - another young coach, and one who has lots of experience of English football. A man who was a thorn in our side for years - and who specialises in working with strikers (as far as I'm aware).

We then scored 19 points in the first 10 games - which is automatic promotion form, including smashing Port Vale 7-0 in his first game. Granted, there were 3 home losses.

Why do you think it was a bad appointment from the start?

 

I think the writing was on the wall for a long time before we sacked him, it was going to happen eventually, unless we somehow got promoted, but nobody had any confidence we would under his guidance. For a while people weren’t happy with the style of football on show, particularly at home, & we struggled against the clubs at the top half of the table. That said, in hindsight he should have at least been allowed a crack at the play offs. It was the right decision though, just at the wrong time, & as ever the club didn’t have a viable plan going forward. Well actually they did with Tallwhacker but it wasn’t very well thought out was it. So a **** up all round.

But now the club has truly backed itself into a corner & now we find ourselves in limbo. Who in their right mind wants to come to us? With little say over transfers & tactics, & the seeing how basket case we are sacking a manager 1 game away from the play offs. Plus half the first team leaving.

Strap yourselves in folks, because these next few years are going to turbulent, stagnating in league 1 & more than likely looking over our shoulders rather than up. We have found our level, we aren’t a championship club in stature anymore. The game is moving on & leaving us behind, but it’s all self inflicted.

 

I think we were blessed with charismatic managers in the past that were very easy to warm to such as Stendel, Ismael and Duff. All straight talking, easy to listen to individuals who when interviewed i plug in and hear their thoughts all day.

I'm starting to believe that was my mistake with Collins, that because i found him a bit bland and dull i let that translate into my footballing opinion of him. Yes at times the football his team played was also bland and dull but he was left with an absolute bomb scare of a team (more specifically defence) and the board basically said go on then do your best young man.

If we'd have won against Bolton (we were winning right up to the last kick from a penalty) then we would've been in the driving seat for automatics, but instead after that late kick in the nuts we dropped off due to form etc and we instead ended up 6th and into the play offs. But we went into the play offs with no manager because our feckless board decided to sack him 5 days before the season defining last game of the season.

When the villain all season was cast as Neill Collins and then the real villain pulls of their mask and it turns out to be the higher ups, that's when it should've clicked for a lot of people that the problem here wasn't the manager.

 

Brilliant post and I agree with every word.

 

You didn't put that video together that made Odejayi look good before we signed him did you?
It's all about opinions and gut feelings but you obviously rate Collins which is fair enough but I personally never thought that he got the best out of our players and when it got to the business end of the season for the top 2 we totally crumbled. The timing of his sacking was harsh but I wasn't sorry to see him go and we're only talking about him now because of the shambles that has followed since.

 

I just thought that after having a championship quality back four replaced by lads from Wren Kitchens, he probably deserved a chance at the playoffs.

 

Sure, a manager ploughing out dull slow horrid to watch football with the last 9 games producing relegation form. Why on earth would you keep him?
We had one of the strongest squads in the league by a mile, you only had to listen to opposing managers and commentators who were envious of that, yet shipped a ton of goals. Our manager was a CB himself and if anything our defence got worse throughout the season against what has been the poorest league 1 for many years IMO.

Due to the opposition being so poor, Collins record is extremely exaggerated. Other teams were that bad, without a doubt. Absolutely from the position we were in from more luck than judgement over the season, no way should we have been taking it to the last day and nearly throwing even the play offs away.

Any other season in the last 10 years, Collins would never have got us near the play off spots and would have departed far earlier.

Brave decision by the board to pull the trigger then. We did see a little uplift in how we played but couldn't fully shake off the Collins effect completely with the sloppy goals conceded.

Yes the division was that bad.

 

But I thought Cole threw the towel in after January. Kane was rubbish. Cadden can't defend. Cotter is rubbish. Styles couldn't wait to leave and had downed tools. Roberts is overrated. MDG is garbage. Watters useless. Cosgrove worthless. Williams legs gone. Mcatee can't finish. Connell gone backwards. Phillips missing for long periods.

That's what the BBS has told me this past month.

Pretty good job to get to the playoffs then I reckon.

 

We might end up getting a manager from Wren Kitchens

 

I do think ultimately it was the correct call to sack Collins. I can totally see why they hired him in the first place, he had a similar profile to Duff and played a similar style but it just never seemed to fully click with him imo. Even when we were winning, it felt like we were often scraping through games (Aside from the opening day game) where we were often relying on a moment of brilliance from one of our better players to dig us out rather than clear patterns of play and good work etc.

