Viking Supporters Co-operative
Viking Chat => Viking Chat => Topic started by: streathamdave on April 08, 2024, 01:32:38 pm
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A year ago (Yesterday I believe) we played Gillingham away. It is a fixture I've been to a number of times over the years. Last year with Schofield ball I simply couldn't face it. Even in the Richardson days I'd never felt that way. In those days, as bad as they were, we had a common enemy in Richardson and to an extent Weaver. I wanted things to work with Schofield as a local lad, but it seemed from the off that he was simply out of his depth. I felt sad for the bloke and a bit embarressed as a fan that things had somehow got that bad. Now regardless of the results inbetween (although hopefully all wins) I am genuinely looking forward to attending that game. Mccann has worked wonders giving us a team back that we can be proud of.
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Look at the players Schofield had available for that match.
McCann AND a hell of a lot of money have given us a team we can be proud of.
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True enough Billy, but the ones who are still around from then are playing better. Some of his tactical decisions were just baffling, in particular playing without a striker on a few games. It's just great to see us play as a good passing team with a bit of quality about us and see the mood of players/staff and fans improve.
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Define ‘a hell of a lot of money’, BST.
We’re playing like a top 3 side, but I’ll warrant we havn’t a top 3 budget or anywhere near it.
I think credit to GM & the team for some clever buys and good loans and also to TB for providing whatever he thought necessary. The Chairman made it very clear at the MTO what the strategy was.
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It can’t be a coincidence that under McCann we played exciting attacking football the last time he was here and that we are doing the same thing this time around.
Under Schofield the stuff served up was so boring and to a certain extent, not much better under McSheffrey.
Although the money is a factor it isn’t just that.
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I got my ticket on first day of sale, regardless of league position, we just make a weekend of the southern games...however, I've a sneaky feeling, this could be the most exciting game since Charlton, fingers crossed!!
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I got my ticket on first day of sale, regardless of league position, we just make a weekend of the southern games...however, I've a sneaky feeling, this could be the most exciting game since Charlton, fingers crossed!!
Every games been like a play off game recently and IF there's something still to play for come Gillingham I can't imagine how thrilling, how nervous, how emotional that occasion could be.
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Define ‘a hell of a lot of money’, BST.
We’re playing like a top 3 side, but I’ll warrant we havn’t a top 3 budget or anywhere near it.
I think credit to GM & the team for some clever buys and good loans and also to TB for providing whatever he thought necessary. The Chairman made it very clear at the MTO what the strategy was.
Well, since the OP used the Gillingham match as the comparison, let's have a look at what has happened position by position since that day.
Goalkeeper (Mitchell). Released. Replaced with a first choice, then replaced again.
Right back (Seaman): Still on books but now 4th choice and on loan in Conf.
Centre back 1 (Faulkner): Injured but now 5th choice.
Centre back 2 (Long): Released. Would be 6th choice at best if still here.
Centre back 3 (Nelson): Gone onto better things, but as he was a year ago, doubtful he'd be better than 4th choice at the moment.
Left back (Rowe): Third choice left back now.
Right wing (Barlow): Released. Can't get in an average Conf side. Wouldn't be remotely close to first team squad now.
Central Midfield pair (Westbrooke and Close): Stand-out players then, but neither are first choice at the moment because we've recruited Bailey and Craig.
Left wing (Molyneux)
Centre forward: (Goodman): Kid making his debut. Currently on loan but would be 6th choice in a fully fit squad.
My point is that we have invested in better players in pretty much every position since that day. I stand by what I've said all along on this topic, that it is grossly unfair to judge Schofield's team's performances against the standards of what we now have, without taking into account that we retained every half decent player from his squad and supplemented them with more than a full XI of better players all over the pitch and in reserve.
So, by definition we are spending a hell of a lot more money now than we were a year ago today.
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BST, do you think Schofield with the funds McCann has been given would be doing better, worse or the same?
I don’t think we’d have made the same signings under schofield, McCann already knew adelakun, TLT and also molyneux is playing like a completely different player. That’s no coincidence
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It's an impossible question to answer for several reasons.
1) We have literally no idea what players Schofield would have signed if given another £1m* on the wage bill. (* that's a guess but it can't be far off the mark.)
2) Are you talking about how we are playing NOW, or how we have played on average over the season? My guess, and it is only a guess, is that given the same squad, we wouldn't have been as bad under Schofield as we were through most of the first 29 matches this season, but we wouldn't have been as good as we have been for the last 10-12. But that's just a guess. We'll never know.
