Viking Supporters Co-operative
Viking Chat => Viking Chat => Topic started by: Copps is Magic on June 08, 2018, 01:46:10 pm
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
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Can't disagree with that, although I would add our caretakers higher than Dickov..
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Yep. Arguably Jones should be on the list, he certainly made a big contribution to the 2nd promotion to the championship. In terms of Mickey Walker, my memory's' failing me on how many games he was in charge and whether he did owt significant?
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a decent win at Port Vale wasn't it?
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Yep. Arguably Jones should be on the list, he certainly made a big contribution to the 2nd promotion to the championship. In terms of Mickey Walker, my memory's' failing me on how many games he was in charge and whether he did owt significant?
I want to say 2 matches for MW?
One win away at Port Vale on TV and one defeat at home, against Gillingham maybe?
As for that list, I’d agree with most although even though he split opinion, I’d put Saunders higher if only for the team he put together for the title winning season!
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Flynn above Saunders? We were worse under Flynn with a better team (midfield).
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SO'D
Penney
Saunders
Flynn
Ferguson
Dickov
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
How do you rank Flynn above Saunders?
He inherited a side that had title-winning form (in terms of points per game) and turned out a set of results that were mid-play-off form. Barring an outrageous stroke of good luck, he would have lost not only the title but also promotion.
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It's all about opinions isn't it. Flynn helped galvanise us for that great away run and certainly for a few late wins at the death that made a big difference. I would if I was making the list perhaps put Flynn and Jones together though as it was a joint effort. Those two also don't have a Rovers relegation on their CV like Saunders does.
But yeah I agree with CiM's ranking.
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
How do you rank Flynn above Saunders?
He inherited a side that had title-winning form (in terms of points per game) and turned out a set of results that were mid-play-off form. Barring an outrageous stroke of good luck, he would have lost not only the title but also promotion.
We got relegated under Saunders remember. Flynn has a clean record.
I don't attribute a great deal to Saunders. As you've quoted a number of times, we had a very healthy budget that year, and I think the players probably could have managed themselves given the strength of characters in the dressing room.
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If Flynn was better why when we got Lundstram, Furman and Coppinger did we get worse PPG than under Saunders? Surely with the better players and a better manager we'd have a better record?
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
Will go along with that but it’s not straightforward to judge really.
Squad size, funding available, quality of players with said funding.
The use of players, the level at which the managers team played in. All managed DRFC in league 1 sometime at the club. Sometime mange when the club was on the up, some managed when the club had plateaued and going down.
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SO'D
Penney
Saunders
Flynn
Ferguson
Dickov
for me. Although that list doesn't accurately display the massive gulf between Dickov and the rest of them. Christ but he was a shit manager.
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
How do you rank Flynn above Saunders?
He inherited a side that had title-winning form (in terms of points per game) and turned out a set of results that were mid-play-off form. Barring an outrageous stroke of good luck, he would have lost not only the title but also promotion.
We got relegated under Saunders remember. Flynn has a clean record.
I don't attribute a great deal to Saunders. As you've quoted a number of times, we had a very healthy budget that year, and I think the players probably could have managed themselves given the strength of characters in the dressing room.
Agreed that we got relegated under Saunders, but I doubt that the bas**rd love child of Brian Clough and Don Revie would have kept us up that season.
My point was that with pretty much precisely the same squad, Flynn's record was significantly worse than Saunders's in L1. That's the only direct like-for-like comparison that we really have between the two of them.
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On this, something that does become apparent is that we should be a club that managers actively look at when the job comes up.
The fact we've only had 6 permanent managers in 15/16 years is staggering in this day and age.
Surely managers would look at it as a chance to show their worth at a club who don't sack managers left, right and centre.
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
Yes your correct there all RANK
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Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Dean Saunders
Brian Flynn
Paul Dickov
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Sean O Driscoll
Dave Penney
Brian Flynn
Darren Ferguson
Paul Dickov
That Welsh bloke with the dodgy eyebrows
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For me it's SO'D followed by Penney with the rest nowhere. Rob Jones was mainly responsible for the 2012-13 promotion, though as captain and a leader in the dressing room rather than as a manager.
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SOD
Penney
Saunders
Flynn
Sick of
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
Yes your correct there all RANK
I assume you mean rank bad.
There is a theme with your posts, I had a quick glance back and according to you, McCall isn’t good enough, Houghton is shit, Whiteman not good enough, Northern Ireland are shite.
You are one angry young man.
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On this, something that does become apparent is that we should be a club that managers actively look at when the job comes up.
The fact we've only had 6 permanent managers in 15/16 years is staggering in this day and age.
Surely managers would look at it as a chance to show their worth at a club who don't sack managers left, right and centre.
I remember as a kid reading in a football magazine in 1978 that we’d had more managerssince the war than any other English club. 23 I think it was in 43 years.
