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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 11:28:43 GMT
Can't agree with that. He insisted he wanted to play a back three with wing backs but he failed to address longstanding issues or recruit to a system that would make that work. Neglected to sign a goalkeeper RWB - he thought Clarke, a very inexperienced loanee, and Sparrow, a young midfielder, would suffice in what is an absolutely key area to the system. When it became clear they wouldn't he panicked and brought in Fosu, also not a good fit for that system. LWB - his solution to provide competition for Tymon was McCarron, a lad who couldn't get a game for the Vale. CB - Flint was totally unsuited to playing in a back three, deathly slow and useless on the ball Midfield - stubbornly refused to sign a proper DM and ensured our midfield was an unbalanced mess for most of his time here. Put a lot of pressure on Smallbone, another inexperienced young player, to shoulder the bulk of our creativity. Forward - Gayle a dreadful signing who was too similar to what we already had. Delap understandable but again we expected him to shoulder a lot of the burden despite a lack of senior experience. Instead of signing a target man to help things stick in the final third and knit our attacking play together he insisted on signing poachers and trying to reverse-engineer those qualities into them. It was a mess, he should've gone in May. The keeper one he explained in interviews, we had very little money and he decided Bursik and Bonham were less important to replace than the other holes in the squad. Clarke was pretty good for me, Fosu was a panic after we got so many injuries at wing back, but did okay there in my opinion. McCarron yeah was a weird one. Think he had the idea that Fosu could do both left and right/Fox could if desperate move there. Flint was only ever there as cover for Souttar, we were shopping in a very shallow pool of players for free who don't mind not playing. I think the refusal to sign a DM was mitigated by the 352 system. You don't necessarily need a Ben Pearson when you play like that. The plan was a Laurent-Baker-Smallbone midfield of energy and dynamism. Powell and Smallbone would've also been the two shouldering that burden, Powell's injury was another slice of bad luck. I can't agree about Gayle, he's nothing like any of our strikers at all. I think the 4 of Tyrese/Brown/Delap/Gayle was plenty fine on paper at that time. None of us thought it would be an issue as I remember. But I agree, he should've gone in may. See those explanations just underline for me how far he'd lost the plot. We'd already seen that we were conceding from a high number of shots on target faced, I don't get why he was happy with the keeper options. That made more sense that spunking the outlay on Gayle, who we didn't need. I thought Clarke looked like what he is, a very green player. League One a better fit for him. That he thought him and Sparrow was an acceptable pool in that position and that Fosu and Fox were viable LWB options is puddled. Souttar wasn't going to be fit for weeks, which left us having to play Flint. If that's the only defender he could find then he should've used a system that suited him better. I still think you need someone with a modicum of positional discipline to sit deeper in midfield even in that system. Literally everyone any good who uses it does that. The deeper, disciplined role didn't suit any of the midfielders he signed bar Thompson. Loads of us thought Gayle was an odd signing and not what we needed at all. We needed a physical option who could hold the ball up to act as a foil for Campbell and Brown. Delap should have been a nice, cherry on the cake signing, instead we found ourselves having to rely on him.