For the record, I'm delighted with how we are playing now and I certainly wouldn't want a different manager. I simply think the bile thrown on Schofield's head by people in here is grossly unfair and doesn't take into account the shite he inherited and the lack of funds he had to improve the squad, resulting in him having to field sub-Conference starting XIs like the one at Gillingham last year. I think you can both admire what McCann has done, and also agree that McCann has had a far, far better hand dealt him than Schofield did.
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I was one of the few who was desperate for it to work under schofield but I must admit he drove me insane with his stubbornness to change formation with 3 at the back or 5 at the back whichever way you look at it.
We didn’t have the players for that and a decent manager would have changed things to suit the players at his disposal IMO
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Excerpt:
McCann has had a far, far better hand dealt him than —————— did.
Agreed, if you include any one of Wellens, McS or Schofield (and maybe even DM & Butler).
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Unfortunately Schofield and the club cutting the wage bill was two sides of the same coin. Very unlikely we could’ve attracted an experienced manager like McCann if that course of action had continued.
Sadly Schofield ended up as the fall guy for this strategy (or lack of). He didn’t help himself but the abuse he received was horrific. Harrogate away last season will forever live with me as one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had in a football ground.
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We have lots back from injuries and they are a lot fitter than previous teams, so Mcann is doing something very right!
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Excerpt:
McCann has had a far, far better hand dealt him than —————— did.
Agreed, if you include any one of Wellens, McS or Schofield (and maybe even DM & Butler).
It's fair to say that all the above managers would have benefitted from a budget similar to McCann's.
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Just imagine the mess we’d be in now had we spaffed any more money on Schofields bore fest? He was horribly out of his depth. I have no sympathy. The players were not as good as what we have now, granted, but it’s his own moronic fault to think that he could get us to play like Barcelona. If he had owt about him then he would’ve bought himself some time by playing a bit of pragmatic football and play to our abilities. He didn’t, so he shit out.
Got sacked twice in one season in the football league. Just like Dickov, I doubt he’ll ever be a number 1 again.
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Just imagine the mess we’d be in now had we spaffed any more money on Schofields bore fest? He was horribly out of his depth. I have no sympathy. The players were not as good as what we have now, granted, but it’s his own moronic fault to think that he could get us to play like Barcelona. If he had owt about him then he would’ve bought himself some time by playing a bit of pragmatic football and play to our abilities. He didn’t, so he shit out.
Got sacked twice in one season in the football league. Just like Dickov, I doubt he’ll ever be a number 1 again.
I think that is a harsh. The blame for me sits with the club over that appointment and failure of such. Have you never taken a job you weren't sure you could do but someone was going to pay you? If not then there is plenty of people in every walk of life that do it. A championship club thought he could do it, so it wasn't only Donny.
It was the poorest Rovers team I have seen in a long time and then appoint one of the most inexperienced managers to try and turn it round. That sits with the club.
When you see some of the opinions on DS from people within football he is highly though of, so maybe he was sold a dud? Maybe he was told the same lies about budget and ambition as we were? I hope Schofield learns and grows from it and does get back into management and make it for himself.
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DS will always have a good career as a coach. That's what he does best, and he has superb qualifications.
He just isn't manager material.
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I really wanted it to work under Schofield, but it was just turgid and awful and in the end I couldn’t see him turning that around. Even during the worst times this season I retained a belief (not just hope) that McCann could turn it around given time. It’s taken a couple of transfer windows and we should always have expected at least that.
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DS will always have a good career as a coach. That's what he does best, and he has superb qualifications.
He just isn't manager material.
Or at least he wasn’t at the time. He had a good reputation as a coach and was unproven as a manager.
He was a huge gamble. That was the clubs fault. Having said that DS was the most stubborn manager I have ever seen including Fergie.
For DS to stick with a formation & style that blatantly was not working and was also blatantly obvious to all and sundry that the players were not comfortable playing was foolish, if not quite insane imo. In the end he lost the dressing room. The players had totally lost any confidence and self belief. His after match interviews were also awful.
His downfall I am afraid was self inflicted. He never gave himself a chance of being remotely successful through his stubbornness to not change.
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DS will always have a good career as a coach. That's what he does best, and he has superb qualifications.
He just isn't manager material.
Or at least he wasn’t at the time. He had a good reputation as a coach and was unproven as a manager.
He was a huge gamble. That was the clubs fault. Having said that DS was the most stubborn manager I have ever seen including Fergie.