We had excellent stability with Penney and O’Driscoll - 2 managers in 11 years. But since then we’ve reverted to type - the new man will be the 5th manager in less than 7 years.
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Post-conference permenant mangers. For me.
Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn
Dean Saunders
Paul Dickov
How on earth is Ferguson ranked higher than the two men responsible for our League One title win?
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Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Dean Saunders
Brian Flynn
Paul Dickov
Not quite a big enough gap to Dickov there for me!
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Funny how history gets written.
If the ref had done his job and blown for a foul at the Reebok in the last 20 seconds of 2013/14 season, Dickov would have been a hero. If Brentford had had a mester in the side in the last 20 seconds of 2012/13 to tell a jumped up little prick to get back in his box, Flynn would have been a catastrophe.
Fine margins.
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Aye. It's amazing that Dickov came within a gnat's chuff of keeping us in the Championship.
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Aye. It's amazing that Dickov came within a gnat's chuff of keeping us in the Championship.
Yep, what might have been if Mahrez hadn’t dived into the box eh.
Likewise, if Wellens hadn’t got crocked in that win at Leeds.
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Or if Dickov had just parked the bus in one of the final seven games rather than insist on going for the win in every match...
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Or if Dickov wasn't w*nk.
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Or if Dickov had just parked the bus in one of the final seven games rather than insist on going for the win in every match...
Hindsight eh mate.
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Or if Dickov wasn't w*nk.
Well, it was kind of implied that if he wasn't a w**k manager he would've had the nous to have picked up the one point necessary to survive...
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Well, it was kind of implied that if he wasn't a w**k manager he would've had the nous to have picked up the one point necessary to survive...
That could be applied to our recent manager and we would have won L2, going on similar logic.
All ifs and buts mate.
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That was in response to pib, again I'd not seen there was a second page before posting. :laugh:
edited now
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Well, it was kind of implied that if he wasn't a w**k manager he would've had the nous to have picked up the one point necessary to survive...
I know mate - was more of a response to some of the defendants of him before, just nicked your wording.
Some of the performances under Dickov were utterly embarrassing. Whether he came close to surviving in the Championship or not, he was utterly useless. The fact that an equally calamitous manager in Lee Clark kept his team up instead, thanks to the goals of a player that Dickov shipped out, is probably a decent enough summary.
His signings were shocking as well and played a big part in us ending up in League Two.
FWIW, Brian Flynn wasn't great either. I certainly wouldn't regard him as the "hero" of our promotion. I think we went up in spite of him rather than because of him, and it'd probably have been sewn up long before Brentford away if he hadn't been put in charge.
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Lee Clark. Christ, there's a fraud!
Weird thing is, Dickov brought in some decent players in the Championship with the likes of Lucas Neill, Federico Macheda etc, but had no idea what he was doing. Shame really.
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For me it's SO'D followed by Penney with the rest nowhere. Rob Jones was mainly responsible for the 2012-13 promotion, though as captain and a leader in the dressing room rather than as a manager.
Spot on for me....
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On this, something that does become apparent is that we should be a club that managers actively look at when the job comes up.
The fact we've only had 6 permanent managers in 15/16 years is staggering in this day and age.
Surely managers would look at it as a chance to show their worth at a club who don't sack managers left, right and centre.
I remember as a kid reading in a football magazine in 1978 that we’d had more managerssince the war than any other English club. 23 I think it was in 43 years.
We had excellent stability with Penney and O’Driscoll - 2 managers in 11 years. But since then we’ve reverted to type - the new man will be the 5th manager in less than 7 years.
The problem with modern football is that 5 in 7 years is still reasonably good!
Keeping in mind that Saunders was poached, Flynn was never going to be long term and Fergie walked, we’ve only sacked one of those in Dickov. Yeah you could say we sacked Flynn but we just didn’t extend his contract.
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We did extend Flynn's contract though. He was just given a different role at the club, he became director of football or something like that.
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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.
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SOD and actually not too far behind is Penney. Really liked those years.
Dickov. There is no way of avoiding that the DREADFUL football aside, he almost did the impossible and kept us up in the Championship, with likely the smallest budget that season and without himself having managed a single minute at that level previously. Strangely he was worse in League One than the much tougher Championship.
Very odd. Also very bad. Mainly bad.
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Sean O'Driscoll
Dave Penney
Darren Ferguson
Brian Flynn & Dean Saunders
These four/five are a cut above Dickov because when they took us over to when they left they've all improved us as a team and/or as a football club. SOD and Penney obvious reasons. Flynn and Saunders, I've added them together because it was 90% the same team, Saunders was left between a rock and a hard place in the Championship with the experiment but managed to build a squad to challenge for League One and get us on the right tracks which Flynn finished off. Fergie, obviously what's been mentioned of the work he's done behind the scenes and despite the relegation we do have a better squad now than when he started, the age of the team has been massively reduced and we have a fair few sellable assets.
