That was the season, that was. When did it go wrong?

ErikthViking

ErikthViking

UTC Legend
Yesterday was not fun, the season ended not with bang, but a whimper.

But, yesterday was just the culmination of the season. When did it start to smell funny? Was there a moment which can be identified that was the tipping point? Or were there many factors that contributed to a disappointing season? Or was it just wrong, all wrong from the start?

I think that it is a mixture of all three.

On August the 2nd, I posted this question:

Do you want to see JT as next Bournemouth manger?

a) no
b) never
c) It's the end of the world as we know it.

By the way, that is NOT an 'I told you so.' I was actually looking for this poll, when I found my post from earlier in the season.

Tindall.JPG

My guess, now is that many people will say, Monty Python-style, "Well I didn't vote for him!"

Apart from appointing the wrong manager, and having lost Wilson in the summer, the big question was who was going to bag the goals?

So here is my first point. We were lulled into a false sense of security by being the last team to suffer defeat (at one of the relegated sides, naturally). But up to that point, we had drawn five out of ten and only scored more than one on two occasions: the narrow opening day win against Blackburn and a the rather decent win at Coventry. Another part of building that false sense was the second 3-1 at St. Andrews and the great comeback at home to Reading. Perhaps a Tindall side did have fight and fire after all?

But, and this is my second point, we had a huge number of under-achievers in the first half of the season. Solanke was regularly getting caught in possession with his back to goal, Phil Bill was often on walkabout, Lerma had joined the peace corps, Stan, Dan and Brooks were carrying injuries and King, well, we know about want-aways, don't we? But despite this, we hit four at Barnsley and five at home to Huddersfield. On the 2nd of Jan we were third in the table, two points behind Swansea with a match in hand and the highest scorers in the division. Maybe the futures' bright, the futures orange, after all?

Third point, even when Dan and Phil Bill woke up after the New Year, we still could not break down a defence that parked the bus with two solid ranks of four. The losing streak, that cost Tindall the job bears witness to that. Pearson was an inspired signing, but Long and Wilshere? Gosling? Never should have - certainly not to a team pushing for promotion like Watford.

Woodgate. Well, he could hardly be blamed for the loss to the Wendies at home after only a day in the job. Seven wins in a row is impressive and during nine wins out of eleven, we beat Watford, Swansea and Norwich, the last two comprehensively. But point number four is telling. Tindall lost six of 26, Woodgate lost eight of 22.

Conclusion. A season of highs and lows. But the highs simply punctuated a season that was highly inconsistent and only served to deceive the eye into thinking that we were worthy promotion candidates. Even in matches that we won, we still carried certain players. The lack of effort combined with poor tactics, at times, was infuriating.

The future. It isn't Woodgate and we need a significant number outs and ins to be equipped for next season.

The other future, government and corona permitted, we get to be there. Bring it on.
 
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It was the same malaise that got us relegated and cost our best manager ever his job. Apart from Wilson this was pretty much the same team that was turning over Everton and Leicester when it really looked as if we could actually go down. One point from West Ham on the last day would have saved us and sent Villa down. On paper this squad should have walked this division.
The fact of the matter is we were not a team. Nobody was prepared to dig in and play for their team mates. It was evident even during those early season wins. A cursory hand bump for the goal scorer. No smiles. They just couldn’t wait to get it over with and get back to there mansions and lambos. There was no on field leadership (sorry Steve Cook) to get in the faces of the slackers.
There was nobody in the stadium to give them earache or alternatively stay and give them a standing ovation after a good win.
The higher club management must shoulder some of the blame too. No ambition other than pocketing the cash. How can you expect the players to buy into a project when there was no investment on the infrastructure ?
Like Covid has done to most of our lives, it was a year wasted which we will never get back.
 
Problem - lack of leadership in the club and on the field. Blake looks like an absent centre, while onfield no one’s been able to rally the team on those many dismal days when we played lateral, walking football.

Positives: the second-rank coaches seem to be getting results with junior teams and perhaps there are players to promote to the first-team squad. And - just maybe CCV, if he stays, could be that onfield leader.
 
Just want to go down there and bang some heads together ! Half a billion pounds pocketed over 5 years and nothing to show. It's disgraceful . So many opportunities to cement the future if this club for generations to come but none taken. Money p1ssed up the wall. We can be angry with the players. We can be frustrated with the managerial appointments but ultimately next season the ire of the supporters should be shown to the upper management, directors and executives of the club for failing so badly. Sack the board ! Let them know how theyve failed the supporters ! We're too happy to be tinpot. We're too happy to laugh about hand dryers not working in toilets. We accept the poor quality of customer service yet we pay possibly more than all the other clubs in this division for ST's and matchday tickets. We accept sub standard catering facilities and grumble about having to queue to get into the supporters club for a beer. We accept the bully boy tactics from our stewards. The ridiculous and time consuming body and bag checks. Why? Why we do we put up with this sh1t ? We love our club and we return( most of us) year after year to put up with being made a joke of. This club needs a major overhaul and we, the supporters, need to instigate change. We deserve answers as to what has gone wrong. Why no new stadium. Why no training ground. Why the decision to pay over inflated fees for players, their wages and their agents.
We need to make our voices heard and get this board of directors out !
Supporters make a difference. Let's make a difference to our club. Be heard ! Don't stand for the sh1t they fob us off with!
SACK THE BOARD!
 
