Rank em

[drfchound]

That is very true BST, I remember Sharp missing half a dozen or so glorious chances to score during those few games.
He just didn’t seem to want to be here.

Had he put one or two of those away we may well have stayed up because no one was battering us.

[BillyStubbsTears]

It wasn’t just missing chances Hound. Players do that. It was his general contribution. I’m assuming there was something going on in his personal life because he was a totally different creature to the one we’d seen before and the one that has done so well for Sheff Utd over the past 4 years.

[drfchound]

It wasn’t just missing chances Hound. Players do that. It was his general contribution. I’m assuming there was something going on in his personal life because he was a totally different creature to the one we’d seen before and the one that has done so well for Sheff Utd over the past 4 years.

Agreed, and as I said, he just didn’t seem to want to be here.
Sharp has never been a player that, in general, gets involved in build up play.

[Bentley Bullet]

Sharp did score 4 goals in 16 appearances though. Considering the player he replaced, Macheda scored 0 goals in 10 appearances, Sharp's record in comparison was very good.

Evidence suggests it was a graveyard for Rovers strikers at the time when you consider Macheda went on to score 10 goals in 18 games for Birmingham - A feat that probably kept them up at the expense of us!

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sharp scored 4 in 15 league starts.

Macheda scored 3 in 12 League starts.

It’s not hard lads. I know you’re getting on a bit and the memory’s not what it was, but there’s an internet out there to help you get on in this modern world.

[Bentley Bullet]

I'm talking about his second loan spell with us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Macheda

[dickos1]

Your numbers are wrong by some way Dickos. Easy enough to check. There’s a whole internet out there.

Saunders left us on 7 Jan 2013. We were second in the table, level on points with Tranmere and behind on GD. We had 50 points from 26 games. That’s 1.92 ppg.
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-one/07-january-2013/

We ended up with 84 points from 46 games.
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-one/2013/

So Flynn won 34 points from 20 games. 1.7ppg.

The difference equates to 10 points over a season. Saunders’s record was automatic promotion/top of the table form. Flynn’s was mid-play off form.

We won the title because
a) Tranmere imploded.
b) None of the sides immediately below us when Saunders left had a strong run in.
c) The outstanding form team during Flynn’s tenure was coming from a long way back.

It’s unarguable Dickos. Saunders had us in a very strong position. Flynn came within a gnat’s knacker of f**king it up and was saved by the most Hollywood-esque season finale that has happened in the history of football.

Billy
They are not out by some way, I looked after the sheff u game so I was including the Colchester game as under Flynn and not Saunders.
So one game is the difference.

Our home results improved dramatically under Flynn

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dickos.

The fact is that there was a whole ten points difference in the season-long equivalent form under Saunders and Flynn. That’s the difference between winning a title and finishing inbthe play-offs.

I’m not sure why you raise the issue of home form but in fact it marginally worsened under Flynn.

Saunders.
P13 W6 D2 L5. PPG 1.54
Flynn
P10 W4 D3 L3 PPG 1.50

It was the away form that really dipped under Flynn. It was astonishing under Saunders (2.31 PPG) and it dropped to 1.90 PPG under Flynn.

 

[red w(h)ine]

Your numbers are wrong by some way Dickos. Easy enough to check. There’s a whole internet out there.

Saunders left us on 7 Jan 2013. We were second in the table, level on points with Tranmere and behind on GD. We had 50 points from 26 games. That’s 1.92 ppg.
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-one/07-january-2013/

We ended up with 84 points from 46 games.
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-one/2013/

So Flynn won 34 points from 20 games. 1.7ppg.

The difference equates to 10 points over a season. Saunders’s record was automatic promotion/top of the table form. Flynn’s was mid-play off form.

We won the title because
a) Tranmere imploded.
b) None of the side’s immediately below us when Saunders left had a strong run in.
c) The outstanding form team during Flynn’s tenure was coming from a long way back.