Paul Dickov -
The only manager to take us back recently. Took over a team that did need some TLC to do well in the Championship but signed some quality players to do that in Duffy, Turnbull, Khumalo, Meite, Wellens, Forrester, Sharp, Macheda and Tamas and we got relegated. He them signed a load of OAP mercenaries and turned us into a bottom half League One team.
He somehow turned Sharp into a bad striker aswell.
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Or if Dickov had just parked the bus in one of the final seven games rather than insist on going for the win in every match...
Hindsight eh mate.
Not really. Some of us were saying it at the time. Taking off Keegan and putting on a crocked Wellens in the last 20 mins of the final home game against Reading, and chucking away a point (with the goal that put Reading in front coming from a run past a totally immobile Wellens) was f**king stupid.
That point would have kept us up. And like I say, some of us were pointing that out at the time. Sometimes in football you play percentage. You don’t always go balls out. Or if you do, you most likely get your balls badly hurt.
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You can blame Dickov all you like but the officials sent us down that season. We were cheated throughout the campaign, right through to the last game when Leicester were awarded a penalty following Husband's outside of the area tackle.
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I don’t normally go for the “blame the officials” game. I reckon bad decisions even out in the long run and officials are generally honest but fallible. But there’s no question that we got some shockers that season. The penalty at Watford that was a foot outside the box. The roundhouse kick on our player (forget who it was) in the box at QPR which was the most stonewall penalty there has been since the f**king game began - except it was turned down. The two-footed assault on our player that led to Ipswich’s late winner at Portman Road which the red walked away from.
The most telling moment for me. The one that demonstrated clearly a ref who had preconceived ideas. Home game vs QPR. We went one down in the first half. Charlie Austin spent an eternity bating the home fans and it must have been 90 seconds between the goal and us kicking off. Ref said not a word.
We equalised in the second half. Rovers players celebrated at the South Stand end. Ref went straight in telling them to get back to the half way line. At 1-1, we were battering QPR. Their keeper was taking an age over every goal kick. Not a word said to him. Our keeper ONCE took the ball from one side of the goal to the other to take a goal kick and the ref booked him for time wasting.
It was so obvious. The ref has decided that QPR would be going for the win and we’d be hanging on. He’d decided that we would be the time wasters, not QPR. And he totally ignored the evidence in front of him and made pre-conceived decisions.
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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.
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Dickov never should've been manager here but I'll tell you what, he always came across like a nice bloke.
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Dickov never should've been manager here but I'll tell you what, he always came across like a nice bloke.
Wasn't he a nice bloke?
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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.
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......And we very nearly did, until that f**king 'penalty' award at Leicester.
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Dickov never should've been manager here but I'll tell you what, he always came across like a nice bloke.
Wasn't he a nice bloke?
You've got me Bentley. I realised my wording error after posting but couldn't be bothered to correct it!
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We were 3rd when Saunders left and finished winning the title.
Average points per game under Saunders that year was 1.88 after he left the average points per game was 1.76.
Over a season that’s a difference of 5 points.
Flynn improved our home Home dramatically if I recall correctly but our away from dropped off
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I never did understand what folk were talking about that season by “playing to Sharp’s strengths”. Sharp was f**king awful in late 2013/14 and was a big part of the reason we went down. He was moody and petulant. He stupidly got himself sent off at Brighton and left us very short of cover over the next three games (which were not the hardest of the season, but from which we picked up only 1 point). He offered next to nothing in the run-in games and should have been dropped long before he finally was for the last game of the season.
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CBCB. I know. But it’s a weakness of mine to check facts before giving an opinion. I know it’ll never catch on.
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He was not fit when he arrived. Sharp being Sharp he pushed hard on accelerator when engine was f**ked and as a result made himself worse. Never quite looked himself but we could not take risk of dropping him.
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I don’t remember hearing anything about him not being fit. He looked well enough in the first few game but his form and his attitude were shocking by late March.
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Billy, thank god you are back, and did not stay in outer Mongolia when you took yourself off into the wilderness.
Stats are facts, points per game are a good indication over a period of time how good a manager was over that period.
The teams they play over that period, the form they are in, and what conditions, (poor weather heavy grounds) home and away matches are not generally taken into consideration, are the teams in that period fighting for promotion or against impending relegation, and can make a big difference.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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I'm talking about his second loan spell with us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Macheda
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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
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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.
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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.
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I love the quote attributed to both Niels Bohr and Storm Pedersen - ‘Predictions are very difficult, especially for the future’
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Looks like predictions about the past aren’t much easier for some.
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Nobody suggested Flynn turned our season around but to suggest he did a bad job when we won the title is baffling
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Isn’t it odd that when we get relegated it is the managers fault, but when we win the league, it isn’t.
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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.
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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.
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S o d
Saunders
Penney
Ferguson
Flynn
Dickov
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Sod
Penney
Ferguson
Saunders
Flynn
Dickov
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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
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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.
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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.
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Hat trick against Scunny as well. What a bloke.
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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.