For DS to stick with a formation & style that blatantly was not working and was also blatantly obvious to all and sundry that the players were not comfortable playing was foolish, if not quite insane imo. In the end he lost the dressing room. The players had totally lost any confidence and self belief. His after match interviews were also awful.
His downfall I am afraid was self inflicted. He never gave himself a chance of being remotely successful through his stubbornness to not change.
It only becomes stubborn when it doesn't work, if it had worked it would be strength of mind and trusting the system etc. The old fergie was "one game from the sack" story and look what happened there.
It had been (hopefully) the lowest point, it was an awful time for the club and awful to watch. All I am saying is I personally don't lay blame wholly on DS shoulders.
TB saw the errors, hence taking Chairman role and full control, giving additional funding, bringing in GM and backing him.
It wasn't Schofields fault.
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Look at the players Schofield had available for that match.
McCann AND a hell of a lot of money have given us a team we can be proud of.
Why are we rehashing this whole "Schofield is much better than everyone thought" argument again?!
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Look at the players Schofield had available for that match.
McCann AND a hell of a lot of money have given us a team we can be proud of.
Why are we rehashing this whole "Schofield is much better than everyone thought" argument again?!
Because someone raised the "Schofield was much worse than he was" line. Again.
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I wish him all the best. Living a good life in Australia with a cushty number as a second in command.
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I don’t think the ‘Schofield didn’t have the money that McCann had’ argument is relevant. The real investment came in January, not when McCann first came back. There isn’t a chance he would have been given that investment if the board didn’t believe in him. If Schofield had given the board the same belief, then he would have been backed too.
McCann wasn’t just simply given a better hand.
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Comparison of respective wage budgets against league position is largely irrelevant in this discussion.
Schofield was sacked because ST renewals were poor; because fans were bored out of their skulls with his tedious, defensive tactics. Which he employed even before injuries struck.
McCann, even when we were 22nd in the table at the end of January, has not been under pressure to be sacked from the stands. He sets his team out to attack and win matches. That's the underlying difference.
Yes fans want to see Rovers win if possible but at the very least we want to see the team having a go and trying to entertain. We didn't even get that under Schofield.
The way Schofield set the team up to play was ridiculous, naive, and totally unempathetic to the supporters. If he hadn't have gone there is no way the wage budget would be as high this season as ticket sales would have crashed.
Surely one of the easiest sacking decisions in the history of DRFC.
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I don’t think the ‘Schofield didn’t have the money that McCann had’ argument is relevant. The real investment came in January, not when McCann first came back. There isn’t a chance he would have been given that investment if the board didn’t believe in him. If Schofield had given the board the same belief, then he would have been backed too.
McCann wasn’t just simply given a better hand.
McCann signed 12 new players before the end of August, while keeping all the decent ones (and having to keep some not very decent ones) from the previous season.
You reckon that wasn't a very big mark up on the previous season's wage bill?
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Comparison of respective wage budgets against league position is largely irrelevant in this discussion.
Schofield was sacked because ST renewals were poor; because fans were bored out of their skulls with his tedious, defensive tactics. Which he employed even before injuries struck.
McCann, even when we were 22nd in the table at the end of January, has not been under pressure to be sacked from the stands. He sets his team out to attack and win matches. That's the underlying difference.
Yes fans want to see Rovers win if possible but at the very least we want to see the team having a go and trying to entertain. We didn't even get that under Schofield.
The way Schofield set the team up to play was ridiculous, naive, and totally unempathetic to the supporters. If he hadn't have gone there is no way the wage budget would be as high this season as ticket sales would have crashed.
Surely one of the easiest sacking decisions in the history of DRFC.
Aye.
I remember thinking "Well at least it wasn't boring today like under Schofield" as I left after 30 minutes against Stockport this season.
Just weird how some people's logic works.
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We seem to forget that Schofield "failed" with probably a lesser budget than McCann had in League Two. Despite McCann's better budget, results were poor until he was given a further budget increase in January, which turned the team's fortunes around.
I wonder if the supporter's general backing of McCann contributed to the board's contentment with him, and had he received similar supporter's condemnation as his predecessors he'd have suffered the same fate as them.
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Comparison of respective wage budgets against league position is largely irrelevant in this discussion.
Schofield was sacked because ST renewals were poor; because fans were bored out of their skulls with his tedious, defensive tactics. Which he employed even before injuries struck.
