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Post by superalexneil on Feb 12, 2023 7:01:31 GMT
Better the devil you know, signings were iffy but had we managed to turn a few of those draws into wins….who knows. Better than any the shite we have had since
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Post by chuckrocky on Feb 12, 2023 7:13:08 GMT
“Signings were iffy”. That’s one of way of putting that he completely spunked £50m up the wall, setting the club back years I suppose.
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Post by superalexneil on Feb 12, 2023 7:22:02 GMT
“Signings were iffy”. That’s one of way of putting that he completely spunked £50m up the wall, setting the club back years I suppose. O Neil signed 4 loans 3 got terminated straight away, Neil has just replaced our CB with someone who isn’t even fit
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Post by David Brent on Feb 12, 2023 7:29:30 GMT
Let’s just agree they’ve all been awful
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Post by potterpaul on Feb 12, 2023 8:08:10 GMT
Nothing like a pointless thread to make us galvanised.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2023 8:09:35 GMT
Rowett was shite but, with hindsight, if he had held his nerve and not started a war with the fans (which was only going to go one way seeing as we're permanent and staff are expendable) then he probably could've ridden out the storm and turned us into playoff contenders; if not in his 1st season then I'm sure in his 2nd. We weren't that far off the playoffs when he was sacked IIRC.
I think he's quite a cool, level headed personality, but it was always going to be tough navigating supporter dissatisfaction at that point in time. The expectation was that we would be doing what Burnley are doing right now; and I don't think it was an unreasonable expectation given we had one of the largest warchests this league has ever seen. If you could've shown us a crystal ball of what the next 4 years was going to look like after Rowett left then no shit we would've all stuck with the devil we knew. It's irrelevant because crystal balls don't exist. But at the time we were all massively pissed off at what he was producing having inherited the backbone of a strong championship squad + access to eye watering budgets to improve. It was a total clusterfuck but his biggest error wasn't spunking millions on the likes of Mcclean/Afobe/Ince, it was being a chippy cunt in the media. Had he managed to remain tight-lipped then, for all his faults (and he is a dour manager make no mistake) he could've been relatively successful here. He had everything he needed to make the stepup and get over the line and into the premiership with us.
It also didn't help that there was so much scrutiny. There was a lot of national interest in how we were doing back then. I remember the shambolic 0-3 defeat to Wigan (4th game of the season) being a major national sports story. And that just added to the pressure that Rowett must've felt. National scrutiny seems like a distant memory now as we seem to have gone full circle and back to the mid 00s when we were largely irrelevant beyond our locality. Our current spell in this god forsaken league truly has been horrendous. The nightmare could be complete if we fuckup our next 2 games.
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Post by robwahlmann on Feb 12, 2023 8:22:24 GMT
With the money being available for Rowett he really should have done better. Why didn't he play Diouf on top instead of spunking £12.5M on Afobe for instance!? Jones also brought in way too many mediocre players, and both O'Neill and Neil have not had any money to spend in reality. I still believe Neil can do a good job for us, and I also think he will keep us up. Anyway, this summer will be a busy one, no doubt about that!
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Post by The Toxic Avenger on Feb 12, 2023 8:23:53 GMT
Sorry but the ‘if only Rowett hadn’t started a war with the fans’ stuff is a total myth, he did way more damage than that.
1) He made us worse with the single worst transfer window in the club’s history.
2) In addition to signing a load of shite, he failed to address a number of existing defective areas in the squad.
3) His tactical approach was to set up defensively and try and sneak something on the counter, even if we were at home against, say, Rotherham. That’s never going to work when you’re promotion favourites and have just spent £50m.
4) The Bojan thing wouldn’t have been as bad for him if he hadn’t expunged all other traces of creativity from the side at the same time. The calls for Bojan were as much a reaction to that as anything.
5) He managed to alienate even respected members of the dressing room like Ryan by publicly chucking them under the bus.
Credit to him for what he’s doing at Millwall, where he seems to have made some smart signings. He’s either learned from the myriad mistakes he made with us or he’s better suited to having a smaller budget at a club with lower expectations. He really did make his bed with us though.
