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Post by lordb on Jan 14, 2018 11:00:16 GMT
Transfers - We haggle the hell out of deals like Indi and Sobhi and appear to have missed out on a number of targets. - We spend silly fees on badly scouted players like Jese, Berahino, Wimmer, Imbula and extend the contract of Johnson. Manager Search - We make an ambitious bid to get in a bright young manager in on a 5 year 17 million deal offering him a substantial amount for transfers. Then the deal allegedly falls through because he isn't happy with us cutting his wages if we go down. - We try to get in a 65 year old manager who hasn't managed at club level for nearly 10 years on a 5 month contract. Who knows what funds we'll give him. It's certainly very confusing. I guess in the next 2 weeks we'll get to find out whether the board are ambitious or not in relation to trying to keep us up. Ten years? 2013 isn't ten years. The strategy right now is to appoint a defence first type manager Rowett,QSF and O'Neill all prioritize that.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 11:03:07 GMT
“What’s all the fuss about” I'll see your "Whats all the fuss about" and raise you with "Who else is going to do it?"
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 11:40:53 GMT
Coates should get the speakmans in to give the team a good positive thinking session .....then a week of training with mon and Keane should do the trick.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Jan 14, 2018 11:48:40 GMT
We haven't got a strategy. Simple as that. The board were entirely happy sticking their collective heads in the sand until last week. Peter Coates said on 14th December that he "didn't know what all the fuss was about" Fast forward a month and we're without a manager, managers turning us down, the transfer window nearing it's end and no real viable candidates who want to take the plunge in our current predicament. Of course, if Hughes had gone in the summer (when anyone with an ounce of common sense knew he should, the writing had been on the wall long before even then), we'd have had managers queuing up for a crack at a stable, supposedly well-run mid table premier league club with a bit of money to spend. Coates' loyalty to Hughes was widely praised in the media. To us, we knew it was incredibly misguided. We're deep in the brown stuff and it's all of the board's own making. Couldn't agree more mate. If we go down it won't be because of the appointment we make now, it will be because of the terrible decision at board level not to recognise the way we were heading in the summer and then subsequently at several identifiable points since the season started. They either couldn't actually see what was happening, or they could but were caught like rabbits frozen in the headlights, too timid to pull the trigger when it was necessary to do so. Which either one it actually was, reflects on them terribly.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 11:50:34 GMT
I'm pretty sure our strategy involved monkeys throwing shit.
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Post by geoff321 on Jan 14, 2018 12:01:03 GMT
Despite a poor run of form Hughes finished just 2 points off 8th place last season, Peter Coates therefore was right to continue with him as manager this season in my view.
It's about looking forward now though and MON seems to me to be the right appointment, lets be fair Coates has got the last two management appointments right and it looks now as though he may get this one right as well.
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Post by rawli on Jan 14, 2018 12:17:45 GMT
Despite a poor run of form Hughes finished just 2 points off 8th place last season, Peter Coates therefore was right to continue with him as manager this season in my view. It's about looking forward now though and MON seems to me to be the right appointment, lets be fair Coates has got the last two management appointments right and it looks now as though he may get this one right as well. That's the danger of managing just by stats. We were very very lucky to finish 9th for a 3rd time despite being largely terrible for the second half of that season. I thought we were extremely poor last season and we carried on in the same vein this season. At some point you've got to trust what you are seeing.
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Post by Sfance on Jan 14, 2018 12:18:24 GMT
Leave it to Geoff!!!!!!!!!
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Post by wuzza on Jan 14, 2018 12:24:15 GMT
The youth programme / Transfer self sufficiency is very much a ‘strategy’. Problem is we haven’t been able to deliver on other. They should have noticed this and started making changes a long time ago but a bit of mid table complacency set in amongst the top brass. Now we are in panic mode. And that is the story of SCFC @ Jan 2018.