McCann, even when we were 22nd in the table at the end of January, has not been under pressure to be sacked from the stands. He sets his team out to attack and win matches. That's the underlying difference.
Yes fans want to see Rovers win if possible but at the very least we want to see the team having a go and trying to entertain. We didn't even get that under Schofield.
The way Schofield set the team up to play was ridiculous, naive, and totally unempathetic to the supporters. If he hadn't have gone there is no way the wage budget would be as high this season as ticket sales would have crashed.
Surely one of the easiest sacking decisions in the history of DRFC.
Aye.
I remember thinking "Well at least it wasn't boring today like under Schofield" as I left after 30 minutes against Stockport this season.
Just weird how some people's logic works.
You're the one in almost splendid isolation in your defence of Danny Schofield - just as you were this time last year.
Which kind of suggest you're the one with the weird (i.e. very strange and unusual) opinion on this.
On the topic of splendid isolation - that's what you'd be very likely to be in at the Eco-Power tomorrow evening if he was still at the club.
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Football is about players. A bad manager can get a tune out of good players but a good manager can’t get a tune out of bad players.
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Who leaves a game after 30 mins?
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I don’t think the ‘Schofield didn’t have the money that McCann had’ argument is relevant. The real investment came in January, not when McCann first came back. There isn’t a chance he would have been given that investment if the board didn’t believe in him. If Schofield had given the board the same belief, then he would have been backed too.
McCann wasn’t just simply given a better hand.
McCann signed 12 new players before the end of August, while keeping all the decent ones (and having to keep some not very decent ones) from the previous season.
You reckon that wasn't a very big mark up on the previous season's wage bill?
I’ve no idea. The contracted players would have been League One players, wouldn’t they? How many other players did we sign?
Little to do with DS, of course, as he didn’t get the gig until October. Which is all the more reason to have given him investment for the January window. They didn’t, thankfully, for a reason.
I don’t know if Schofield was only ever a stop gap, or that they realised quite quickly that it was a huge mistake to give him the job. Either way he was completely out of his depth in every way.
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Worth pointing out that the reason McSheffrey was sacked was because he failed to give us an identity or style of play. Schofield was specifically hired because of his reputation as a 'systems' coach to address this. We headhunted the bloke, lumbered him with Conference North level players like Jonny Mitchell and Todd Miller, then sacked him for trying to do what he was hired to do. It really does sum up the very worst of the Blunt chairmanship. That's where the blame lies, for me.
There's no way in hell any manager would set us up to play the way Schofield did except as a last resort, but the sides we were fielding were two levels below the standard required last season.
Obviously we're in a much better place now, and I think McCann is a better manager than Schofield will be head coach. But I think DS was made a fall guy for the absolute shitshow taking place above him. And that shitshow was so bad, it took us 75% of this season to really recover from it, even with McCann in place and a massive boost to investment in players and coaching staff.
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Football is about players. A bad manager can get a tune out of good players but a good manager can’t get a tune out of bad players.
But a good manager can get a tune out of players that a bad manager can’t
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Football is about players. A bad manager can get a tune out of good players but a good manager can’t get a tune out of bad players.
But a good manager can get a tune out of players that a bad manager can’t
I agree and to extend the proposition you utilise what strengths your good (or bad) players possess. If it is highly technical (to give Schofield the benefit of the doubt) you have to recognise that your players aren’t up to it and play another way. He didn’t.
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Football is about players. A bad manager can get a tune out of good players but a good manager can’t get a tune out of bad players.
But a good manager can get a tune out of players that a bad manager can’t
But remember. This season, up till 9 weeks ago, we DIDN'T get a tune out of a squad that was far better than the one Schofield had to choose from.
We got 29 points from 29 matches. 3rd worst in the division and including some of the worst defeats in our history.
I'm not pointing the finger at McCann because you have to look at the bigger picture. And the big picture shows that he's finally, with a lot of financial support, got us playing excellent football.
I am just amazed that so many people are so quick to stick the boot into Schofield, when he achieved better results than that with a far worse squad and little opportunity to improve it. Maybe it's just me, but I try not to make such bold judgements when the facts don't support them.
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I defended Schofield all last season probably more so than you Billy. But McCann is a proven experienced manager, and the styles of play are drastically different. For those 29 games this season our injury list and starting 11 wasn’t much better than last year. But even then we had games where we looked very good and you could see there was hope of it all clicking together, to be honest there wasn’t that indication last season
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Comparison of respective wage budgets against league position is largely irrelevant in this discussion.