It started to go wrong when Eddie lost control..halfway through Last Season.

Kamikaze signings not bearing fruit.

Haemorrhaging money to Defoe...at Rangers.
Staff mismanaging /diverting funds I suspect..Little Empire ventures..yachts etc.

Dressing room 'divisions' overlapping into this season {( maybe Racial stuff to do with BLM...I'm not ruling anything out...:throw:)(I'm sorry but things need probing when They tell us Nothing)}

Then this season ;
..Sacking JT in a Panic!

Letting Gosling go...to Watford! Could of been useful yesterday - 'big game' player...experience of Scouse derbies etc.


Players not wanting to be in the Championship...because they are 'PL standard '...embarrassed to be treading on Wycombe turf....or be seen in Bristol or Luton.

Not using the talented youth....or introducing them one at a time for natural progression when someone like Francis or Pugh were tired and finishing.

Anything JW did or did not do... was purely coincidental ...but he did well considering the crap going down under the pine trees!

I could expand on all that but I'm gonna get enough stick for now....and others 'closer' to the club will have some more accurate Trig I daresay!
Walk them dogs!
 
Anyways...things'll be happening on't Monday Morn...
.....Agent McAgent and the Agents and The Knights Templar Reps will have a Gig at Our Beloved Dean Court...(where the good and hearty men of Boscombe St Johns once ventured out of Pokesdown and handed over the thing to Cooper Dean.)

Monday Money Smoke will permeate the Pine Tree Air....Car Park heaving with Lear Jets, Lerma Taxis and Ferraraghinis . F√ck It !

And Me or my ghost will one day sing from our National League South ground on Promotion Day...¶ We are National League...we are National League ...¶
 
Reality is when things go wrong it’s rarely one factor but a combination of factors happening at the same time.

I voted for Tindall in erik’s vote but would have been happy for a new manager to address a big slip in player’s attitudes the previous season as old Cherry says. None of the mentioned options back then or in feb when JT left filled me with excitement. That’s on the recruitment department to source a quality option.

Given the short turnaround in seasons, JT seemed like a reasonable option. I have no insight how influential JT was in dressing room but denim/Hughes/Blake would know. Thus if it was a crazy decision doomed to failure then they would know. If they ignored the signs then that’s on them.

As a rookie manager JT was bound to make mistakes but did turn around games at half time so must have had some motivational powers eg Reading was spectacular. Went with a new system with 3 at the back that players bought into but was easy to play against without the right personnel and JT abandoned it. Probably should have done it earlier.

Dont think JW is a great manager but players knuckled down after Barnsley defeat but took foot off gas at end of season that sowed our downfall by putting us against Brentford the pick of the play off teams.

Of all the factors that went wrong think they players get the biggest criticism. Too many games they played as individuals without enough effort to do the grunt work, thought they could turn up to play pretty football.

But this was also a culture shock for some players after the prem seasons. Some players clearly suffered from the intensity of scheduling which was intense like no other season.

I do think in part this reflects the recruitment of Eddie where I think some of the new signings lacked the resilience of the old guard. Losing the old Eddie dna with a dozen players leaving the club (in contest to Watford and Norwich) further eroded the resilience of the group and I felt a lack of composure did us yesterday. JT wanted to change the culture of the group so signings like CCV and Pearson and attempt to get ritchie reflected this.

So a long post. If people want to put the blame on JT then it’s all about opinions so fine. For me he is a convenient scapegoat. If the club thinks it just about the manager then next season will end in failure too
 
You can trace it back to last summer. The shock of relegation and Eddie leaving, and what happened next and the lack of direction that followed.

Demin told the club to use what resources it had already been given to do the job. That meant selling to balance the books, no recruitment for replacements, promoting manager and assistant from within. That is all quite within Max's prerogative of course, he's been an incredible owner for us. But it did limit what the club could do last summer in preparation for this season.

The squad was a case of seeing what pieces of a jigsaw puzzle where left in the box, and then figuring out how to fit them together. That's not the optimal way to build a promotion side. Then that side faced a culture shock in this league.

The manager left with this puzzle wasn't sure what he wanted to do, didn't have an experience of picking a system/team to fall back on. JT tried every combination and often changed even things that looked like they kinda worked. I think JT was setup to fail in many ways, and I felt and feel sorry for the guy. I don't think he was ever going to be the answer long term, but I don't think it's all his fault either.