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 11:30:12 GMT
Can't agree with that. He insisted he wanted to play a back three with wing backs but he failed to address longstanding issues or recruit to a system that would make that work. Neglected to sign a goalkeeper RWB - he thought Clarke, a very inexperienced loanee, and Sparrow, a young midfielder, would suffice in what is an absolutely key area to the system. When it became clear they wouldn't he panicked and brought in Fosu, also not a good fit for that system. LWB - his solution to provide competition for Tymon was McCarron, a lad who couldn't get a game for the Vale. CB - Flint was totally unsuited to playing in a back three, deathly slow and useless on the ball Midfield - stubbornly refused to sign a proper DM and ensured our midfield was an unbalanced mess for most of his time here. Put a lot of pressure on Smallbone, another inexperienced young player, to shoulder the bulk of our creativity. Forward - Gayle a dreadful signing who was too similar to what we already had. Delap understandable but again we expected him to shoulder a lot of the burden despite a lack of senior experience. Instead of signing a target man to help things stick in the final third and knit our attacking play together he insisted on signing poachers and trying to reverse-engineer those qualities into them. It was a mess, he should've gone in May. Sorry. I state in the message to you above that MONs summer recruitment was very poor and he should have gone. The ups and downs of recruitment I mentioned just was pre-Summer of this season. I stand by my point though. This system falls to pieces without Pearson. It’s built for him, a former AN player. It makes a lot of sense. Previously, we built one for Campbell, only for him to get injured. Then we built one for Powell, only for him to get injured. Did we build one for Powell? In the back three system he was sort of shoehorned in here and there and just made the best of it?
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Post by Gary Hackett on Mar 22, 2023 11:30:59 GMT
He's a nice guy, I've got no ill feeling for him but he didn't really know how to coach or recruit in the championship.
He did a fantastic job steadying the ship but should have gone 6 months before he did.
I wish him well.
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Post by theonlooker on Mar 22, 2023 11:43:32 GMT
His legacy will be this summer after his work with Collins and Souttar, amongst all of the other spade work he did, will allow us to spend again.
Some will forget, some will point towards the rogue business he did last summer whilst others will be grateful for the unglamorous but oh so important work he did over the course of his time here.
Either way, he's gone and we move forward with Alex Neil who thankfully now has a much easier job than he might previously have had.
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Post by Squeekster on Mar 22, 2023 12:10:54 GMT
His legacy will be this summer after his work with Collins and Souttar, amongst all of the other spade work he did, will allow us to spend again. Some will forget, some will point towards the rogue business he did last summer whilst others will be grateful for the unglamorous but oh so important work he did over the course of his time here. Either way, he's gone and we move forward with Alex Neil who thankfully now has a much easier job than he might previously have had. Exactly this!
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 12:14:30 GMT
His legacy will be this summer after his work with Collins and Souttar, amongst all of the other spade work he did, will allow us to spend again. Some will forget, some will point towards the rogue business he did last summer whilst others will be grateful for the unglamorous but oh so important work he did over the course of his time here. Either way, he's gone and we move forward with Alex Neil who thankfully now has a much easier job than he might previously have had. As always it's hard to accurately quantify the job of a manager as without him steadying the ship we could quite easily be languishing in the same position as someone like Portsmouth or Charlton right now. We were a club in steep decline under Jones, with no leadership and no direction. But we move on, he'll always be remembered fondly by me as a decent man who did a decent job..........
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Post by onionman on Mar 22, 2023 13:27:34 GMT
He did brilliantly at the beginning when our main need was for a sensible adult to make sensible decisions after the madness of Jones. He did ok the following couple of years in very difficult circumstances. By the end, his decision-making was absolutely terrible.
Fairly clear that his performance declined as he got increasingly burnt out from running the club from top to bottom, and that the backroom staff he appointed either agreed with his bonkers decision-making or were either unwilling or unable to influence him. Hope the club has learned from that.
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Post by Gary Hackett on Mar 22, 2023 13:35:22 GMT
He did brilliantly at the beginning when our main need was for a sensible adult to make sensible decisions after the madness of Jones. He did ok the following couple of years in very difficult circumstances. By the end, his decision-making was absolutely terrible. Well summed up.