Schofield was sacked because ST renewals were poor; because fans were bored out of their skulls with his tedious, defensive tactics. Which he employed even before injuries struck.
McCann, even when we were 22nd in the table at the end of January, has not been under pressure to be sacked from the stands. He sets his team out to attack and win matches. That's the underlying difference.
Yes fans want to see Rovers win if possible but at the very least we want to see the team having a go and trying to entertain. We didn't even get that under Schofield.
The way Schofield set the team up to play was ridiculous, naive, and totally unempathetic to the supporters. If he hadn't have gone there is no way the wage budget would be as high this season as ticket sales would have crashed.
Surely one of the easiest sacking decisions in the history of DRFC.
Exactly this, for me.
Well put, great post.
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We seem to forget that Schofield "failed" with probably a lesser budget than McCann had in League Two. Despite McCann's better budget, results were poor until he was given a further budget increase in January, which turned the team's fortunes around.
I wonder if the supporter's general backing of McCann contributed to the board's contentment with him, and had he received similar supporter's condemnation as his predecessors he'd have suffered the same fate as them.
BB It took GM longer than expected to turn a losing mentality into a winning one.
When a team is constantly losing football matches for 2 full seasons it’s a not easy to turn that round instantly.
The new players in January have made a massive difference but the ones that were already here before January are showing that they are also very good players.
Ability is a must but it’s not much good without confidence & belief.
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CS, when a car still breaks down after the same part has been constantly replaced it is time to consider it is the wrong part being replaced. In Rovers' case, it was Lucky for Grant McCann that the board finally decided it was the right time to go down that route and look elsewhere for the cause of the problem.
I wonder if the supporters general backing of McCann contributed to them making that decision.
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Team improves after money is spent shocker. Obviously you have real extremes (great and useless) and Schofield to McCann may be one of those cases, but managers done impact a clubs success as much as people think. Thats a fact. There are far more important contributing factors.
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Such as?
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Such as?
Players…
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For those 29 games this season our injury list and starting 11 wasn’t much better than last year.
I know I should let this go, but I can't let absolute nonsense like this go without commenting.
Under Schofield last year, these were some of the appearances
Seaman 17
Barlow 15
Agard 14
Long 13
Lavery 12
Faulkner 11
Todd Miller 11
Ravenhill 8
How many appearances would that lot have made this year?
Faulkner has played literally 10 minutes. None of the others would have made it into ANY side we've put out this season.
The starting XI against Gillingham last year that the OP referred to was:
Mitchell
Seaman Faulkner Long Nelson Rowe
Barlow Close Westbrooke Molyneux
Goodman
Subs
Bottomley
Todd Miller
Degruchy
Agard
Hurst
Brown
Ravenhill.
Find me a side we've put out this season that is remotely as weak as that one in so many positions.
Why are people so determined not to look dispassionately at the facts on this issue?
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I defended Schofield all last season probably more so than you Billy. But McCann is a proven experienced manager, and the styles of play are drastically different. For those 29 games this season our injury list and starting 11 wasn’t much better than last year. But even then we had games where we looked very good and you could see there was hope of it all clicking together, to be honest there wasn’t that indication last season
Completely agree with this. Under Schofield we were awful to watch, games were boring but early this season when McCann was struggling to get results there were positive signs and the football was more enjoyable.
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Comparison of respective wage budgets against league position is largely irrelevant in this discussion.
Schofield was sacked because ST renewals were poor; because fans were bored out of their skulls with his tedious, defensive tactics. Which he employed even before injuries struck.
McCann, even when we were 22nd in the table at the end of January, has not been under pressure to be sacked from the stands. He sets his team out to attack and win matches. That's the underlying difference.
Yes fans want to see Rovers win if possible but at the very least we want to see the team having a go and trying to entertain. We didn't even get that under Schofield.
The way Schofield set the team up to play was ridiculous, naive, and totally unempathetic to the supporters. If he hadn't have gone there is no way the wage budget would be as high this season as ticket sales would have crashed.
Surely one of the easiest sacking decisions in the history of DRFC.
Perfectly put!
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I think a large factor is time as well. It was unlikely McCann (or any manager) was going to come in and wave a magic wand, even with better players. We were down there with the worst sides in the EFL last year. Look where Rochdale and Hartlepool are now (11th & 12th in the NL), we were nigh-on as bad as them. That's not an overnight job to turn around.
