NWCherries98
Fans' Favourite
Dunno if anyone else agrees, but it’s Starting to really piss me off seeing this everywhere!
To get it out of the way, I’ve always thought that in many ways O’Neil was a very good coach on the training pitch. I loved his energy when he first took over, talking about how much of an honour it was to be the manager, how the players are more than good enough to stay up. Saying how he feels part of the club. Generally, he’s probably the most likeable of the short group of managers we’ve had since EH, and seems like a very hardworking person and a great guy, with the respect of the players.
It’s a fantastic accomplishment to have turned the season around from where Parker left us to be safe with 4 games to spare. And recently we’ve even been playing some great stuff too. Having said that…
We have Mark McAdam and other local pundits and reporters slagging off the fans for not keeping the faith earlier in the season. We’ve got every other pundit with wide eyes and expressions of disbelief muttering “my lord, to keep THAT squad up. Christ. He should be manager of the season!”
Kindly go **************** yourselves. They’re going to sit there in their little media boxes and tell us that our squad is that much worse than Southampton’s, Everton’s, Forests, and Leeds’? Our squad is probably, on the whole, bottom 6 in terms of quality (lower and maybe higher before and after the Jan. window). I wouldn’t have been “surprised” to go down, but I’d have been disappointed, as even before January we were more than capable of staying up with some confidence and sensible tactics.
The way these pundits are patronisingly carrying on like this, refusing to give our players or Gary O’Neil himself any sensible credit is infuriating. It’s not a miracle that we’ve stayed up, a lot of it is down to Gary himself learning on the job and phasing out some his awful habits. We were fucking dreadful for a good 4 months, DESPITE the quality of players we often had at our disposal. When we were at our worst, we were missing all of our best players - the same players written off as being, obviously, THE worst squad in the entire league.
And with tweets like McAdam’s it goes the other way. Obviously the people with O’Neil clown profile pics on Twitter and being abusive should feel very stupid. But the fans, generally speaking, know what they’re looking at. From Late October to March, the football we were playing was piss poor, and we were grossly underperforming.
Not sure where I’m going with this tbh. O’Neil at the end of the day has done a brilliant job, and I’m glad we stuck with him. But he’s not this messianic figure that all these pundits are making him out to be, rescuing our simple-minded championship dross squad from certain doom. And all of the 90% of people that thought he’d relegate us aren’t bad people or stupid people for thinking this.
With our investment at the start of the season and in January, and in comparison to how other teams are looking, I’d expect us to finish around 16th. I imagine that’s probably where we’ll realistically end up. Mission accomplished, well done Gary. Let’s push on next year. In the meantime, these crap youtuber pundits, the dimwits on Sky, and the well meaning but smug local ones ought to remind themselves that we’re a quality team with big investment behind it and a recent legacy of being a solid, mid table club in the richest league in the world. And that it’s not entitled or ungrateful to expect more when we’re not seeing this.
If Foley is to be believed, we’re going to become even more a part of the furniture of the elite than we are now. Maybe these pundits will get onboard eventually, but I doubt it lol.
To get it out of the way, I’ve always thought that in many ways O’Neil was a very good coach on the training pitch. I loved his energy when he first took over, talking about how much of an honour it was to be the manager, how the players are more than good enough to stay up. Saying how he feels part of the club. Generally, he’s probably the most likeable of the short group of managers we’ve had since EH, and seems like a very hardworking person and a great guy, with the respect of the players.
It’s a fantastic accomplishment to have turned the season around from where Parker left us to be safe with 4 games to spare. And recently we’ve even been playing some great stuff too. Having said that…
We have Mark McAdam and other local pundits and reporters slagging off the fans for not keeping the faith earlier in the season. We’ve got every other pundit with wide eyes and expressions of disbelief muttering “my lord, to keep THAT squad up. Christ. He should be manager of the season!”
Kindly go **************** yourselves. They’re going to sit there in their little media boxes and tell us that our squad is that much worse than Southampton’s, Everton’s, Forests, and Leeds’? Our squad is probably, on the whole, bottom 6 in terms of quality (lower and maybe higher before and after the Jan. window). I wouldn’t have been “surprised” to go down, but I’d have been disappointed, as even before January we were more than capable of staying up with some confidence and sensible tactics.
The way these pundits are patronisingly carrying on like this, refusing to give our players or Gary O’Neil himself any sensible credit is infuriating. It’s not a miracle that we’ve stayed up, a lot of it is down to Gary himself learning on the job and phasing out some his awful habits. We were fucking dreadful for a good 4 months, DESPITE the quality of players we often had at our disposal. When we were at our worst, we were missing all of our best players - the same players written off as being, obviously, THE worst squad in the entire league.
And with tweets like McAdam’s it goes the other way. Obviously the people with O’Neil clown profile pics on Twitter and being abusive should feel very stupid. But the fans, generally speaking, know what they’re looking at. From Late October to March, the football we were playing was piss poor, and we were grossly underperforming.
Not sure where I’m going with this tbh. O’Neil at the end of the day has done a brilliant job, and I’m glad we stuck with him. But he’s not this messianic figure that all these pundits are making him out to be, rescuing our simple-minded championship dross squad from certain doom. And all of the 90% of people that thought he’d relegate us aren’t bad people or stupid people for thinking this.
With our investment at the start of the season and in January, and in comparison to how other teams are looking, I’d expect us to finish around 16th. I imagine that’s probably where we’ll realistically end up. Mission accomplished, well done Gary. Let’s push on next year. In the meantime, these crap youtuber pundits, the dimwits on Sky, and the well meaning but smug local ones ought to remind themselves that we’re a quality team with big investment behind it and a recent legacy of being a solid, mid table club in the richest league in the world. And that it’s not entitled or ungrateful to expect more when we’re not seeing this.
If Foley is to be believed, we’re going to become even more a part of the furniture of the elite than we are now. Maybe these pundits will get onboard eventually, but I doubt it lol.
