Don’t think its fair to label Schopp as being the worst coach/manager, looking back he never stood a chance here! He was on his own, wasn’t allowed to bring in his own coaches with him, language barrier was an issue and he couldn’t stamp any of his own authority on the club. After VAL had taken away the 1st team coaching infrastructure, we lost “key”players through sales, loans and injuries, with NO competent replacements. Conway was acting as a Commission/salesman CEO and left him with a completely depleted and unbalanced squad. Limited forward line with Woodrow & Morris injured, with the loss of Chaplin & Dike from the previous season, replaced by two joke Belgians. The loss of Mowett and no replacement, “Benson” clearly wasn’t ready for the step up to the Championship and is just about coming to terms with league one now. Someone at the club the club thought it would be a good idea to loan “Kane” to Oxford with NO replacement. He had NO competent midfielders and a squad overloaded with central defenders and with the exception of Anderson & Helik none were/are up to playing in the Championship regularly. Brittain is now been found out at Blackburn! Stendel had his own people around him to begin with and a capable squad for the division when brought in. What did Schopp have to work with? The board/owners SHAT & sold him up the river before he was given the job. I hope Schopp does well in his new job he doesn’t deserve the criticism for his short time with us.
I can’t see how anyone can rate Poya as better than Schopp given the circumstances each worked under. I’m not saying Schopp did a decent job, he didn’t & deserved to be sacked but he certainly wasn’t our worst manager last season. Poya was terrible, even with Carlton Morris available to him & two excellent loan signings in Bassi & Quina he couldn’t get a tune out of them. It was like all the attacking players were playing as individuals & had no chemistry. As bad as things were under Schopp there was at least a few halves of football where an inferior front line in 3 of Woodrow, Oduor, Frieser & Adeboyejo looked like they’d at least played together & had some patterns of play.
I also agree with Schopp being 'better' than Poya but we are getting into the realms of "do you prefer arsenic or cyanide?" again. Let's hope no-one takes the mantle again for quite some time.
Just thinking how bad those two were last season makes me shudder, Poya was a disaster that shouldn’t have happened after Schopp completely against what was needed ! Thankfully we appear to have done this season what we should have last. I just hope they( the board/owners) have learned and we strengthen in Jan especially up top. Never expected to be challenging this season but given the position we are in we have to push on. I get this season should be about consolidation with a push next but in reality whether we go up this, next or somewhere down the line the squad would need a major overall to compete at a higher level so the sooner the better, on the basis we won’t have masses of money in August but that isn’t likely to alter the longer we stay in L1 ( unless we sell a start for a massive amount but then that doesn’t seem likely nor would it get the fans fully on side).