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Post by Beloved Monkfish on Jan 14, 2018 12:32:01 GMT
Despite a poor run of form Hughes finished just 2 points off 8th place last season, Peter Coates therefore was right to continue with him as manager this season in my view.It's about looking forward now though and MON seems to me to be the right appointment, lets be fair Coates has got the last two management appointments right and it looks now as though he may get this one right as well. Hey up Mark! I disagree with your points. Jeremy Hunt was raving the other week about how there are 6500 more doctors and 15000 more nurses now working for the NHS since he took over; however, the NHS is clearly a complete mess and massive changes are needed. Just looking at the points total is what has contributed to our downfall this season. Look a bit closer, and we've been rubbish for 2 years. It's been coming and nd the people at the top should have seen that.
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Post by geoff321 on Jan 14, 2018 12:41:53 GMT
Despite a poor run of form Hughes finished just 2 points off 8th place last season, Peter Coates therefore was right to continue with him as manager this season in my view. It's about looking forward now though and MON seems to me to be the right appointment, lets be fair Coates has got the last two management appointments right and it looks now as though he may get this one right as well. That's the danger of managing just by stats. We were very very lucky to finish 9th for a 3rd time despite being largely terrible for the second half of that season. I thought we were extremely poor last season and we carried on in the same vein this season. At some point you've got to trust what you are seeing. Results though are always more important than performances, so with just one more win Hughes would have delivered 8th position, then his record would have been 9th, 9th, 9th, 8th. I'm not sure that clubs like Stoke can produce quality performances consistently in todays PL, so a manager can only really be judged on results and postion in the table, I think that's how Coates judged Hughes.
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Post by Beloved Monkfish on Jan 14, 2018 12:45:14 GMT
That's the danger of managing just by stats. We were very very lucky to finish 9th for a 3rd time despite being largely terrible for the second half of that season. I thought we were extremely poor last season and we carried on in the same vein this season. At some point you've got to trust what you are seeing. Results though are always more important than performances, so with just one more win Hughes would have delivered 8th position, then his record would have been 9th, 9th, 9th, 8th. I'm not sure that clubs like Stoke can produce quality performances consistently in todays PL, so a manager can only really be judged on results and postion in the table, I think that's how Coates judged Hughes. You're right, we can't consistently. But apart from 2 or 3 games we last season we were awful. When we won, we only did by the skin of our teeth and often when we lost we got hammered. I think we can expect more than that. The warning signs were there.
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Post by pyrus on Jan 14, 2018 12:49:08 GMT
Strategy is a matter of working out where you are then defining where you want to be; the route you take to get from where you are to where you want to be is your strategy.
I think our strategic objective when Hughes came in was to become a top half premiership team. That was Hughes remit. I think a further strategic objective was also in play, namely for the football club to become self-sufficient. That is Scholes and Cartwrights’ remit
I would suggest that our current dilemma is because the second objective has undermined the first objective to the extent that our strategy is now non-existent. Our focus now seems to be to forget the money, forget the top ten, lets just not get relegated - we don’t have a strategy, we have a fire-fight.
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Post by Ygor on Jan 14, 2018 12:53:08 GMT
What gets to me is there are lots of people on here, and in the media who keep saying how good LMH and his backroom team are/were and how good the owners are. I agree there is history there to support those views to some degree.
However, dare I say it, players are not afforded the same leeway. Shawcross has a fine history with the club but the minute his play starts to flounder, people are criticising and on his back. Rightly so in my view given the amount of money the players are paid to perform. And when you stop performing, you deserve some criticism. That's the way it is in life, in your job, etc. you have to keep on being good at what you do.
Yet the owners and messrs Scholes and Cartwright don't seem to be subjected to quite the same critique. Despite being paid millions (or just being very rich full stop) some dislike it when the Board are heavily criticised, despite there being plenty of evidence that they have not been up to scratch for some time.
How we find ourselves in our current predicament is beyond belief and I'm afraid I apportion much of the blame to those who could have done something about it but didn't until it was probably too late. They (the Board, Coates, Scholes) are far from blameless yet many refuse to condemn their decision making, wheeling out convenient historical excuses. They are paid a lot of money, and I pay a lot of money (relatively) to support and watch Stoke City. I think I and others are entitled to criticise people at the club if they don't perform, particularly when bad decision making appears to move towards the norm rather than a one-off blip.