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Post by flea79 on Mar 22, 2023 13:38:59 GMT
nice guy but wont really be remembered that well in 10-20 years time
wasnt a dick as such in the way Rowett was, nor was he disaster like Kammy and Nathan Jones, just plain old mediocre Michael (who did some boring but important work with the squad he inherited)
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Post by idle on Mar 22, 2023 13:48:49 GMT
I thought our best under O'Neill was when we used 3-5-2 as a spoiler tactic in difficult games, which got us a lot of points and cup scalps. We were then flexible enough to play 4-3-3 in other games and do well. Relying exclusively on 3-5-2 was not nearly as effective. I find it hard to read the article and not feel sympathetic, honestly. He did a lot of unpleasant spade work for us and seems a decent man. I wonder what might have been if we hadn't blown the 2-0 lead at home to Cardiff that - if I remember rightly - would have put us into the automatic places? That's the one with the Vokes missed penalty, not the 3-0 last season. I seem to remember us plaing a 5-2-3 rather than 4-3-3 or 5-3-2 when we were soaring as "Stokalona" until Campbell was injured?
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Post by slash on Mar 22, 2023 15:00:57 GMT
MON should've been binned in May.
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Post by chiswickpotter on Mar 22, 2023 15:10:56 GMT
His legacy will be this summer after his work with Collins and Souttar, amongst all of the other spade work he did, will allow us to spend again. Some will forget, some will point towards the rogue business he did last summer whilst others will be grateful for the unglamorous but oh so important work he did over the course of his time here. Either way, he's gone and we move forward with Alex Neil who thankfully now has a much easier job than he might previously have had. As always it's hard to accurately quantify the job of a manager as without him steadying the ship we could quite easily be languishing in the same position as someone like Portsmouth or Charlton right now. We were a club in steep decline under Jones, with no leadership and no direction. But we move on, he'll always be remembered fondly by me as a decent man who did a decent job.......... Yes without him we could have been in a dark place. But after doing a good job he lost the plot with 5 at the back, which was strange as he was such an advocate of 4-3-3 when he arrived and in his technical work for UEFA. Until last summer his transfers were reasonable given his budget, (Bonham, Wilmott, Brown, Fox, Jagielka, Thompson, Baker and Laurent were steady not spectacular signings for a club tight on money) and he helped bring Souttar, Tymon and Campbell through and retain Tezgel. But last summer was inexplicable, Gayle and Flint especially were completely out of keeping with his stated plan and with a decent goalkeeper we would still be in with a shout of the playoffs.
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Post by tommycarlsberg on Mar 22, 2023 15:17:36 GMT
The reason we were shit is that he totally failed to recruit to the system he wanted to play. I think the 352 success of the first half of 21/22 is overstated personally, our best performance of the period was the West Brom game where we played a balanced midfield with 4-2-3-1 and while we were getting good results I thought there was a slightly Brian Little-esque sense of being unconvincing in some of those games. Neil is the first manager we've had for about eight years who actually seems to know what he wants and looks to recruit to it. I thought that we were pretty excellent in the Nottm Forest home game to be honest. We took that game to them for large periods and they were never really in it from start to finish. Swansea away too, selective memories though.
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Post by xchpotter on Mar 22, 2023 16:15:06 GMT
MON should've been binned in May. The May in 2021 as well, not the most recent one. It was obvious he’d lost the plot then, but the board kept him at least a season or more longer than they should.
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 16:32:19 GMT
MON should've been binned in May. The May in 2021 as well, not the most recent one. It was obvious he’d lost the plot then, but the board kept him at least a season or more longer than they should. Shame Alex Neil didn't want to do any of the donkey work or he may have been..........
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Post by middleoftheboothen on Mar 22, 2023 16:50:51 GMT
The May in 2021 as well, not the most recent one. It was obvious he’d lost the plot then, but the board kept him at least a season or more longer than they should. Shame Alex Neil didn't want to do any of the donkey work or he may have been.......... He's had to do as much donkey work now clearing O'Neill's shite so not sure that's really a good point.
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 16:58:44 GMT
Shame Alex Neil didn't want to do any of the donkey work or he may have been.......... He's had to do as much donkey work now clearing O'Neill's shite so not sure that's really a good point. O’Neills shite are some of our best players at the moment, Wilmot, Laurent and Smallbone. Not forgetting Campbell who wouldn’t be here but for him…..
