McInnes on City - uncomfortable reading...

[milo1111]

1 hour ago, Aaron-Bcfc said:

Hahaha bitter bitter man.

I don't care how much of a shambles the club was, how many players we had when he came in, (surely you'd take a look at the squad you were about to manage). I'm sure McInnes was constrained, but let's not forget he had 2 million to spend and rather than invest in a competent defence he blew it on 2 forwards.

But why would he sign a good defender when he had the God Liam Fontaine available? His inability to drop him was possibly the worst managerial decision I have ever witnessed, and it happened week after week after week. Not to mention playing Jon Stead left mid and Ricky Foster (what a great signing by the way) in centre mid. Also who was that terrible winger Yannick Bolasie that he was too scared to play in the same side as Adomah?..

Awful manager. Stick to the SPL.

This. We were a shambles behind the scenes, we were overpaying crap players, but even so he was a joke.

How can the board be blamed for the following.. He didnt rate pitman and froze him out and sold him back to bornemouth for £80k. Bizarre. Didnt rate/play bolaise...Persisted with the shell shocked fonts.Signed marc wilson.... signed Foster... signed jody morris..absolute joker. Obviously has an eye for a player

Stick to the mickey mouse league mcinnes.

[Swede]

Going on about inheriting a large squad on big wages?  This is the same McInnes who brought in the likes of Marc Wilson, Richard Foster, Stephen McManus and Matthew Bates all either woefully inadequate or well past their sell by date AND he signed McManus TWICE (as if once wasn't enough) and gave Wilson an option to stay longer once he reached a certain amount of games (which he took up)

In hindsight its very easy to blame others and gloss over your own short comings and I'm afraid for him all that it really shows is that he was woefully out of his depth and that managing in England is much more tougher than it is in Scotland.

 

[Lorenzos Only Goal]

2 hours ago, Olé said:

Didn't see this posted anywhere - interesting reading - from The Times:

“I needed simplicity after Bristol City, which was an absolute ... I can’t say it,” he says. “After Bristol I just needed to strip everything right back, and do the job the way any football manager is supposed to do his job.
“Bristol City had fought relegation for three or four seasons prior to me. I kept the club up in 2012 and, looking back now, that was when I was in my strongest position there. At the end of that season I should have been kicking and screaming to finally get things done properly at that club.
“We had players haemorrhaging money at Ashton Gate, earning 14k or 15k a week which the club couldn’t afford. But I wasn’t convinced the club wanted to deal with the situation. I had four different managers’ signings in the dressing room. It was incredible.
“I remember one of my first days at training; all these players parked their cars and came over the hill towards me in their red training gear. There was maybe 40 or 50 of them — it was like watching Zulus coming towards me. I had to try to ship loads of them out on loan and get the squad down to an acceptable level.
“We managed to keep the club up in 2012, having been way adrift when I arrived there. The board had said, ‘if we go down with Derek McInnes, we’ll come back with Derek McInnes’. I had regiments of players I had to move on, but these guys had nowhere to go. Bristol City was Utopia to them — they were on great money. The club was vastly over-paying its players by thousands of pounds per week.
“Everything at Bristol was a mess, including some of the posturing for power in the boardroom. That’s why I said, at Aberdeen, I just needed simplicity. I needed to get back to doing what a football manager does.
“Bristol City taught me one key lesson — when things are going your way, and you are hot, then insist there and then on getting things done. Because it can all change so quickly. You go from a king to a clown.”

 

I needed to manage in an easy not very challenging league more like.  40 or 50 my ass we used 31 players that season, and we had some good ones Cisse stands out, the guy was out of his depth and ran back to Scotland with his tail between his legs, the SPL is a tiny weak league with a few good sides in it.  Over paying players fair enough but lets not forget he signed the undroppable Foster who was dreadful.

[Lorenzos Only Goal]

9 minutes ago, Swede said:

Going on about inheriting a large squad on big wages?  This is the same McInnes who brought in the likes of Marc Wilson, Richard Foster, Stephen McManus and Matthew Bates all either woefully inadequate or well past their sell by date AND he signed McManus TWICE (as if once wasn't enough) and gave Wilson an option to stay longer once he reached a certain amount of games (which he took up)

In hindsight its very easy to blame others and gloss over your own short comings and I'm afraid for him all that it really shows is that he was woefully out of his depth and that managing in England is much more tougher than it is in Scotland.

 

Exactly signed some absolutely crap players to this massive squad!.

[BabylonSisters]

1 hour ago, Olé said:

I've given it an hour or two and am quite surprised no one has objected to DMCs comment that we had players on 14-15k a week. I've not been ITK since the start of the century, but a lot of people have been on here regularly declaring that (David James aside) we just don't go over 10k. Wage structure etc. Who is right?

By the way, if anyone is so moved by this exposé to want to wear a Derek McInnes RUN DMC t-shirt, I still have about sixty of the damn things propping up my pop-up warehouse of #SouthBristol gear. Just go to www.bsthree.co.uk (ha)

Baldock was generally reckoned to be on about 20k per week, and Tomlin is on at least 15k per week. I'm sure that Baker, on loan from a Premier League club, is on more than 10k per week as well.