I do think the timing of the sacking was wrong and the abuse Collins got from fans was over the top too. If the board had doubts about his ability to take us forward, it should have been decided before the eve of the final game to pull the trigger. The timing was bizarre to say the least and did feel very much like a decision to sell tickets for the final game and playoffs.

Also, the most frustrating thing about this whole situation is that they have done this without a clear plan and vision in place. They went for a manager who by all accounts plays a totally different style to that of Collins in Thalhammer, knowing he would not automatically qualify for a work permit. They then just assumed he would get one upon appeal. Which of course he did not. There seems to be no logic or long term planning at all.

There is then the possible approach to Wellens (which I don't think was there anyway) who again is a totally different type of manager to the two before. Often plays a back 4. What is the aim and idea? Then it is Duff who again goes away from the possession style they crave and when then that fails, it is Stendel they want. Again totally different system and way of playing. Would take a lot of recruitment to get us into his formation as we have no wingers.

At least with Williamson, if he is the one we end up with. There is some correlation in style between him and Collins to show some logic as to why we went down that road. The board just seem to bounce between ideas on a whim.

Over the years they have been here, we have flipped and changed between formations and styles so much. No wonder we can't build any long term success and keep players and they have no idea what they are going to have to do season to season.

 

I don't think that really, we did have a good squad for this league. Performances have been far from acceptable though and that has to be the responsibility of the head coach. So many times he tried to gloss over things instead of saying his tactics were wrong.

If a player like Connell goes backwards for instance, you have to look at how they are being coached.

 

That is sort of the point though isn’t it? He started alright. His record WAS ok, but then at the business end of the season our form (in terms of results) fell off a cliff. The form performance wise was never that great in the first place but got even worse and we started losing - home and away - after having lost just once away all season at Derby - until the run in. We were in a four horse race for top two. And finished sixth, just.

Also, not wishing to be pedantic, but 1.9 points per game wasn’t automatic promotion form. It would have garnered 87 points, which was third this season and would have finished fourth last season.

Even if he’d maintained that form we wouldn’t have gone up automatically.

I understand all arguments that he should have been kept in role but I don’t agree. The timing was bizarre I’ll grant. But the toxicity and negativity was growing, his continuing would have only exacerbated this. I would have given him the last league game and the playoffs having got to that point and not done anything until 45 games were played - but I would have had him leave a few weeks before - not months as some have mentioned - but when the rot had clearly started to set in.

 

Remember that Port Vale game. We were even outclassed for that game for the first 20 mins.
Then they reverted to type and were so so bad. Athersley rec would have done em 8-0.

 

Given the position we were in 3 months prior to the end of the season. How anyone could have envisaged the dramatic drop in standards, points wise is beyond me. So some are saying he should have gone then. Absolutely bonkers. hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Over the last couple of months. (Apart from portsmouth) it was like watching Schoolkids perform on that pitch I admit that. But we couldn't have envisaged it. The players have to take a lot of the blame.
He's gone, I wasn't gutted and neither did i think it was the wrong or right thing to do. Hoping it would ignite the players to perform better than their recent performances. we move on.

 

I'm pretty sure if we'd have averaged 1.9 points per game all season - then we wouldn't be having this conversation. I was just using this really to counter those who reckon he was the wrong appointment from the start. That's clearly rhubarb.

You say you would have sacked him "weeks" before. That's still bizarre to me. Up until about 4 games before the end of the season we were 4th. Would you have been happy signing off on that? I wouldn't. Why on earth would you sack a manager who led your team to 4th, all whilst scoring more goals than last season, and trying his best to sort a defence that had been gutted from the season before.

It's completely negligent behaviour from the board. A few of us have a theory why they did what they did - but I'd love to know why.

By all footballing measurements, it's insane.

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As a footnote, I don't really know why I'm still banging this drum. What's happened has happened. I need to move on to next season - and hope that the board put a bloke in charge who takes us forward. Because we've now seen that the playoffs aren't good enough. If we're 12th at Christmas, then we'll be having the same conversation

 

Personally I can see why they did , the crowd had turned against him and he just didn’t seem to learn from his mistakes.
Whether it would have been better to leave him in place until the end of the season is obviously debatable but I can see why they would have been worried about toxicity from the fans and honestly I can’t see how we could have done much better at Bolton than we did.
I think our problem was more in choosing the wrong manager in the first place, he was never that demonstrative during games earlier in the season but he looked positively depressed during the run in.
Obviously we have now moved from the safe haven for managers that we once were and the ridiculous policies with players that the board seem to have enhanced that ( obviously apart from MLH who wanted to move on to ‘bigger things’ )