Has anyone considered this?

I keep hearing people defending Collins by pointing out he must be doing something right, as he has got us into the play-off places despite having a poor squad, but has anyone considered reversing that and saying our players have got us into the play-off places despite the poor coach?

It’s just a thought, because for me we owe nearly all our success in the first part of the season to two people, Cole for his goals and Roberts for countless match winning saves. Collins was making awful mistakes in team selections, formations and, especially, substitutes. But Cole was scoring like never before and he had to, because McAtee took time to find his feet, Phillips was useless till Connell came back and Watters and, especially Cosgrove were pretty hopeless. At the other end teams were constantly outshooting us, but a mixture of poor finishing and excellent goalkeeping was winning us points. There was no obvious style to our play and players were going backwards. We were winning games despite rarely playing well.

A couple of months ago, however, things started to look up. The team selections were improving, the substitutions were starting to help our play, rather than bring an end to it and the players were playing with more energy, helped by Connell returning to the team. But since half-time in the Bolton game the wheels have come off big time and it’s even worse than the early months of the season now, because Cole has forgotten how to score and we are shipping goals. The play is, frankly, boring, predictable and very easy to work out. Collins may as well have gone home yesterday, because he didn’t seem to have a clue what to do, other than change players and continue with the boring, predictable plod. I had only just come round to believing Collins was worth sticking with too!

It’s not vital that we go up this season. Well, not vital if you are prepared for us to sell Connell and Jalo to plug the financial hole and see a team full of loanees, kids and the rejects we’ve sent out on loan this season, with the odd cheap free transfer, as we kick around the lower mid-table next season. We MUST do everything we can in these last few weeks and make an effort to get promoted, because we desperately need the extra money it will bring. We cannot keep expecting the owners to chuck £4m in every season.

I know that if we go up we are going to struggle, but if we don’t we are going to struggle. Look at all the key players who will be leaving in the summer, with no transfer fees coming in. Roberts, Williams, McCart, Kane, McAtee, Cole, plus the other loanees and, probably, Connell and Jalo, to raise transfer funds. I’d rather be struggling in the Championship, whilst using the extra money to keep Connell and Jalo and bring in young players with a view to either keeping us up or mounting a stronger promotion challenge the year after.

Does anyone honestly believe that Collins is gonna take us up through the play offs? We have to get past Bolton and an in-form Peterborough (yes, I know they lost yesterday, but they have been on a great run and are always good for a few goals) or, more worryingly, Lincoln. Lose on Monday and if Oxford and Lincoln both win we’ll have to start looking over our shoulders. Our one saving Grace is that they still have to play each other.

We are going backwards. We won’t go up unless things change and then in all likelihood Collins will be replaced in the summer. Our squad is talented enough to be playing way better than we have been. So, for me we replace him now. Bring Neil Warnock in. Do you think we would continue playing sideways-sideways-backwards with Warnock in charge? We still might not go up, but we can guarantee that we’d be giving it our best shot, something that has been severely lacking in the past few weeks. We cannot afford to sit back and watch the season to continue to fizzle out when there is so much resting on it.

 

I remember an interview Phillips gave, think it was after his brace against Leyton Orient. He said that, for his goals he should not have been in the box but went in anyway and scored 2 goals. Wonder if it was Collins that had told him to stay out of the area. Good job he 'disobeyed' orders or that would have been another home defeat.

 

Good post, I think we will be tier 3 for a good few seasonsl yet

 

Aye, let's bring in a 442 merchant when we have a squad completely unsuited to it.

 

Peterborough are not really an in form team.The last three games we've picked up more points than they have.

 

I agree with most. I think he stuck with Styles in center midfield too long who was absolutely anonymous, it was only after blackpool in the cup and the 3 nil defeat at Derby when the penny dropped and Phillips got a chance. He then moved styles to wing back and rotated him and cadden.
I think we missed connell early season but he hasn't been as good as he was last season.

 

What were the awful mistakes in team selections & formations?

 

The idea that you can take the credit away from Collins for the fact we are pretty nailed-on for the playoffs really is a non-starter. There'd only be one person blamed if we were in the drop zone, so credit where it's due.

 

So if we win its because of the players and when we lose its Collins?

 

Not at all, if Collins makes a mistake then it’s on him, if he makes a good move then he gets the credit, same with the players. I’m just wondering whether the players have got us points, despite of or because of the coaching, considering how disjointed we have been all season, how many baffling team selections and substitutions have been made and how we never seem to change the approach during a game when the way we are playing is just not working. Those are things you would expect a coach to be responsible for. We were heavily reliant on just two players for the first few months of the season, and all the game stats and, let’s face it, what we were seeing with our eyes, suggested we were doing far better than our performances suggested we should be.

 

Well like most things in life the answer is its a combination of everything.

I suppose the real question is are we under performing for the squad we have or not.

 

We've been saying the same for ages . we're where we are inspite of him not because of him. We've got potentially one of the best midfields in the division and a squad capable of the automatics but a poor coach with no tactical sense at all. The majority of our goals come from individual efforts rather than a good team build up. Add to that baffling substitutions and negative play and we struggle.

 

Most definitely. The Cambridge and Cheltenham manager would have taken any one of our players. We have two strikers who have got 40+ goals in League One over the past two seasons and neither look like scoring again. We don’t seem to be able to get a cross over or stop a cross coming over, but we know we have decent wing backs. And our midfield trio should be capable of bettering one marshalled by Paul Digby, but we seem to only play sideways and backwards.

 

Underperforming recruitment (board)
Underperforming coaching team (appointed by board)
Massively underperforming squad (picked by coaching time that was appointed by board and / or purchased by board)

So yeah, underperforming

 

The squad we have is good enough if they play their best.

Each individual player is however massively inconsistent - this could be from game to game or month to month. The attackers have been rubbish for weeks now.

I'm not sure whether this is down to player or manager. It is usually down to confidence.

I would not want the manager removed, not least when our away record is so spectacular that he is obviously doing one half of his job brilliantly.

We need to be more direct at home but that requires the forward driving midfielder we don't have.

My two biggest gripes are:
1. We do not specifically mark the obvious tall men at corners/free kicks and guess what happens.
2. Collins is not realistic in post match interviews and I feel he insults what little intelligence I have.