[spudski]

I read a quote from Alex Ferguson, who said words along the lines of... 'The position and results of a team, over a few years, often reflect what is going on behind the scenes...it shows the 'health' of a club to the core'.

Whilst that cannot be the case 100%, I agree with the sentiment.

I've banged on about how any manager would struggle here...and that has been for a reason.

In the past, players knew they were onto a good thing coming here...managers came and went, and often muttered after leaving, that things were not as they seem.

Word gets around...football is a small world.

In the past before FFP...we were attractive because of the wages.

It's no coincidence that we have struggled to secure certain players...not just because of wages, but because players speak to people, and find out about how the Club works.

I think we are making progress...but it's far from perfect, and way off a lot of Clubs.

[REDOXO]

16 minutes ago, Lorenzos Only Goal said:

Exactly signed some absolutely crap players to this massive squad!.

 

26 minutes ago, Swede said:

Going on about inheriting a large squad on big wages?  This is the same McInnes who brought in the likes of Marc Wilson, Richard Foster, Stephen McManus and Matthew Bates all either woefully inadequate or well past their sell by date AND he signed McManus TWICE (as if once wasn't enough) and gave Wilson an option to stay longer once he reached a certain amount of games (which he took up)

In hindsight its very easy to blame others and gloss over your own short comings and I'm afraid for him all that it really shows is that he was woefully out of his depth and that managing in England is much more tougher than it is in Scotland.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Lorenzos Only Goal said:

Exactly signed some absolutely crap players to this massive squad!.

I thought this place had lost its collective marbles until I saw these two posts. Thank god gentlemen. Mc Innes knew what he had coming in. He was given money but signed garbage. Refused to play Bolaise and Pitman and fired the entire back room staff bringing in utter nonsense coaching staff. My god did you see the size of Spink. 

This man was not tied down by GJ Millen et al he was part of the problem that SOD and SC inherited. He can write himself out of this clubs history in his own mind if he likes. I won't write him out of my recollection of the period if that's ok with him or anyone else!

[Xiled]

Great article, great thread.

I agree with all the posters who say that McInnes was part of the problem, not the start of the solution.

What does hit home very clearly is why (a) we are not paying stupid wages these days and (b) why SC and the Board did not attempt promotion with a large squad last season.

We clearly have learnt a lesson since the dark days that started at the end of Gary Johnson's tenure.  And for all the doom and gloom earlier in this thread, we're fourth from bottom today - that will do me fine for this season if we're still there after 46 league games.

[Esmond Million's Bung]

Just imagine if he were to turn up tomorrow the size of our squad is no longer the Zulus at Rorkes Drift, it's now the short staffed British army, so loads of VC's but ends in defeat.

 

[Robin101]

1 hour ago, Swede said:

Going on about inheriting a large squad on big wages?  This is the same McInnes who brought in the likes of Marc Wilson, Richard Foster, Stephen McManus and Matthew Bates all either woefully inadequate or well past their sell by date AND he signed McManus TWICE (as if once wasn't enough) and gave Wilson an option to stay longer once he reached a certain amount of games (which he took up)

In hindsight its very easy to blame others and gloss over your own short comings and I'm afraid for him all that it really shows is that he was woefully out of his depth and that managing in England is much more tougher than it is in Scotland.

 

I'd genuinely managed to forget about all these players. Christ we were awful! We are in such better shape now. 

[jambodinho]

I've always felt a bit sorry for McInnes and it's always annoyed me when people refer to him as McClueless. His statement confirms what I've said all along. He had a massive job here and not enough time to do it. A bloated squad of overpaid deadwood that we couldn't give away. He is arguably the best manager we've had here in a tactical sense for a long time. Think back to the rearranged Watford game that was cancelled on boxing day. That season they were walking the division under Zola, tearing teams apart with their slick passing game. They came to the gate and del had obviously done his homework. We sat so deep including the strikers and let their centre halves have the ball. Our fans were going mental. "Get into them" and "close them down" and all sorts of insults coming from the crowd. But what we were doing was stopping Watford from tearing us a new one. Their centre halves had no forward passes on. They couldnt play their little passing triangles around our team. They resorted to hoofball and we ended up beating them with our team of overpaid useless players. It was ugly but when you are near the bottom you have to resort to concentrating on stopping your opponents from doing what they want to do instead of going out and playing your own way (something cotterill didnt know how to do) Another comment that makes me laugh is the one about Scottish football  being like watching pub teams play. True, it's a poor standard but he's still had to make his crap team better than the other crap teams in that league and he's led both St johnstone's and Aberdeen to impressive league positions. I'm sure he'll succeed in England at some point in his career and we will just be a small blot on his C.V.

[Cunnyfunt]

5 hours ago, Iron Man said:

Aaah that's why he liked putting Jon Stead and Brett Pitman on the left wing?

As well as Chris Wood. 

[Up The City!]

The rot started with GJ...

[Marina's Rolls Royce]

51 minutes ago, Just Red said:

The rot started with GJ...

