Johnson and Heckingbottom

Are both rubbish apparently. Yet we got promoted and won the JPT under their combined stewardship.

Maybe it was the players that just happened to be top drawer? But they were all identified by The Plan. Yet The Plan is a bag of gash apparently.

So promotion was achieved despite Johnson, Heckingbottom or The Plan.

FYI, I know what I've written is pointless but I'm bored.

 

Food for thought if nothing else.

 

You can't forever live on past achievements.

Heckingbottoms 12 months record says nothing to suggest that he's currently a good manager. He doesn't win football matches.

Johnson is a streaky manager. Winning run followed by winless run. Think he started today on 1 win in 10? He finished his first season with us on 1 in 10 and the following season went on a club record losing run, all with a fantastic squad of players at that level.

I think you have to question a managers influence when his players go on such runs. Could they just organise themselves and do as good a job?

Problem with Johnson is the press seem to love him when he's winning, but never question him when things aren't going so well. Similar with Hecky fans were singing his name when he was losing.

I don't think Hecky will be as lucky as Johnson though. If things continue the way they've started, I doubt he'll see out the current season. Unlike Johnson, he's not loved at his current club.

 

I see both managers as being akin to me buying a bunch of shares on the stock market. I might buy some duds and the price drops and drops or get lucky and the value just keeps rising.
Either way, apart from my initial guess that I'm making a good investment the performance thereafter has little to do with me but more to do with the confidence of the market (team) and the individual companies (players). There's a tendency to see managers as master puppeteers orchestrating everything, but I think there are very few who are able to do that.

 

I tend to look at it like this, we had one of the biggest budgets in league one, we did well. We have one of the smallest budgets in the championship, we are not doing well.

coincidence?

 

It's almost as if there were good and bad elements to both like nearly anything else in life

 

Johnson is a better manager

 

Oof. Controversial.

 

We were 14th when Hecky took over, but he gets credit for promotion. He took us 8 places up, Johnson took us 10, from rock bottom on a terrible winless run.

I think Hecky’s gonna be dining on the back end of 2016 for a long time and thinking tactics come second to telling your players they’re not good enough and if they’re sat 23rd in the table that’s exactly what they deserve.

 

Johnson will go on to have a successful management career. He’s innovative and ambitious. Heckingbottom won’t. It’s only my opinion of course.

 

Definitely better backed by his clubs owner.

Our promotion was a close run thing in terms of actually making the playoffs and I give Hecky full credit for keeping a settled side. I'm not sure Johnson would have made it because he liked to tinker.

Johnson certainly doing better than Hecky at moment, but has had better tools to work with since he left us, and has still struggled for long periods.

 

Hecky deserves credit for that run.

Won 14 Drew 5 Lost 3 from 22

8 places or not, he did a fantastic job.

I'm not a Hecky fan btw, haven't been for quite some time, but I think he fully deserves credit for that run of results.

Agree he can't live off it forever though.

 

I remember David flitcroft had a great 6 months in the championship doesn't make him a good manager.

 

Spot on. People trying to defend Heck in this thread are confusing "coach" with "manager". He did well to coach an existing group of players that had been handed to him and keep them motivated when they were already on a winning streak. Crumbled as soon as his role required more than that. As someone else noted, just look at Flicker. Flicker also deserves more credit IMO cos he made a hapless group headed for certain relegation attacking and hard to beat, Heck more or less just gave more of the same in a league lower.

 

Heckingbottom has the worst team in the league August - January yet left us outside the bottom 3. We should’ve lost a lot more than we won

 

The only way to really compare the two is if Heckingbottom gets time to build his own squad like Johnson but he probably won’t as if he goes on anywhere near as bad of a run as Johnson did at Bristol last year he’ll get the sack

 

Your opinion presented as fact.

 

I’m just being pedantic for the sake of discussion with the 8 places vs 10 places tbh, those 8 places Hecky climbed were all occupied by stronger teams than the bottom 10 and we played some great football.

The main thing that makes me dislike and regret Hecky is that he constantly told his players that they weren’t good enough. Losing his rag at a pre-season camp in Hungary and declaring we’re crap before even making the effort to try and get the best out of them is terrible man management.

 

Disagree and of the players signed in Jan only mcburnie and moore have improved us so far.

 

I’d say it’s pretty obvious, no championship quality keepers, a poor midfield, nothing up front & injury after injury in defence.

Isgrove, Cavare, Hedges, Pinnock & Gardner barely played due to injury.

And MacDonald, Yiadom, Jackson & Fryers have all missed decent chunks of the season.

On top of only having 3 unproven championship strikers.

Amazed we were even out of the bottom 3 when he left