Robinsfan

13 minutes ago, Puckle_red said:

The mess Ashton and LJ left behind following years of overspending meant NP had to pull a rabbit out of a hat to keep us competitive. This was really the first season where we were less hamstrung financially and in typical City fashion had a lot of injuries. 

We weren't in a financial position to he hiring and firing coaches left right and centre. Then, once Nige had the opportunity to push on and improve us, we sacked him at the first sign of a bad run (during an injury crisis).

Context is important. QPR might've been playing crap football but they didnt have a crap squad, very different scenarios.

QPR absolutely did have a crap squad not as bad as it was under Ainsworth but certainly worse than ours. The financial angle is always odd to me since Pearson spent a very similar amount as Blackburn had during his tenure, and even before his tenure we outspent them. They also play more academy players than us yet they challenged for the playoffs while Pearson finished 17th and 14th decent achievements for sure clear slow progress but not amazing achievements like they're treated here. When you apply context to every other club Pearson's achievements become very mediocre. Which I stress again is fine it is the club we are I just thought we had higher ambitions than that.

My final point towards this thread in general is that we should hope Sheffield Wednesday goes down and hire Danny Rohl that right there is a manager who is working miracles with nothing.

34 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Try adding some context, then you might see it.

The reduction of the wage bill, the squad, and the injuries? Is that unique to us are we somehow special in this division? I'm not saying Pearson was a bad manager he was just mediocre and his tenure was mediocre. That's fine if that's our ambition the Lansdowns should've sat on their hands and continued buying low and selling high with a manager who was never gonna take us up or down. I just genuinely thought we had higher ambitions than this. Unfortunate. There are plenty of clubs that had far less, who were in far worse positions who did more than what we did under Pearson because they had a top-quality coach. 

My main point is that since we came up to the championship we've given every manager far too long in the job. That's all of them. I hope that with these recent developments, we've finally caught up to every other club in the division unless we now go and give Manning 2 years of midtable and poor football.

Just now, Barrs Court Red said:

Well I don’t really see a “clamouring”.  I do see people mournfully acknowledging the progress and togetherness that we’ve lost, in contrast to this shit show.  
 

A change of approach has worked for QPR. It hasn’t for us for the last 4? Managers
 

I can see why Pearson was binned mind,  I’m not immune to the various reasons and factors that led to the decision. 

I can acknowledge we've lost progress compared to where we were under Pearson to now but where we were under Pearson was quite clear after 3 years; midtable and we were never going to get promoted even if we were to give Pearson another 10 years. Then for the first time in eons, the board decided to show a little ambition and sack him and get someone new in. It hasn't worked and it looks like it won't but it was finally good to have a little ambition shown going to a manager who appeared to be on the up. The board needs to own up to their mistake with the Manning hire and find someone else it's not the end of the world as long as we keep our academy and recruitment going which with the signings of Stokes, Murphy, and Bird which seems like they were going to happen irrespective of the head-coach. Nearly every club has been hiring and firing head coaches like it's nothing in the championship the last couple of seasons what are we too good for that?

2 minutes ago, Barrs Court Red said:

Here’s one for your list @joe jordans teeth

Weird one considering I want Manning gone soon. Clamoring over mediocrity is crazy to me when clubs in far worse positions than us eclipse what we've spent 3 years building in 4 months.

6 minutes ago, Fuber said:

I mean sure.

But do you trust our board with the project of that breathtaking scope, decision making, common sense?

Well, that is the problem. No matter the head coach the board has to have that capability or we'll never go up. With the things I'm seeing the recruitment side seems to be right or at least heading their players such as Stokes, Bird, and Murphy these are great signings with a clear identity that are being made irrespective of who our head coach is. Now we have to get the headcoach right, I still believe Manning was the right kind of manager to target, it clearly hasn't gone well and he should have a very short amount of time to turn that around before we move on to someone else. 