It’s unarguable Dickos. Saunders had us in a very strong position. Flynn came within a gnat’s knacker of f**king it up and was saved by the most Hollywood-esque season finale that has happened in the history of football.

You are going to get nowhere using facts and evidence to persuade some folk on here.

Funny thing though stats. Apparently under Flynn we our form was mid play offs yet we improved our league position by 1 place and won the title.
Tranmere kept their manager and finished nowhere – if he had left when Saunders did the fans would have blamed the slump upon the change of manager.
Stats are not all that useful in predicting what will happen when there are too many circumstances that can change – injuries, loss of form etc
I don’t think that anyone can be sure what would have happened if Saunders had stayed. I also don’t think Flynn/Jones were in charge long enough to judge them.

[Dutch Uncle]

I love the quote attributed to both Niels Bohr and Storm Pedersen - ‘Predictions are very difficult, especially for the future’

[BillyStubbsTears]

Looks like predictions about the past aren’t much easier for some.

[dickos1]

Nobody suggested Flynn turned our season around but to suggest he did a bad job when we won the title is baffling

[BillyStubbsTears]

The issue was whether he’d done a better job than Saunders, not whether he’d been a good or bad manager absolutely. To maintain that he did in the light of the actual performances really IS baffling.

[dickos1]

I hadn’t suggested otherwise, i did say his record wasn’t as good as Saunders.
I just don’t think he did such a terrible job, he made a few decent signings and at the time it was widely acknowledged that the performances had improved under him.

[RugbyRover]

I always thought it was funny that Dickov got blamed for Sharps ineffectiveness.

funny how I always felt that Sharp was unable to deal with the way Keegan and Furman just blindly hoofed the ball in his vague direction, at any height and any speed. A striker is only as good as the service he gets and in his second spell with his Billy got nothing from those two cloggers.

[RoversAlias]

Yeah I don't think it's fair saying Flynn didn't do as well as appears. He did a good job, came in mid-season and helped galvanise a side who could easily have gone off the boil completely. To say he came close to totally messing it up is unfair, we did play better under him and the additions of Furman and Lundstram made a significant difference in my opinion.

We stayed near the top the entire time under Flynn whereas I was never convinced by us as title contenders when Saunders was still in the job.

[drfchound]

Isn’t it odd that when we get relegated it is the managers fault, but when we win the league, it isn’t.

[pib]

He clearly wasn’t Pib, given where he’d managed to get us to with 6-7 matches remaining and taking into account the relentless injury crisis that we had all season.

OK - you're entitled to your opinion of course. I watched a lot of Rovers that year though (with my eyes) and it was plain that Dickov didn't really have a clue what he was doing. He took over a side that had just won promotion and we had some pretty decent players who could hold their own at that time.

I'll admit - some games weren't bad and we looked pretty good. But for the most part we were dreadful. It was obvious watching us we had no identity, no discernible style. It was management by "throw a load of shit at the wall and hope some of it sticks" and sometimes it did, but mostly it didn't. We were pathetic away from home and probably had more games that season where we failed to create a real chance than any other Rovers season I've seen.

We scored the 2nd fewest goals in the division (Yeovil scored more!) and only 2 teams have scored fewer in the Championship since. I'm not saying I expected us to go up and take the Championship by storm (or even necessarily stay up) but we just looked completely rudderless to me.

Then when we went back into League One it just got worse. Terrible signings, awful clueless performances and the start of a tailspin that saw us go down again. I can't believe the bloke lasted as long as he did in the job.

And just to throw another factor in... look at what he did in management before DRFC, and look at what he's done since.

Pib

Jones
Khumalo
Tamas
Wellens
Wabara
Husband
Turnbull
Forrester
Woods
Macheda
McCombe
Robinson


That’s a dozen players off the top of my head who had long term injury problems in 13/14.

What Dickov was doing was having to constantly fill in the gaps left by those injuries.