The same, of course, applies to Schofield, as we were already pretty shit when he came in. He didn't have a magic wand to wave either. We'll never know if he would've performed better with this season's budget given time, but what we do know is that the path we were going down was a disaster, and it's a relief that the club have course-corrected. Unproven HoF, unproven Head Coach, and a bottom-half L2 budget was just a recipe for massive underperformance.
It's taken McCann a while, but I've very much been of the mind all season that things had to pick up eventually, because you look at what he's done in the game and his experience, and the probability was that he'd figure out a way to improve things. With Schofield, the probabilities were far more unsure because you couldn't look at a body of work he had as a manager/HC and say with confidence he would deliver. I think I and others will feel vindicated in that belief in GM if we can carry through the current form into next season and mount a challenge.
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Team improves after money is spent shocker. Obviously you have real extremes (great and useless) and Schofield to McCann may be one of those cases, but managers done impact a clubs success as much as people think. Thats a fact. There are far more important contributing factors.
Tosh.
Man Utd have a greater commercial income than Liverpool, even today.
Swap Eric ten Hag for Jurgen Klopp & Man Utd would have a couple more Premiership titles under their belt & quite possibly a Champions League Title.
Liverpool under Hag would be struggling as Man Utd are (for the size of the club) now.
Managers influence team/club’s performances….fact.
Staying with Premiership managers I give you…
Aston Villa under Emery
Brighton under Potter & De Zerbi
Newcastle & Bournemouth under Howe
All improved (are improving) the clubs who employed them.
A good manager (unless you’re given the poison chalice that are Chelsea & Spurs) makes a significant difference to a teams (players) performances.
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Such as?
Players…
That's one but you said factorS or are you counting playerS as multiple?
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While we’re on it with the pointless arguments, I think we’d have finished higher in the league than we did last season if we’d have just stuck with McSheffrey.
We’ve gone with McCann and he’s had good backing from the owners but we need to be careful how we label “lots of money” in the context of our direct competitors. Even with the extra backing, we can’t be expected to compete with what some of the biggest spenders in this division are paying out. It’s taken more than one transfer window to fix us and there’s still work to do in the transfer market. But we are now showing signs of turning the curve and we should forget about arguing over what’s gone before and just focus positively on what we get from watching this team both now and moving forward.
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I think a large factor is time as well. It was unlikely McCann (or any manager) was going to come in and wave a magic wand, even with better players. We were down there with the worst sides in the EFL last year. Look where Rochdale and Hartlepool are now (11th & 12th in the NL), we were nigh-on as bad as them. That's not an overnight job to turn around.
The same, of course, applies to Schofield, as we were already pretty shit when he came in. He didn't have a magic wand to wave either. We'll never know if he would've performed better with this season's budget given time, but what we do know is that the path we were going down was a disaster, and it's a relief that the club have course-corrected. Unproven HoF, unproven Head Coach, and a bottom-half L2 budget was just a recipe for massive underperformance.
It's taken McCann a while, but I've very much been of the mind all season that things had to pick up eventually, because you look at what he's done in the game and his experience, and the probability was that he'd figure out a way to improve things. With Schofield, the probabilities were far more unsure because you couldn't look at a body of work he had as a manager/HC and say with confidence he would deliver. I think I and others will feel vindicated in that belief in GM if we can carry through the current form into next season and mount a challenge.
Point here. We WERE playing shite when Schofield took over. We'd picked up 8 points in the previous 9 games
In his first 15 games, we picked up 24 points. Playoff form. There was an immediate improvement in both performances and results. Yet still we have a stream of people in here insisting that he was absolutely out of his depth and never ever got a side performing. I really, really don't understand it.
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Team improves after money is spent shocker. Obviously you have real extremes (great and useless) and Schofield to McCann may be one of those cases, but managers done impact a clubs success as much as people think. Thats a fact. There are far more important contributing factors.
Tosh.
Man Utd have a greater commercial income than Liverpool, even today.
Swap Eric ten Hag for Jurgen Klopp & Man Utd would have a couple more Premiership titles under their belt & quite possibly a Champions League Title.
Liverpool under Hag would be struggling as Man Utd are (for the size of the club) now.
Managers influence team/club’s performances….fact.
Staying with Premiership managers I give you…
Aston Villa under Emery
Brighton under Potter & De Zerbi
Newcastle & Bournemouth under Howe
All improved (are improving) the clubs who employed them.
A good manager (unless you’re given the poison chalice that are Chelsea & Spurs) makes a significant difference to a teams (players) performances.
It’s not tosh. Whatever you may think.