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Post by bayernoatcake on Mar 22, 2023 17:01:32 GMT
We need a minimum of 10 players in the summer. Cracking job.
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 17:05:12 GMT
He's had to do as much donkey work now clearing O'Neill's shite so not sure that's really a good point. O’Neills shite are some of our best players at the moment, Wilmot, Laurent and Smallbone. Not forgetting Campbell who wouldn’t be here but for him….. Is it necessarily a great look that it's taken a change of manager to get the best out of some of those players?
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:19:26 GMT
O’Neills shite are some of our best players at the moment, Wilmot, Laurent and Smallbone. Not forgetting Campbell who wouldn’t be here but for him….. Is it necessarily a great look that it's taken a change of manager to get the best out of some of those players? Well it was 5 games in for Laurent and Smallbone and Laurent was carrying a knock for some of them. In the same way that it took more than 5 games for some of our form players to shine under AN as well………
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:20:37 GMT
We need a minimum of 10 players in the summer. Cracking job. We did whoever the manager was. A bunch of loanees and a load of out of contract players………
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 17:29:54 GMT
Is it necessarily a great look that it's taken a change of manager to get the best out of some of those players? Well it was 5 games in for Laurent and Smallbone and Laurent was carrying a knock for some of them. In the same way that it took more than 5 games for some of our form players to shine under AN as well……… It’s more than just time though isn’t it? Both have been freed by having Pearson in the side, the kind of midfielder was stubbornly against signing. I’d also argue Smallbone is a better fit for Neil’s style generally than MON’s.
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:32:27 GMT
Well it was 5 games in for Laurent and Smallbone and Laurent was carrying a knock for some of them. In the same way that it took more than 5 games for some of our form players to shine under AN as well……… It’s more than just time though isn’t it? Both have been freed by having Pearson in the side, the kind of midfielder was stubbornly against signing. I’d also argue Smallbone is a better fit for Neil’s style generally than MON’s. Correct, although we wouldn’t have been able to get Pearson in August of course……
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 17:33:34 GMT
It’s more than just time though isn’t it? Both have been freed by having Pearson in the side, the kind of midfielder was stubbornly against signing. I’d also argue Smallbone is a better fit for Neil’s style generally than MON’s. Correct, although we wouldn’t have been able to get Pearson in August of course…… Another proper DM would very likely have had a similar effect, I’d venture…
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:36:10 GMT
Correct, although we wouldn’t have been able to get Pearson in August of course…… Another proper DM would very likely have had a similar effect, I’d venture… Maybe, maybe not. Alas we’ll never know………
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 17:37:44 GMT
Another proper DM would very likely have had a similar effect, I’d venture… Maybe, maybe not. Alas we’ll never know……… Indeed. It’s irrelevant anyway as MON didn’t want to sign one.
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Post by gingerninja on Mar 22, 2023 17:37:50 GMT
There's absolutely no way we will bring in 10 players over the summer 👊
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:39:24 GMT
Maybe, maybe not. Alas we’ll never know……… Indeed. It’s irrelevant anyway as MON didn’t want to sign one. Maybe that was one for January? Alas we’ll never know. Let’s just hope that playing the way we are under AN we can secure the signing of Pearson or someone equally as good if he’s not available……..
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Post by prestwichpotter on Mar 22, 2023 17:39:55 GMT
There's absolutely no way we will bring in 10 players over the summer 👊 I think we will, we’ll have to…….
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Mar 22, 2023 17:43:22 GMT
Indeed. It’s irrelevant anyway as MON didn’t want to sign one. Maybe that was one for January? Alas we’ll never know. Let’s just hope that playing the way we are under AN we can secure the signing of Pearson or someone equally as good if he’s not available…….. Seems unlikely given the only one he signed in three years was Thompson and he said publicly he didn’t want one as the game had moved on from them (!) but we’ll never know for sure.
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