You wanted Copacabana football. You wanted a flood of goals. Grand. So did I. But I was also aware of that injury context. And given that, I would have been happy for us to survive playing with ten men on the goal line.

Wrong. Where did I say anything about Copacabana football and scoring lots of goals? In fact, I think I set the bar pretty low saying I just wanted a Rovers team to look capable of creating a couple of chances per game, and at least look like they knew what they were doing on he pitch and what game plan they were playing.

Such ridiculous expectations eh? Hoping for your team not to be a completely pathetic for nigh-on a season's worth of away games.

We went down because the above didn’t happen. We didn’t show up in anywhere near enough games when our best players WERE available and fully fit. If we’d have got one more win or a couple of draws on the road in one of those games where we looked like a Sunday league side, we’d have been fine. You end up where you deserve to be at the end of the season, and if we’d appointed a manager who deserved the job we’d have stayed up comfortably.

Glad you seem to know more about what I was looking for than I do though. Thank god you're here.

I think Dickov should be in the running for the job now given he was such a magnificent manager. He clearly has the ability to manage in the Championship having "nearly" kept us up. He's reportedly a "nice bloke" so that's the pleasing and willing personality bit covered. Only stumbling block is that none of our current board say hello to him when walking their dogs around leafy Cheshire, which was one of the essential criteria when Dickov got the job in 2013.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Pib

Ok, my tongue in cheek exaggeration about Copacabana football seems to have upset you so I’ll withdraw that. My apologies.

We’ll obviously have to agree to differ. You say we went down because we didn’t put the performances in when we had everyone available (which ignores the fact that there wasn’t a single match all season when we had our first XI available, but there you go.)

My take is that we went down (on the final kick of the season, following a blatant foul, but there you go - you get what you deserve) because we had the worst injury situation that we’d had in the 46 years I’ve been watching us. We played THIRTEEN different defenders because of the injuries. Six of those were signed on the hoof to cover injuries. Two of those then got long term injuries. All four of our original first choice back four ended up with long term injuries, three of them within the first 3 months of the season. Our first choice keeper got a season ending injury at Xmas.

Given those facts and the (likely) fact that we had the second lowest budget in the division, my opinion is that it is, shall we say, a little bit over the top to say that we wouldn’t have gone down if Dickov wasn’t w**k.

Each to their own, obviously, but my take is that it would have been a remarkable achievement if we had survived.

[phil old leake]

S o d
Saunders
Penney
Ferguson
Flynn
Dickov

[dickos1]

Sod
Penney
Ferguson
Saunders
Flynn
Dickov

[Donnybax]

I thought that at the time Dickov wanted to keep Macheda and the board brought Billy Sharp back.
Dickov got blamed for not playing to Billy's strengths but to be fair he either wasn't fully fit or he had something on his mind. He's never looked like that before or since. Arguably Macheda playing for us may have scored more plus denying Birmingham his goals. We were also doing well against Birmingham until James Husband dithered with the ball on the edge of our area. They then brought on Zigic and targeted Copps at right back twice for two more goals.

I always thought it was funny that Dickov got blamed for Sharps ineffectiveness.

it wasn’t just sharp. Dickov couldn’t get any strikers to score

[Chris Black come back]

f**k me his tactics with Tyson. Just get Jones or McCombe to f**king leather the ball upfield and let Tyson run after it. Very bad times.

[drfchound]

Didn’t Tyson get 14 goals in his last season, having missed a few games through injury as well.

Rigo would have loved watching that style of play.

[RedJ]

Hat trick against Scunny as well. What a bloke.

[streathamdave]

SOD               
Penney
Flynn
Ferguson
Saunders
Dickov          Others will disagree (and have done so already), but wheels could have come off after Saunders left and I think the Job Flynn did in keeping things stable has been underplayed. Wasn't really a fan of Saunders of Dickov and Ferguson didn't live up to his potential in my eyes. All about opinions.