In support of those in charge

When Danny was sacked we were a half-decent run from making the playoffs. We'd seen flashes of great stuff at the beginning of the season, before injuries took their toll and the lack of experience of our team - in my opinion - started to show. We were losing games and playing badly, but we all knew that the team was at least mid-table quality and probably a couple of sensible additions away from the top 6. That's when patience should be shown, and I still haven't forgiven the club for not doing it. I think if we'd kept him we'd probably be in at least the same position this season, and we might be doing a bit better. We might even be doing a lot better.

We've now lost eight games in a row, one of which was against a side struggling in a league which is two below us. Not only that, but as far as I can see we don't look like scoring, let alone winning. We're completely devoid of ideas and of confidence. We got rid of Bailey, Lalkovic and Berry and replaced them with a motley crew of other people's youngsters. We signed - and continue to play Conor f'ing Wilkinson. We look more like relegation candidates than we did at any point in our many years in the Championship. In League 1. I've just seen absolutely nothing that gives me any sign that we can get out of this, still less that we can stabilise the ship and push on over the next couple of seasons. For me, this isn't the time to show patience - if there was ever a time to push the panic button then this is it.

I've asked the club to show patience with managers for years. I think pretty much every manager we've sacked since Simon Davey could have legitimately been given more time, although I'll admit to not being too bothered when Keith Hill left (I'm not sure he had the mindset to do well here), and with hindsight I think getting rid of Flicker when we did was probably excusable (seeing as he just went mental). But there's no point in showing patience when you've got absolutely no evidence or argument that it's going to get better.

I suppose it's possible that the club are just trying to teach people like me a lesson: "You wanted patience? Welll now you've got it. How do you like it now then?" It feels like catching your child smoking and then making them chain-smoke the whole packet in front of you as punishment.

 

which i dare say wont be able to happen until Mr Stones moves on - if he never moves or get a career ending injury we will get nowt apart from that pittance of 2.3 million or whatever it was.

eggs basket

even BM said it would be silly to rely on the stones transfer yet it looks like its exactly what happened.

 

That's just the case with Smith and Wilkinson isn't it(hurrah, lucky us!)? Pearson they hope to sign but no deal is in place. That's what I took from the posts regarding this week's meeting anyway.

 

Fact is we could have employed an experienced manager and we could have done poorly too. We could have had 3 'experienced pros' and still done poorly. We've had sides with experience and still done badly - because ultimately you need the right players. What we do appear to lack on the pitch is a leader, someone to organise and cajole and fire players up.

So yea, experience would be nice, but lets not present inserting a couple of 30 some things would have made all the difference.

 

The problem is that prior to LJ taking over we thought a bad run was losing 4/5 out of 7 games so most people thought previous managers should have been given a chance through these spells, we don't expect any of our managers going through a 8 consecutive defeat run at this level. Regardless of the recruitment policy a good manager would have that squad of players in the top half. He should have gone last night, they backed him through a bad spell, it's now gone beyond.