A couple of things from today's Racing Post. 1. They have a feature entitled 5 things we learned from the weekend and we feature in today's as follows: "Barnsley can win matches Those who use solely results to judge teams will have been surprised by Barnsley's win at OLdham, but the Tykes have recently been playing to a much higher standard than eight straight league defeats suggested. And finally they were rewarded with success at Oldham which was absolutely crucial for boss Lee Johnson before a tough week involving matches against Peterborough and Sheffield United. The belief should return and the recent addition of Kevin Long, Adam Hammill and Ivan Toney have boosted the Yorkshire strugglers." 2. In a separate article Kevin Pullein who writes about football betting from a statistical point of view writes about results not being everything (he isn't writing about us). He quotes Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman who suggests that success = skill + luck. He goes on to say "that means the success of a football team should be attributed partly to skill and partly to luck. They might not have got the results they deserved, or they might not have played as well as they can - and, in all likelihood will. If we want to assess coaches and players fairly, or anticipate with any accuracy what they might do next, we should acknowledge that results need interpretation and shouldn't be taken at face value." Not sure if this does help anyone but it does I suggest give us food for thought.
No. Everything is black and white. We lose because of Johnson, we win in spite of Johnson. There are no other factors.....
Similarly statistics are only ever to be applied if and when it supports the poster's agenda. eg The only statistic that counts is goals when we lose and we should therefore sack the manager. However, when we win it is important to account for the opposition's form, possession, shots on target, shots off target. corners, throw ins, territory, ambience and whimsy to assert that we were lucky and should therefore still sack the manager.
Let's be right though, losing 8 in a row in the third division is pretty black and white w4nk in my opinion. Anyway, we've won one so onwards and upwards and that.
No it's ****. And not all down to bad luck... but a season is 46 games, pretty much the concensus on here was that a new manager would need 3 years to get it right - fwiw Johnson does not convince me, but we'll see..
On a similar note I stumbled on this video on youtube the other day, and was shocked to remember the fact he managed an unbeaten run, with 6 wins on the bounce "for the first time in 35 years" so it seems hes able to make records on both ends of the spectrum. [video=youtube;F1JihGpQTHY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1JihGpQTHY[/video]
I'd say that is pretty much my thoughts as well. My gut feeling on Johnson is that he's not a great manager - lots of reasons, even as silly as the way he talks - and as I say, it's a gut feeling only. But, I'm prepared to give him a long time to prove me wrong. Even if one of those reasons is that it reduces the amount of money we'd have to buy him out of his contract.
