“He should be Manager of the Season”

SlowDownDerek said:
It is an incredible achievement. Of course it's not impossible to stay up as a promoted side but you have to play well, be managed well and sign quality players that make the difference. We did all of that and that's why we stayed up. Credit to all involved.
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Do you think you had to play well and be managed well this season or to just do it occasionally? Three sides came up, one changed their entire squad. One changed the manager and had the longest running caretaker since Harold Pinter and one kept the squad and the manager. All three will stay up. It wasn’t that difficult this year if you had a good core squad. We did.

I’m not sure what some people are arguing for here. Either our squad was good or Scott Parker was right they were crap and the way forward is to fire your manager after four games, appoint a novice caretaker while you publically chase a game giant then back track to the caretaker for the rest of the season. I wonder why more clubs don’t do it.
 
Neil Dawson said:
Tell me what you think. Not what you think I think.
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See post #79. It's very simple when you don't have an irrational dislike of certain people in the club and bizarre need to apportion any sort of credit away from them.

The squad was good enough to stay up if they got lucky with injuries. Credit to the players for never giving up, the manager for motivating them and having enough tactical nous to keep them up comfortably, the recruitment team for adding enough quality to make a difference and to Foley for holding his nerve and not reacting to the pressure to sack the manager. Great job all round.
 
Neil Dawson said:
Do you think you had to play well and be managed well this season or to just do it occasionally? Three sides came up, one changed their entire squad. One changed the manager and had the longest running caretaker since Harold Pinter and one kept the squad and the manager. All three will stay up. It wasn’t that difficult this year if you had a good core squad. We did.

I’m not sure what some people are arguing for here. Either our squad was good or Scott Parker was right they were crap and the way forward is to fire your manager after four games, appoint a novice caretaker while you publically chase a game giant then back track to the caretaker for the rest of the season. I wonder why more clubs don’t do it.
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Lol, yeah staying up is easy peasy. Have you heard yourself? Give it up man.
 
Haha was only a matter of time before this debate re emerged. I have little doubt it won't be the last time either over the summer/next year or so...

Modern equivalent of who had the strongest Championship squad debate: Tindall or Parker.
 
MB1980 said:
Haha was only a matter of time before this debate re emerged. I have little doubt it won't be the last time either over the summer/next year or so...

Modern equivalent of who had the strongest Championship squad debate: Tindall or Parker.
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Tbh I'm not so sure. Neil has backed himself into a corner where he's now simultaneously trying to argue that the squad was great but the recruitment was poor. Surely he'll have to give it up as a bad job at some point.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Tbh I'm not so sure. Neil has backed himself into a corner where he's now simultaneously trying to argue that the squad was great but the recruitment was poor. Surely he'll have to give it up as a bad job at some point.
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He's been doing that for ages. Apparently it's all about the nucleus. Whatever you do, don't bring up that quote, from after Parker was sacked, when he insists that our squad is so bad that any manager who can keep us up is a genius who should be working at the biggest club in the world. He gets grumpy when you mention it.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Tbh I'm not so sure. Neil has backed himself into a corner where he's now simultaneously trying to argue that the squad was great but the recruitment was poor. Surely he'll have to give it up as a bad job at some point.
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Recruitment happens at different stages of a squad evolution.. it’s not difficult.
 
Red_Kettle said:
He's been doing that for ages. Apparently it's all about the nucleus. Whatever you do, don't bring up that quote, from after Parker was sacked, when he insists that our squad is so bad that any manager who can keep us up is a genius who should be working at the biggest club in the world. He gets grumpy when you mention it.
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I said we needed numbers. Which we did.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Lol, yeah staying up is easy peasy. Have you heard yourself? Give it up man.
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Well it appeared to be this year for the teams that came up. Easy relative to the Premier Leagues history and elite level sport…. Which is a little different to ‘easy peasy’. Even those that changed managers and squads. How many points would we have as well if we’d had the run of VAR.
 
Neil Dawson said:
Is it just down to players then. Managers don’t have an influence? Do Newcastle have a better squad than Liverpool and Chelsea? Or does the manager have something to do with it.

Im not disputing Fulham finished higher than us. I’m saying the reason wasn’t because they had better players, hence why in four match ups they got three points out of 12 and in a season where both clubs had uninterrupted managerial influence we were divided by a hairs breadth.
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I think it's more about players as a group, how they fit together than it is about managers...and how much onfield leadership there is across a team.

The manager thing is hyped to a ridiculous degree..because how can it be explained away about people like Mourinho, Rodgers, Ranieri and countless others suddenly being out of it after raging success.



Why isnt the 'afcb' vaunted Bielsa not still at Leeds.

I can see the day when a 'selection commitee' drawn from a few directors and a few prominent supporters replaces a manager for the purpose of picking the matchday squad after weekly consultation with the coaches....Makes far more sense....because if this level of Money starts to drop away from the game one day then it would be logical to not have to pay a managers Salary of the kind now in existence.

Managers in the days of Robson, Redknapp and Clough......had far more control...before players inflated- wage contracts and agents influence affected outcomes.

There is more media talk around 'Managers' than any other aspect in the game...unless a player like Haaland rocks up and steals a few headlines.

Fans sadly have been drawn into Manager Gush !
 
Neil Dawson said:
I said we needed numbers. Which we did.
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Lol.

Dawson.jpg

This was after Parker was sacked, when our only remaining signing would be Jack Stephens. So either Southampton's Sixth Choice Centre Back is such a footballing colossus that his presence transformed the entire squad or, more likely, in August you thought we weren't good enough to stay up. It's ok to be wrong Neil. Just admit it with dignity and move on. You don't have to keep playing this Sisyphean game of message board twister with your own past opinions.
 
