After lockdown, we were great. Also decent when Chaplin had that purple patch in November/December. The season after was poor, albeit not over many games. Don’t get the whole thing about us staying up because of deductions though. If Wigan hadn’t have signed the players they couldn’t afford, they wouldn’t have got as many points as they did. If they’d have played by the rules and got enough points then fair enough. But they didn’t.
Managers in a relegation fight should be looking at finishing fourth bottom on points throughout the season to save their bacon. Which I imagine is what Struber attempted to do. In the end a last gasp winner saved us yet we finished 3rd bottom on points earned.
Poor choice of words. No we didn’t. Wigan didn’t ‘earn’ the points they had deducted. They cheated, plain and simple. You could argue without the cheating, given how bad the overspend was, they’d have probably got even less points than they ended up with after the deduction.
Absolute dog **** manager who cared more about his mates than he did this club. We stayed up in spite of him not because of him. His team selections and tactics were sending us down. What kept us up was a combination of things that all meant he was the luckiest manager in bfc history. Players who worked their ******** off was the main one (except for his golden boy). COVID which gave us a chance to reset completely. Which meant empty stadiums that massively benefited out young inexperienced squad. Which meant the natural fitness of young players played a big part compared to older squads. An extremely fortunate situation with injuries. And most importantly just generally being lucky as **** during games, playing awfully and for 90 minutes and having the linesman accidentally knock one in for us off his arse. Even in an interview after the season he said that Ritzmaier made the most of his time on the pitch and played excellently despite not getting many minutes for us. Completely at odds with the facts that he started 20 out of a possible 28 games plus he made more sub appearances obviously. The man hasn't got a clue about football and I can only assume he is the best interviewee I human history because he certainly wouldn't get a job if anyone actually saw him manage. Oh and he also acted disgracefully in trying to sabotage things to get a move.
Good assessment. The thing with ritzmaier was laughable never have i seen favouritism like it at oakwell before. At one point i genuinely thought they were related.
You think Andersen is dog**** too. And when anyone uses "luck" as a reason, you know they're desperate. Plus you were disgusted at his lack of emotion all season - perhaps you remember his tears and "my boys" when his job was done. Anyway - played 39 Won 14 drawn 8 lost 17. That's 50 points from 39 games. That's mid table obscurity. Those are facts. Yet of course we stayed up in spite of him. Which conveniently forgets we were bottom of the league and 7 points from safety when he took over. Yeah he was dog*****. And he's proving it over in the US too.
Mowbray is doing a steady job for us so don't think there's any chance of him being involved. Good win today btw
That was said to me and it really is true, its a crazy league. You can play excellent and lose then the week after play worse and win. I would have taken where we are at the moment before the season started but a short good or bad run of results can see you playoffs or bottom 3.
I think if you disagreed with his selections (I did too) & he still got good results it should mean you rate him even higher. I think it’s pretty poor if you hold it against a manager for not picking the players you would have if he gets the results anyway. The facts are that when he got more time to work with the players on the training ground they came back & improved significantly. He didn’t get lucky, he improved a lot of players & worked on a system that got us results. If he was no good we wouldn’t have improved. The last few games - the extremely unlucky Leeds defeat, the Forest win & the Brentford win were 3 outstanding performances. Extremely harsh to use the start of the following season against him as well. We all knew he was leaving, they were just trying to agree compensation. Can’t have been a good situation for trying to win football games.
I agree with the final outcome but I am talking about a manager who doesn`t know 100% what the authorities outcomes are going to be at the end of the day, so he goes with points on the board and goes for 4th bottom, he came third bottom until the points deductions were in place and Wigan`s appeal failed. Earned was a poor word looking back.