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Post by TinkerT on Feb 12, 2023 8:24:38 GMT
Rowett was shite but, with hindsight, if he had held his nerve and not started a war with the fans (which was only going to go one way seeing as we're permanent and staff are expendable) then he probably could've ridden out the storm and turned us into playoff contenders; if not in his 1st season then I'm sure in his 2nd. We weren't that far off the playoffs when he was sacked IIRC. I think he's quite a cool, level headed personality, but it was always going to be tough navigating supporter dissatisfaction at that point in time. The expectation was that we would be doing what Burnley are doing right now; and I don't think it was an unreasonable expectation given we had one of the largest warchests this league has ever seen. If you could've shown us a crystal ball of what the next 4 years was going to look like after Rowett left then no shit we would've all stuck with the devil we knew. It's irrelevant because crystal balls don't exist. But at the time we were all massively pissed off at what he was producing having inherited the backbone of a strong championship squad + access to eye watering budgets to improve. It was a total clusterfuck but his biggest error wasn't spunking millions on the likes of Mcclean/Afobe/Ince, it was being a chippy cunt in the media. Had he managed to remain tight-lipped then, for all his faults (and he is a dour manager make no mistake) he could've been relatively successful here. He had everything he needed to make the stepup and get over the line and into the premiership with us. It also didn't help that there was so much scrutiny. There was a lot of national interest in how we were doing back then. I remember the shambolic 0-3 defeat to Wigan (4th game of the season) being a major national sports story. And that just added to the pressure that Rowett must've felt. National scrutiny seems like a distant memory now as we seem to have gone full circle and back to the mid 00s when we were largely irrelevant beyond our locality. Our current spell in this god forsaken league truly has been horrendous. The nightmare could be complete if we fuckup our next 2 games. Depends how you look at it, at the time on paper Ince and Afobe looked good signings for what we wanted, but the fact the family even allowed McLean anywhere near the club just shows you how far and how much they've lost touch with reality and the fans, everything which has happened since has proved that. All they need to do is employ someone who knows how to run a football club because they simply don't have a clue. When you think back to even the pulis days though when he controlled everything about the club, have they ever known what they are doing? It's about time the supporters council started asking some questions.
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Post by bagnallboothen on Feb 12, 2023 8:28:19 GMT
I hated Gary Rowett, arrogant beyond belief. Couldn't stand him before he joined and absolutely despised him once he left.
I was convinced he'd be my most unliked Stoke manager in my life time, I seemingly forgot John Coates was our owner
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Post by J-Roar on Feb 12, 2023 8:39:11 GMT
I never felt that he liked to club or the supporters. In the end it felt like he was trying to get sacked as he didn't want to be there.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2023 8:48:48 GMT
Depends how you look at it, at the time on paper Ince and Afobe looked good signings for what we wanted, but the fact the family even allowed McLean anywhere near the club just shows you how far and how much they've lost touch with reality and the fans, everything which has happened since has proved that. All they need to do is employ someone who knows how to run a football club because they simply don't have a clue. When you think back to even the pulis days though when he controlled everything about the club, have they ever known what they are doing? It's about time the supporters council started asking some questions. I think it's fairly common knowledge that our board are using the old school model that managers are given free reign, and the board will back them as far as they're allowed whilst trying to remain in the shadows. So it's somewhat irrelevant what they thought of McClean (and let's not forget that McClean won supporters' player of the season in the year Jones got fired/MON arrived) because they wouldn't look to intervene and undermine their manager's authority. I think it's an outdated, lazy system of running a football club. Mainly because the likes of Brentford/Brighton/Sunderland even, are all using statistical models and playing moneyball. It's the main reason why AN left Sunderland and came here IMO; because he was a head coach there but wanted to be the manager. Unfortunately, I think the days of legacy managers with full authority are gone. Because even the greatest managers of all time aren't going to beat computers running statistical analysis. But that's the system we're working under and I suspect we'll slip further before there's a chance of realisation/modernisation; and potentially it'll never happen under the current ownership. Of course I'm just theorising here, I could be talking anything from total sense to total shite.
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Post by wuzza on Feb 12, 2023 8:56:40 GMT
I reality it’s hard to argue that we would have been in any worse position if we had just stuck with Rowett. I don’t believe he would have got us relegated and he would probably have achieved better results as time wore on. It’s not even as though we would have sacrificed anything on the ‘entertainment’ front either as Jones and O’Neills’ sides were dreadfully dull. However that’s in no way to argue that Rowett did a good job while he was here - he obviously didn’t because the amount spent should have produced a promotion team.
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Post by superalexneil on Feb 12, 2023 12:01:17 GMT
This forums gone to pot - shitbin for a discussion? Lick me balls
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