Maybe it's some of the unpleasant and hateful remarks that upset many rather than just straight forward criticism without abuse/vitriol. I don't like the unpleasantness either, but come on, you are dealing with football fans. Just go to a match and listen to some of the chants and things shouted. It's hardly a kindergarten and I wouldn't expect anything else. That's football I'm afraid.
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Post by jarvinski on Jan 14, 2018 12:54:25 GMT
Why aren’t we going for Koemann?
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Post by PotterLog on Jan 14, 2018 13:26:33 GMT
Transfers - We haggle the hell out of deals like Indi and Sobhi and appear to have missed out on a number of targets. - We spend silly fees on badly scouted players like Jese, Berahino, Wimmer, Imbula and extend the contract of Johnson. Manager Search - We make an ambitious bid to get in a bright young manager in on a 5 year 17 million deal offering him a substantial amount for transfers. Then the deal allegedly falls through because he isn't happy with us cutting his wages if we go down. - We try to get in a 65 year old manager who hasn't managed at club level for nearly 10 years on a 5 month contract. Who knows what funds we'll give him. It's certainly very confusing. I guess in the next 2 weeks we'll get to find out whether the board are ambitious or not in relation to trying to keep us up. Four years and ten months is not “nearly ten years”
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Post by passtheoatcakes on Jan 14, 2018 13:43:57 GMT
I sat and watched our 2014/15 season highlights on Friday night to cheer myself up and yes I know you only ever see the good bits, but just look where we were to where we are now.
We actually had real pace and skill at times. Man I really miss those days.
Meanwhile Arnie is strutting his stuff at Wet Sham and the teams around us appear to have some form of game plan which involves in the main not shipping a bag load of goals every game.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we have massively regressed with minimal and dodgy investment in the team over the last two years. No long or mid term strategy is very evident at SCFC towers and I am afraid that in my view it’s going to get a lot worse before it is sorted out.
Other prem clubs appear to ignore the ‘let’s be a self sufficient well run business’ blah blah blah. It’s all about money and the ability to scout the right players, so for me I wanted more of a clear out than we have seen so far, depressing days football wise.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 14:38:45 GMT
Yet the owners and messrs Scholes and Cartwright don't seem to be subjected to quite the same critique. Despite being paid millions (or just being very rich full stop) some dislike it when the Board are heavily criticised, despite there being plenty of evidence that they have not been up to scratch for some time. How we find ourselves in our current predicament is beyond belief and I'm afraid I apportion much of the blame to those who could have done something about it but didn't until it was probably too late. They (the Board, Coates, Scholes) are far from blameless yet many refuse to condemn their decision making, wheeling out convenient historical excuses. They are paid a lot of money, and I pay a lot of money (relatively) to support and watch Stoke City. I think I and others are entitled to criticise people at the club if they don't perform, particularly when bad decision making appears to move towards the norm rather than a one-off blip. If you want continuity at a football club with the structure that are in place in England, and they all do, then it's a truth universally acknowledged that managers and players come and go while administrative staff stay. The board are not admin but they are the owners, so whatever critique is at hand simply don''t apply to them. I think folks on here might just have unrealistic expectations about how managers are found. It just doesn't happen overnight/week. It took more than a month at Everton, and it probably took a while at the other clubs as well but they were able to implement a replacement strategy quicker, possibly because they sacvk managers every season, some even more often. If Conte stood down next week - and he might - it would probably take Chelsea a while to find a replacement, although they would be able to name a caretaker. If Wenger stood down at any time soon, it would scare the board shitless, because despite major unrest among supporters, you just don't replace a manager of 20plus years just like that.