Red_Kettle said:
We really weren't. Fulham eased off at the end of the season, making the points difference look more respectable, but by every other metric they were comfortably better than us. They also battered us at Craven Cottage, and we needed a (very satisfying) last minute penalty to get a point at home. Obviously, despite lauding Brighton's recruitment model, you'll now pretend that the only stats that matter are goals and points, but that's not true - luck doesn't even out over the season and the league table can, and often does, lie. So yes, I absolutely did think that Fulham had better players than us, and then they spent much more than we did in the summer.
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Not arguing with your logic but not pleased with your comment that “they battered us at Fulham”

….they camped in our half for the whole of the second half but you ignore what happened in the first half we would have won but for a disgraceful series of penalty decisions which meant we should have had two pens and they had none. That would have been a comfortable win for us
 
Old Cherry said:
I think it's more about players as a group, how they fit together than it is about managers...and how much onfield leadership there is across a team.

The manager thing is hyped to a ridiculous degree..because how can it be explained away about people like Mourinho, Rodgers, Ranieri and countless others suddenly being out of it after raging success.



Why isnt the 'afcb' vaunted Bielsa not still at Leeds.

I can see the day when a 'selection commitee' drawn from a few directors and a few prominent supporters replaces a manager for the purpose of picking the matchday squad after weekly consultation with the coaches....Makes far more sense....because if this level of Money starts to drop away from the game one day then it would be logical to not have to pay a managers Salary of the kind now in existence.

Managers in the days of Robson, Redknapp and Clough......had far more control...before players inflated- wage contracts and agents influence affected outcomes.

There is more media talk around 'Managers' than any other aspect in the game...unless a player like Haaland rocks up and steals a few headlines.

Fans sadly have been drawn into Manager Gush !
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You keep saying this periodically and I'm going to keep saying ... how do you explain the difference in performance from players between howe s 1st stint and him leaving for Burnley and what transpired under Bradbury and Groves, then Howe returning again?
 
AFCBade said:
Not arguing with your logic but not pleased with your comment that “they battered us at Fulham”

….they camped in our half for the whole of the second half but you ignore what happened in the first half we would have won but for a disgraceful series of penalty decisions which meant we should have had two pens and they had none. That would have been a comfortable win for us
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Sorry, I wasn't talking about this season, when I agree we were hard done by (and also Fulham didn't actually create that much for all their pressure). I was talking about the previous season, when they were on top for the entire match, and we scored from our one meaningful chance, a cleverly worked kick off routine.
 
AFCBade said:
Not arguing with your logic but not pleased with your comment that “they battered us at Fulham”

….they camped in our half for the whole of the second half but you ignore what happened in the first half we would have won but for a disgraceful series of penalty decisions which meant we should have had two pens and they had none. That would have been a comfortable win for us
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Ssshhh… that goes against the narrative that we aren’t very good.
 
Neil Dawson said:
Not really, I don’t think they’ve added much with the exception of Tavs. I refuse to get over excited with any centre backs or keeper that have the second worst defensive record in the league and can’t handle a set piece and the 6 Jan signings are largely unproven with the exception of Outtara who doesn’t exactly set the world on fire but has potential.

This teams bedrock that kept us up were players that arrived before this season and had done it before and Tavs. Name our most indispensable players other than Marcus… Solanke, Billing, Lerma, Kelly, Smith?
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…yet most of the season Solanke and Kelly have been getting dogs abuse by some on here (admittedly Solanke just one person really)

I think the signings have been key. Stephens and Senesi have had a massive impact since World Cup; dango has been variable at times but made some key contributions not least the spurs winner; vina scored twice and would have been 3 but for a tight Solanke offside and covered the loss ofJZ; pretty clear that Neto has a huge stabilising influence on the defence ….
 
Red_Kettle said:
Sorry, I wasn't talking about this season, when I agree we were hard done by (and also Fulham didn't actually create that much for all their pressure). I was talking about the previous season, when they were on top for pretty much the entire match, and we scored from our one meaningful chance, a cleverly worked kick off routine.
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Now Understood, thabks…worth saying that in that game we were missing about 8 first teamers hence the Steve cook cameo!
 
Red_Kettle said:
Lol.

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This was after Parker was sacked, when our only remaining signing would be Jack Stephens. So either Southampton's Sixth Choice Centre Back is such a footballing colossus that his presence transformed the entire squad or, more likely, in August you thought we weren't good enough to stay up. It's ok to be wrong Neil. Just admit it with dignity and move on. You don't have to keep playing this Sisyphean game of message board twister with your own past opinions.
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Like I said we needed signings. I think we all thought that. I’m all over social media on lots of different media and podcasts and I’ve said numerous times we were good enough to stay up. Why do you think I got so irritated by our performances and some of our tactics? Because if I didn’t think we were at all up to it it seriously wouldn’t have bothered me. I could see that if we didn’t sort our crap out a squad good enough to stay up…wouldn’t.
 
Red_Kettle said:
Sorry, I wasn't talking about this season, when I agree we were hard done by (and also Fulham didn't actually create that much for all their pressure). I was talking about the previous season, when they were on top for the entire match, and we scored from our one meaningful chance, a cleverly worked kick off routine.
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Agree. They battered us last season at their place and they were partway 'on the beach' at our place, given already promoted and their dip in results compared to a few weeks earlier.

As ever, context is key.
 
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