It's stems from higher up the club hierarchy, and they need to take a look at themselves and see where we can put things right.
 
It looked like JT was doing an OK job at the start of the season. He set out to restore spirit and it looked like he had. Danjuma and Begovic came back to play central roles. When we got it together we tore teams apart, and dug in to beat the bigger teams.

Then when it started to go wrong we ceased to be able to get the ball forward through midfield, we drew with and lost to a series of mediocre teams. The game-changing players disappeared from games or would get the ball with 11 players in front of them. And if poor spirit had been covered over, that changed. King was agitating, but several others probably didn't want to be there and were making the dressing room a nasty place. By January it looked like JT had well and truly "lost the dressing room".

Woodgate came in and made us a bit more direct and was good in front of the cameras. Hopefully he added credibility in the dressing room. In the early games we had patches of early-season world-beating form, but often he matched up our formation and style against our opponents - we REALLY lumped it against direct teams. Moving Billing forward was his tactical masterstroke / discovery. In our run of 7 victories we did what we hadn't done earlier, roll over the weak teams. But against good teams we struggled - ground it out against Watford, and we were looking very exposed against Norwich before they had a man sent off, and Brentford looked a class above in the league game.

To me, player morale was always lurking just below the surface. Billing looked poor when subbed or asked to play a different position. Who knows how many out of Brooks, Danjuma, Lerma, Smithy, Solanke, Kelly or Lewis Cook remained against their will? The "attitude" we showed looked like the fragile false aggression of a team of individuals, rather than the solid will of a team with togetherness.

Woody doesn't seem to have the ability to maximise these talents. We were back to endlessly playing across the back. To me, Wilshere knitted the play together and enabled us to keep the ball, but he and Pearson were rotated. And our subs were as bad as they ever were under Eddie - eg the evolving mess we ended up with yesterday.
 
The truth is that this may be "The best squad AFCB have ever had" but it doesn't mean it's a very good one. The transfer policy before relegation has ended up with a squad that's unbalanced and constantly at odds with itself. There were too many young or injury prone players brought in for the future and not enough tough, experienced ones. And players like Mepham and Kelly obviously thought they were taking a step up so to find themselves back in the Championship must've been very disappointing and certainly neither of them seemed very happy for much of the season.

Despite Brooks being injured last season they just brought in unproven winger Riquelme on loan as a replacement. Then in mid-season they buy yet another DM so ended up with Billing, Cook, Lerma and Pearson all asked to do the same job with not a playmaker amongst them. Billing obviously wasn't happy about this and has a reputation as a disruptive influence in the dressing room and coincidentally(?) squad harmony only happened after JW moved him forward. Okay, Pearson's been great but why keep Lerma? He didn't do enough in the PL to warrant keeping him.

And why keep King? Like Fraser, he'd made it very obvious he didn't want to stay so why not learn from what happened with Fraser and let him go. He spent his career here playing second fiddle to Wilson and then has to watch him getting his dream transfer whilst he was denied his move to Man U. I wasn't happy with his attitude, but you'd have to be a saint not to feel resentment. Solanke, for me, has very much found his level but his only replacement is Surridge who is still a league above his atm. So a lack of foresight that they tried to remedy by bringing in non-scoring striker Long. And on top of all that you have a very unbalanced wage structure that seems almost deliberately designed to ferment resentment between players.

What changed? Well, Billing's happy and JW seems to have made them realise their best hope of PL football was if they played to their potential. Too late, unfortunately.
 
If JW does get the bums rush out of Kings Park...
...I want Frank Bruno in charge..cus I like Frank I dus...he is Frank and Honest...and he could whup some pussy butt in that dressing room !
 
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I don’t think anyone actually wanted JT as their first choice, but I’m definitely one of many who was JT in after that West Ham friendly and a couple of decent wins.
 
The group of players were ultimately just that, a group. As a team the focus was lost from the promotion side. Players looking at where their respective careers where going rather than where the team was going and I suspect once our top players thought it was time to move on then this filtered through the teams general attitude.

As a club we were small fry in the Premier leagueplayers naturally see a progression at some point. Eddie was different with his love of the club. Ultimately, and understandably, the new generation of players didn’t share that to the same degree.

The successful Bournemouth teams spirit was forged in a most incredible way and that was a magic ingredient in their success.

For me team spirit is key and the winning mentality and single minded team focus just wasn’t there in the right way this season.
 
Have I missed something? Have Boscombe just been relegated? I thought that they had got to the play offs and gained a two goal advantage before events overtook them. Only once before in their history have they finished higher in the Championship. Still, have your moans and get it out of your system. Think of how the fans of Sunderland must be feeling. Now, that is a big club underachieving!
 
Like many have said many many issues BUT started with the arrogance of not playing warm up games when the Prem re started, the JT appointment when in fact both the end of EH and the appointment of JT needed a Director of football as did the appointment of JW...why? Because the board are clueless non football bods
 
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