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Post by blackpoolred on Jan 14, 2018 14:42:52 GMT
Can't help you with our transfers it is a weird as feck and nobody understands it. Lot of money in the game and lot's of backhanders going on everywhere I should imagine, the Wilmer signing probably made a few people a bit richer(the fee we paid for him was unfathomable) - Stoke probably no different from any other club in terms of a bit corruption amongst agents, players and managers Regarding our manager choice I think it is a bit more black & white: Unless they are stupid they know we are pretty well fecked and that relegation is more likely to happen than not with the current crop of players and with how late they left things. So they wanted a good forward thinking manager who would be able to rebuild the team from scratch and get us straight back up should the unthinkable happen. MON is an old school PC choice that nobody likes in the boardroom apart from PC(possibly not even him). They are going to see if he can manage to keep us up although they don't have the greatest of confidence in him - why would anyone when he has not managed in prem for years. If he does manage to help us avoid the drop they will evaluate whether they want to continue with his services or not and whether they like the direction the club is going in with him at the helm(the type signings and football we are playing etc). If we go down then he will definitely be gone. Florence looked at the money and thought great and then did his homework on the squad and thought they are shite and the likelihood is I will not get any of my bonuses what the feck am I thinking, had a panic attack and did a quick u-turn, MON may see this as his last chance to get involved with day-to-day football in the top flight, but ain't thick and if he does his homework he too will more than likely pass this one up. At this stage the job won't go to someone with obvious talent but more likely somebody desperate to have a crack at top-flight management no matter how shite the tools are they have at their disposal. Is that based on any inside knowledge or is it all your own work. More my summation, with a lot of help from the social media grapevine(so must be true), although it is not hard to read between the lines regarding who choose which manager.
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Post by kustokie on Jan 14, 2018 14:50:29 GMT
The strategy actually made sense - they just cocked it up. Plan A was to go for young up and coming manager with some PL experience. PLan B was to hire MON to keep us up and find a long term manager in the interim. I don’t understand why they didn’t offer QFS a base salary of say 3.5 million a year for 5 years and a bonus of 2 million if he kept us up, nothing if we went down. That way his base salary did not decrease if we were relegated and he had a strong incentive to stay up. They way spun it was sent the message that punitive action would be taken if we went down instead of rewarding him if we stayed up. It comes to the same thing but the optics are better.
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Post by smallthorner on Jan 14, 2018 15:13:26 GMT
I was busy fitting a bathroom yesterday. Would anyone tell me what’s going on? Our potential new messiah has turned us down and is staying in Spain and therefore is not a potential messiah anymore. We have gone cap in hand to our potential new messiah in MON and his mad assistant who turned us down also but we are now scrabbling around to convince him otherwise. Is that about right? Paul Lambert installed as manager on 18 month contract next week and SJW arrives on a surprise signing from Burnley.
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Post by rawli on Jan 14, 2018 18:04:20 GMT
That's the danger of managing just by stats. We were very very lucky to finish 9th for a 3rd time despite being largely terrible for the second half of that season. I thought we were extremely poor last season and we carried on in the same vein this season. At some point you've got to trust what you are seeing. Results though are always more important than performances, so with just one more win Hughes would have delivered 8th position, then his record would have been 9th, 9th, 9th, 8th. I'm not sure that clubs like Stoke can produce quality performances consistently in todays PL, so a manager can only really be judged on results and postion in the table, I think that's how Coates judged Hughes. I'm not denying that's how he judged him. However, it shouldn't be the way you judge him completely - if that was the way we could all be good football chairmen. The more relevant stat anyway was that the last 3 seasons we finished 19, 14 and 10 points from relegation. That's not a good trend.
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Post by smallthorner on Jan 15, 2018 12:16:19 GMT
I was busy fitting a bathroom yesterday. Would anyone tell me what’s going on? Our potential new messiah has turned us down and is staying in Spain and therefore is not a potential messiah anymore. We have gone cap in hand to our potential new messiah in MON and his mad assistant who turned us down also but we are now scrabbling around to convince him otherwise. Is that about right? Paul Lambert installed as manager on 18 month contract next week and SJW arrives on a surprise signing from Burnley. Has anyone seen super Jon at Clayton yet?😁
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Post by bhp on Jan 15, 2018 12:23:35 GMT
I was busy fitting a bathroom yesterday. Would anyone tell me what’s going on? Our potential new messiah has turned us down and is staying in Spain and therefore is not a potential messiah anymore. We have gone cap in hand to our potential new messiah in MON and his mad assistant who turned us down also but we are now scrabbling around to convince him otherwise. Is that about right? Paul Lambert installed as manager on 18 month contract next week and SJW arrives on a surprise signing from Burnley. You're half the way there...
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