An indication of how far we have come

[pib]

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".

[Jonathan]

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. 

[belton rover]

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.

[Sammy Chung was King]

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.