Liverpool are where they are because they have a good manager but more importantly they have one of the best (data led) recruitment structures in the world. Same for Brighton.
Conversely United aren’t under achieving because of EtH. He’s a great coach. They just consistently spend their money horribly.
Eddie Howe??? Newcastle have spent fortunes, that’s why they have (marginally) improved. They finished 12th under Bruce/Ashley pretty consistently. They currently sit 8th.
However many points you think a good manager is worth over a season it’s less. Ask any top sporting director. It’s just an absolute fact. Of course you can find examples of cases where a certain manager improved situations and other managers made things worse but you have to look at these things as a whole, not just hunt for certain spots that may back up your ultimately wrong opinion.
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While we’re on it with the pointless arguments, I think we’d have finished higher in the league than we did last season if we’d have just stuck with McSheffrey.
We’ve gone with McCann and he’s had good backing from the owners but we need to be careful how we label “lots of money” in the context of our direct competitors. Even with the extra backing, we can’t be expected to compete with what some of the biggest spenders in this division are paying out. It’s taken more than one transfer window to fix us and there’s still work to do in the transfer market. But we are now showing signs of turning the curve and we should forget about arguing over what’s gone before and just focus positively on what we get from watching this team both now and moving forward.
Serious question. Do you think any manager, from Klopp downwards, would have got a tune out of the squad that we were reduced to by this time last year?
That squad for the Gillingham game had 8-10 players who, if we're going to be brutally honest wouldn't get in a middling Conference side. Why should we have expected any better than desperately dull attempts to limit the damage on the pitch?
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Team improves after money is spent shocker. Obviously you have real extremes (great and useless) and Schofield to McCann may be one of those cases, but managers done impact a clubs success as much as people think. Thats a fact. There are far more important contributing factors.
Tosh.
Man Utd have a greater commercial income than Liverpool, even today.
Swap Eric ten Hag for Jurgen Klopp & Man Utd would have a couple more Premiership titles under their belt & quite possibly a Champions League Title.
Liverpool under Hag would be struggling as Man Utd are (for the size of the club) now.
Managers influence team/club’s performances….fact.
Staying with Premiership managers I give you…
Aston Villa under Emery
Brighton under Potter & De Zerbi
Newcastle & Bournemouth under Howe
All improved (are improving) the clubs who employed them.
A good manager (unless you’re given the poison chalice that are Chelsea & Spurs) makes a significant difference to a teams (players) performances.
It’s not tosh. Whatever you may think.
Liverpool are where they are because they have a good manager but more importantly they have one of the best (data led) recruitment structures in the world. Same for Brighton.
Conversely United aren’t under achieving because of EtH. He’s a great coach. They just consistently spend their money horribly.
Eddie Howe??? Newcastle have spent fortunes, that’s why they have (marginally) improved. They finished 12th under Bruce/Ashley pretty consistently. They currently sit 8th.
However many points you think a good manager is worth over a season it’s less. Ask any top sporting director. It’s just an absolute fact. Of course you can find examples of cases where a certain manager improved situations and other managers made things worse but you have to look at these things as a whole, not just hunt for certain spots that may back up your ultimately wrong opinion.
In your opinion.
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It’s not my opinion. It’s proven. Maybe worth you digesting information from more varied sources. May broaden your understanding of football.
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It’s not my opinion. It’s proven. Maybe worth you digesting information from more varied sources. May broaden your understanding of football.
Oh how I laughed.
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For those 29 games this season our injury list and starting 11 wasn’t much better than last year.
I know I should let this go, but I can't let absolute nonsense like this go without commenting.
Under Schofield last year, these were some of the appearances
Seaman 17
Barlow 15
Agard 14
Long 13
Lavery 12
Faulkner 11
Todd Miller 11
Ravenhill 8
How many appearances would that lot have made this year?
Faulkner has played literally 10 minutes. None of the others would have made it into ANY side we've put out this season.
The starting XI against Gillingham last year that the OP referred to was:
Mitchell
Seaman Faulkner Long Nelson Rowe
Barlow Close Westbrooke Molyneux
Goodman
Subs
Bottomley
Todd Miller
Degruchy
Agard
Hurst
Brown
Ravenhill.
Find me a side we've put out this season that is remotely as weak as that one in so many positions.
Why are people so determined not to look dispassionately at the facts on this issue?
Ha ha
Give over
Miller maybe started one game, two tops.
