Lee Johnson

[Phileas Fogg]

On 21/12/2017 at 14:12, RumRed said:

Who are these mythical people that will never take to him?  I'm yet to meet one, last season of course there were grumbles, this season nothing but praise.  Last season hung heavy over us for the start of this but Lee has gone through that and I'm sure all are more than happy.  I know I am.

Maybe people are a bit freer with words over the internet but there are clearly some.

Most are prepared to change their mind and judge things as they see them which is a totally realistic and normal way to view football. There’s plenty who wanted Johnson out last season who’ve changed their minds now. Nothing wrong with that.

However; there’s one or two who cant even bring themselves to give Lee any credit without qualifying it or detracting from it somehow.

I enjoy the mental gymnastics some go through in order to prevent giving Lee full credit.. ‘credit must go to the WHOLE coaching staff’ any time Lee appears to get praise was the one in vogue recently. Funny.

There’s a few on this forum who are conspicuous by their absence..

[Port Said Red]

I know anyone saying I always knew he would come good will come across as being smug, so I am prepared for the criticism. I kept likening his tenure and his working brief with that of Alan Dicks, roughly "build from within as much as possible, buy potential and fulfil it", in return you get time to do it. Dicks got time and I felt LJ needed it.

My only doubt was after the Reading game and I believe I said as much at the time, it was the fraglity of the confidence of the players that worried me. You could see it drain from them when the game went to 2-1 and I felt that this was something the Manager had to change or go. As it turned out he made changes elsewhere and solved the problem, which is great testament to him.

Strangely, I think that experience may have gained us at least 3 points this season, as I think the players may have seen themselves from that period in some of our opponents, particularly Hull City.

[Jack Dawe]

1 hour ago, Red Exile said:

I was thinking of the home match in January last season where it seemed to me that Warnock snatched a victory in a way that which made LJ look a bit wet behind the years...or at least that's how I saw it.

Delighted to have been proved wrong this year.

Managing a group of young men in such a high-pressured environment is such a subtle thing, the "things" that are missing when losing games are often intangible - it's not training pitch cones or drones or not having visited Barca or Real Madrid, or often even any football stuff, like tactics and team selection - and not immediately obvious. That Cardiff game and others last season suggested, quite clearly to me, that that group of young men did not believe in LJ, not completely.

When I say this I am thinking about how the mind works, on two levels: the bit we are conscious of, and the bit we are not. There's a lot going on in the part of the mind that is out of our conscious awareness.

When SL went to the team and asked: are you behind LJ, they all chorused "yes, of course" like most would in that situation. That's the conscious mind at work.

The capitulation v Cardiff and other games like Reading and Derby away exposed the doubts that the team had individually, and as a group, about their young head coach; their lack of complefe belief. Those doubts lurked mostly out of their conscious awareness. Those doubts manifested themselves, for me, in all those close games "("we're only losing by one goal") we kept coming second in.

Johnson is a good enough coach to get the team ahead in the Cardiff game, and others like Reading and Derby, but something was missing to see those games out, and in all the other games we were struggling in. Something was missing, something he hadn't got to the bottom of, and it was threatening to wreck everything, for him, and for us.

What that was, I now think/believe/guess, was the Tomlin thing. He had talked about "picking a team I can trust" a number of times but kept using Tomlin, going back to him, kept trying to make it work with him.  Kept giving him chances, making allowances for him. And it wasn't working. I would imagine the players were thinking, why does he keep playing this ****? He hasn't given me/so and so as many chances.

LJ had not confronted, once and for all, what needed to be confronted.

LJ dithered over Tomlin - he was the club record signing at the time, after all; he is keen not to waste SL's/the club's money - until we lost at Preston, then he was decisive, his mind was made up, and Tomlin didn't start another game. He appeared two more times, both as sub, on 88 mins v QPR at 2:0 up, and he was given a 30 minute send off - more for us, probably - v Birmingham. A game that didn't matter.

Post Preston,the team played very much like they are playing this season. They were playing with togetherness, energy and spirit: the stuff you need to "see out" games and overcome the odds (along with the football "stuff": tactics, organisation, substitutions etc).

It wasn't football stuff that Johnson was getting wrong - he knows plenty about this - it was "people" stuff (the stuff of any workplace), and "group stuff," stuff a bloke in his mid 30s can only know and learn by experience (and getting it wrong before you can get it right), this was our problem last season - what we witnessed in that Cardiff crumble - in my humble opinion, making lots of guesses and the odd leap of faith based on what we have been told by LJ and SL since, and what they have done (ie, shipping the record signing out, quick sharp) too.

Tomlin dealt with, spirit and togetherness restored, an inspired positional switch for Bobby Reid (and a couple of very good signings) and  we now get to see this "highly thought of" coach we were told about, and his excellent, progressive football, as his Oldham team once hinted at here a few years back.

The doubts amongst the squad are nowhere to be seen and the belief in their head coach and his methods are obvious (Marlon Pack matching Pogba, more than! Unbelievable!)

Until the next intangible problem or obstacle.....

[Sparkz 76]

In all honesty if he wasn’t a Johnson SL would have probably sacked him as a non attachment manager would not have lasted the bad run. Big LJ fan now and he mega proved me wrong well done Lee

[bcfcredandwhite]

On 21/12/2017 at 14:12, RumRed said:

Who are these mythical people that will never take to him?  I'm yet to meet one, last season of course there were grumbles, this season nothing but praise.  Last season hung heavy over us for the start of this but Lee has gone through that and I'm sure all are more than happy.  I know I am.

There are a few on Not606 mate - although most don’t post much these days. 

One of them once said he would never go near Ashton Gate whilst the ‘poisonous’ Johnson’s has any association with the club. He does post congratulatory comments but when pressed he either doesn’t reply or simply says ‘my feelings on LJ are well known’  

 

[downendcity]

They say you learn more from.your mistakes than your successes.

If this is the case then LJ's career as "manager" here might well be defined by the losing run a year ago.

Not forgetting either SL formulating the long term plan for the club, which is now coming together, after the mistakes and poor decisions (By his own admission) of previous years.

Allied to that SL'S decision to stick by LJ, against all pre-conceived football logic, and we have 2 men at the helm with both the courage of their convictions and a genuine for and belief in the club.

I also think the spirit the out the squad and club is partly borne out of what they went through last season.

 

[Lanterne Rouge]

2 hours ago, downendcity said:

They say you learn more from.your mistakes than your successes.

If this is the case then LJ's career as "manager" here might well be defined by the losing run a year ago.

Not forgetting either SL formulating the long term plan for the club, which is now coming together, after the mistakes and poor decisions (By his own admission) of previous years.

Allied to that SL'S decision to stick by LJ, against all pre-conceived football logic, and we have 2 men at the helm with both the courage of their convictions and a genuine for and belief in the club.

I also think the spirit the out the squad and club is partly borne out of what they went through last season.

 

That was more important than I think we will ever know. The lessons LJ and the squad learned from that run were invaluable.

No-one involved with the club will ever permit that to happen again.

[Red Skin]

@Jack Dawe.  Agree with the Tomlin thing, but by his own admission LJ did over complicate the coaching last season and tinkered too much with the starting 11.  

Another pre-season under his belt without the disruptive influence of Tomlin, and with his own young and supportive coaching staff have also worked wonders along with growing maturity and professionalism of his team.