A counterpoint to the Pearson clamoring again with a point I've made in many threads today. QPR were dead-set for 24th under Ainsworth; since Cifuentes has joined (22 games I think now) they're now 10th in the form table a side who were in dire straights far far worse a position than we have ever been since we got promoted to the championship. We are lucky Cifuentes wanted to wait a little and finish things in Sweden rather than moving straight to QPR at the start of the season. They've just beaten Leicester and likely they'll be fighting for playoffs next season with the right signings. It took him 4 months not the 3 years it took Pearson and we are still no closer to the playoffs. Why do we settle for such mediocrity? Pearson was mediocre and he's exclaimed like a hero around here I just truly don't get it.

18 minutes ago, 38MC said:

So you want us to give him too much time? 

The writing is on the wall. He’s lost the fans, lost the dressing room, out of ideas, blaming other people and absolving himself of any responsibility, and has not shown in his previous roles an ability to stop the rot. 
 

Hes had 20 games, the rest of the season and 10 into next would be a full seasons worth of games - in excess of an average tenure of a championship manager. 

Yeah, you're right. If by the end of the season the results haven't turned he should go that is kind of what I alluded to. My general point is that we have given every single manager we've had in this stint in the championship too much time.

12 minutes ago, Fuber said:

That's a point I fundamentally disagree with. It can be an indicator - sure, but much of that then comes down to other skill-sets longer term, I.e. Recruitment, squad-building, strategic decision-making.

Farke (Norwich), Wagner (Huddersfield), Frank (Brentford), Hughton (Brighton), Jokanovic (Fulham), all promoted two-three years into tenures after slow starts in their first seasons of clearing deadwood.

"Recruitment, squad-building, strategic decision-making." All of these things mainly done by CEOs and directors of footballs, not the head coach. Where I was leading with my idea is that the club needs to have a general idea and fit to their squad building irrespective of manager. That is what Brighton have and you can see that every time they've changed head coach they've only gotten better. I can see we are attempting that at least now finally catching on late as usual. Which is why I'm fine with the sacking of Pearson and while I'll be fine with the sacking of Manning (if he doesn't turn it around) we shouldn't be signing players to fit a manager we should be signing a manager to fit our style of play and style of recruitment and even as Pearson has left we've been signing players that seem to match what we've been doing the past couple years. Our Project should be bigger than a singular manager just like Brighton, Brentford, and Fulham have all successfully implemented.

Sorry for the constant edits but I wanted to add Luton in here another team that clearly last season it didn't matter at all that they lost Nathan Jones as they only got better. Obviously complete conjecture but I don't think they'd be in the premier league if Southampton hadn't committed the equivalent of footballing Seppuku hiring Nathan Jones. 

Posted this in another thread but the one reason I’ll defend the Pearson sacking is because it was the right idea and if come 10-15 games into next season (or this season ends in a disaster) it isn’t working with Manning sack him. We have always been a club that gives managers too much time we did it with Lee Johnson, we did it with Pearson, we did it with Holden. You don’t get promoted off of “longstanding managers” Coventry had their chance last year with the best player in the division Gyokeres and blew it too a team that had their manager for 6 months who was a clear and obvious improvement over Nathan Jones from practically minute one. Same with Nottingham Forest. There’s a reason if you look at how long managers have been in the job in the championship it’s absolutely tiny. It’ll be obvious from the first couple months if a manager has got it or not.

It’s obvious with QPR and Cifuentes for example, if you look at the form table since he came in QPR are 10th. Not bad for team some labelled one of the worst in championship if they stay up and get the right signings this summer they’ll be pushing playoffs. Ainsworth would’ve had them 24th. They were and are in an infinitely worse position than we were when Pearson, Johnson, Manning and Holden all got their jobs. So what’s the difference?

I hope finally we’ll be a team that moves managers on quickly. Gave Lee Johnson too much time and to a certain extent gave Pearson too much time and if Manning doesn’t turn it around don’t give him too much time. Teams don’t give managers time anymore because frankly it’s a waste of time. There’s one manager in this division that’s been “building slowly” and that’s Mark Robins and they’ll likely never get promoted. Sack and move quick and you might strike a gem like Wednesday and QPR did with their managers. Luton lost their manager and got better and got promoted. Forest sacked their manager after 7 games didn’t give him “time” and got promoted. There’s hundreds of examples who’s the last team to get promoted with a “longstanding manager?”. We are a perennially outdated club always running off trends from years ago. 