We’ve had plenty of games this season where we’ve played lots of inexperienced players since as Nixon, mcgrath, the two young loan strikers, craig,
These are players that wouldn’t have been any more expensive than some of the players we signed last season.
McCann just spent that money better
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Go on then Dickos. Since you've chosen yet another stupid hill to die on. Find me a squad this season remotely as bad as that one at Gillingham last year.
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It's more than about just one game though. I mentioned Gillingham because the difference in feeling for me from that game to looking forward to the same one coming up crystalised things for me. Football is more than simply stats and wages. It is about how coming away from a game or the lead up to a game make you feel. Plenty of our managers have been potless, but the football they served up (Richardson era aside) never made me feel how football under Schofield did. Looking at the players that were the same under Schofield and Mccann, I would argue that the vast majority of them have played better under Mccann. Schofield seems a nice bloke, but I felt and still feel that he got less from the sum of the players at his disposal than he ought to. That is not about money, that is about a mixture tactics, flexability, ability,experience and nous. Anyway, I wish him well in the future.
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Most football fans don't make their judgements on pure facts. It's a game based on emotion and feeling at a supporter/fan level. Fair play to those that can rise above that and only see facts, but I doubt that is a majority of people.
Last season, for the most part, the feeling around the club was not a good one. Bitterness about our relegation, perceived/real failures at board level, too many players that weren't good enough, for the most part turgid football.
This season started with optimism, and is ending with optimism and excitement. Rightly or wrongly (I'd of course say rightly) most people's feelings towards the manager's abilities and the signings we brought in were largely positive throughout. There has been frustration and negativity at times, but for whatever reason, supporters' emotions didn't fully tip over like last season into anger and calling for the manager to go. In that sense, this season has been completely different and I think that's probably what governs people's feelings on the subject of "how far we have come".
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While we’re on it with the pointless arguments, I think we’d have finished higher in the league than we did last season if we’d have just stuck with McSheffrey.
We’ve gone with McCann and he’s had good backing from the owners but we need to be careful how we label “lots of money” in the context of our direct competitors. Even with the extra backing, we can’t be expected to compete with what some of the biggest spenders in this division are paying out. It’s taken more than one transfer window to fix us and there’s still work to do in the transfer market. But we are now showing signs of turning the curve and we should forget about arguing over what’s gone before and just focus positively on what we get from watching this team both now and moving forward.
Serious question. Do you think any manager, from Klopp downwards, would have got a tune out of the squad that we were reduced to by this time last year?
That squad for the Gillingham game had 8-10 players who, if we're going to be brutally honest wouldn't get in a middling Conference side. Why should we have expected any better than desperately dull attempts to limit the damage on the pitch?
As someone that supported and defended both McSheffrey and Schofield while they were in charge I don’t mind getting involved on this one, hence my genuine view we’d have done better sticking with McSheffrey. I liked Schofield as an individual and don’t think he’s as hopeless as some made out, but after a promising start I really didn’t enjoy watching his football. In answer to your question, no, I don’t think anyone could have got consistently good results with those players and I don’t solely blame Schofield for how poor we were. But, of the two managers last season, I preferred watching the way McSheffrey got us pulling together and managing games (notwithstanding our flaws) to the way Schofield got us strangling the life out of them. I hope both go on to have good careers in the game as they are both likeable guys that took the job here at the wrong time for them. We were awful, no disputing that.
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It's more than about just one game though. I mentioned Gillingham because the difference in feeling for me from that game to looking forward to the same one coming up crystalised things for me. Football is more than simply stats and wages. It is about how coming away from a game or the lead up to a game make you feel. Plenty of our managers have been potless, but the football they served up (Richardson era aside) never made me feel how football under Schofield did. Looking at the players that were the same under Schofield and Mccann, I would argue that the vast majority of them have played better under Mccann. Schofield seems a nice bloke, but I felt and still feel that he got less from the sum of the players at his disposal than he ought to. That is not about money, that is about a mixture tactics, flexability, ability,experience and nous. Anyway, I wish him well in the future.
This.
All the analysis and debate about who had the better players/more money is irrelevant.
The feeling of hopelessness under Schofield’s tenure was truly awful.
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You have to be practical, if you don’t have the players to play attractive football and don’t have the funding to bring those type of players in, you find a system and style that suits what you have. Football is about results first and foremost.
You can afford to play in a style that you want to, when you get your squad in to replace poor players. He needed results, he didn’t get them. Whatever a chairman tells you about having time to build a way of playing. If the results aren’t there, they don’t keep their promises as the pressure gets heaped on the board.