Not to mention the absolute plethora of examples with Premier league teams. The only reason Leicester are in this division is because they decided to give Brendan Rogers “time” when it clearly wasn’t working.

Would feel awful if I was a Leicester fan should've been out of sight.

3 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

Which also means there's rarely a week where they might all drop points. 

I know people want to get excited, but honestly what I'm doing is getting excited for next season whilst enjoying the end of this one in a stress-free situation.

I will say. It's crazy fine margins. We've won and lost a lot of games by a single goal this season, if just a couple of those had gone in our favour then we'd be right in that pack.

Again, for me a reason to look forward to 2024/25 when I think we have a great chance of being consistently in that pack that floats between 5th and 8th. 

The Stoke, Coventry, Southampton (A) and Millwall (H) games come to mind for me. But obviously, games like that aren't unique to us.

6 hours ago, Steve Watts said:

Watching all lonely from a Wigan hotel room I was delighted with what I saw tonight. 

There is an air of caution to be mindful of though, and that is that we played the same way in the first half on Saturday and the same way as we did against Watford. That, last night, was absolutely not Manning-ball and showed that our strengths lie in other tactics. My worry is that against a struggling side like QPR we revert back to MB and try and bore the opposition into submission.

I just hope he finally realises that taking the game to the opposition and quick counter attacks is when we look at our best. 

Keep up with that style towards the end of the season and a little glimmer of hope starts to spark.

In terms of players, is anyone else getting bored of saying "Joe Williams was outstanding today"? The man is possessed and needs to be signed up immediately.

There is a reason why teams that specialise in transition football struggle against teams that are lesser than them the biggest example is the Man utd of recent years (mainly Ole's UTD) who similarly to us tended to struggle in games where their opponents are happy to give up the ball and sit in a low/medium block. It's part of the reason they hired a manager like Ten Hag and likely part of the reason we hired a manager like Manning. You have to be able to be patient, comfortable with the ball, pen teams in, and build a degree of control to break down teams who sit in a block especially when it's a well-coached block a manager like Cifuentes will employ.  We will press high and we will obviously look to attack quickly in transition but the likelihood is we'll struggle to find as many moments in transition as we did yesterday and that's where as you say "Manning ball" will have to flourish.

The likelihood is most fans probably don't watch enough of the other keepers in the championships to get an idea of how good they are. The only goalkeeper I've heard being universally lauded in this division is Viktor Johansson, but that's primarily as a shot-stopper.

8 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Problem is we've chopped and changed already.

4-3-3/4-2-3-1, to a back 3..then back to a 4-3-3 again.

Bell at wingback is ludicrous too.

It smacks of a less than coherent strategy. No reflection on the signings but..

We play a 3-2-5 in possession and a 4-4-2/4-2-4 out of possession and have done since QPR away. That's it that's all that matters. If we played a back 4 or a back 3 we would still attack and defend like that.

A youth prospect from the Man City academy seems to be very different from a youth prospect from any other academy these days. Shea Charles never kicked a ball for a senior team then signed for Southampton for £10 million plenty of other examples as well quite excited about this one seems like an injury kept him out of the team in Belgium so that's always a worry.

I saw a passing map of the game last night, and it showed that we pretty much played no passes into Conway at all. Conway's biggest weakness for me is receiving the ball back to goal. It seems most of the time if the central defender follows him, he'll lose the ball. This was shown especially against Millwall at the gate where the defender practically just ran through him (I think a couple of them were fouls, but it's the championship). This makes it difficult for us to progress the ball centrally. An 'easy' solution to this is just to buy a big striker, but then at this level, you are always trading strengths and weaknesses, so we'll be losing out on something else. I think, for Conway, it'll come with experience, but his contract is winding down, and if he doesn't sign in the summer, he'll likely leave. I can't see him being a lone striker for many teams in the league above or for any of the teams around us, and two natural striker teams are few and far between.