The rot started when we managed to reach the Championship play-off final.

The rot set in when SL and his board felt that the only way to take this club  forward was by building a new stadium at Ashton Vale.

McInnes was always part of the problem and never part of the solution.He's done well in Scotland- big deal. S'funny how his name is rarely ever linked with a return to a the English league.

SOD and the much derided 5 pillars was the start of the solution. 

SC and a very small squad which had been assembled at little net cost was the answer. Trouble was, when SL found his club back in the Championship, he was so desperate to avoid his mistakes of the past that he made new ones: He put Pelling as a gatekeeper to our signings and we consequently signed no one and lost the hard earned momentum and now are unnecessarily fighting relegation.

There aren't many Managers who say "Yep, fair shout- I messed up" and McInnes or SC are certainly not in that category. I think I'll cringe when I eventually read SC's take on being sacked- if you think his post match loss interviews were bad then just wait for his post sacking one.

The number of comments which deride all things BCFC in this thread does make me seriously wonder why some people support BCFC and the conclusion I came to is that they probably don't. Not really.

We have much reason to be really annoyed at events but we also have plenty of reason to still feel optimistic.

In football, one individual error can lead to a chain of events resulting in failure. Both on and off the field.We won't  know if the Board have scored the losing own goal  for a while yet. They may just end up winning ugly.

 

[Taz]

What people forget with Jody Morris is that DM needed someone to organise the Saturday night and Christmas parties - he couldn't do that, manage the team and trim the squad!!!!

In all seriousness, whilst a lot of what he says is probably true, he also forgets to mention that most of his signings were absolute tosh. Add that to the fact that players were being played out of positions, played regardless of their form, and losing 7 games on the bounce, he was a large part of the problem at the time also.

Who knows, if he would have dropped Liam Fontaine rather than give him the captaincy and continue to play him despite looking like bamby on ice, he may well have returned to the form that saw Southampton bid £1m for him!!!! He needed to be taken out of the spotlight - not given an even bigger and brighter one!!!

Well done Del, let's shift the blame completely from yourself and blame the board for the whole sorry mess. How many of your signings went onto bigger and better things!? Yes the board are a large reason for the mess that we were in then, but he made the situation just as bad by signing a load of crap.

[Roe]

Pretty harsh but sounds about right.  I think most of the issues he's raised have been addressed now though so hopefully we don't spiral back into those ways.

[Portland Bill]

9 hours ago, cidered abroad said:

So if McInnes came in to a club in total disarray, when did the rot start or had it always been like that?

Gary Johnson? Danny Wilson? John Ward? Joe Jordan second time? Osman? Pulis ? Denis Smith? Lumsden? Joe Jordan first time?

I cannot believe that it was Terry Cooper or Jordan who started the downhill slide. But by the time Danny Wilson arrived it was surely well entrenched with his Galacticos?

Personally I think it was during GJ reign that it all started. We were bringing in loans on a weekly/daily basis. We had about 10 strikers and I still laugh at when we bought in a loan striker who was fourth or fifth choice at Wolves, he got injured so we went back the following week and got there sixth/seventh choice striker! It was comical.

The problem is that most look upon GJ spell here as a total success, unfortunately behind the scenes ( we didn't care at the time because we were blinded by our league position) it was the shambles that Mcinnes talks about. 

[ChippenhamRed]

9 hours ago, Monkeh said:

We can't compete in this league until the ground is finished and we price tickets correctly so we get decent crowds

Presumably by pricing tickets "correctly", you mean a reduction. If, for example, we reduce tickets by 20% to increase our crowds by 20%, how does that help us compete any better?

(this is not a defence of current ticket prices).

[Cunnyfunt]

21 minutes ago, Portland Bill said:

Personally I think it was during GJ reign that it all started. We were bringing in loans on a weekly/daily basis. We had about 10 strikers and I still laugh at when we bought in a loan striker who was fourth or fifth choice at Wolves, he got injured so we went back the following week and got there sixth/seventh choice striker! It was comical.

The problem is that most look upon GJ spell here as a total success, unfortunately behind the scenes ( we didn't care at the time because we were blinded by our league position) it was the shambles that Mcinnes talks about. 

Sam Vokes was one of them? Who was the other? Andy Keogh? 

[CliftonCliff]

27 minutes ago, Portland Bill said:

Personally I think it was during GJ reign that it all started. We were bringing in loans on a weekly/daily basis. We had about 10 strikers and I still laugh at when we bought in a loan striker who was fourth or fifth choice at Wolves, he got injured so we went back the following week and got there sixth/seventh choice striker! It was comical.

The problem is that most look upon GJ spell here as a total success, unfortunately behind the scenes ( we didn't care at the time because we were blinded by our league position) it was the shambles that Mcinnes talks about. 

Which is why one fervently hopes that Lee Johnson, unlike his father, will not be taking any player recruitment advice from his Uncle Pete....

[Fordy62]

Bitter ex manager in rant against former club shocker. I don't doubt things were bad, but Del hardly helped the situation with this cracking array of signings, did he? Possibly collectively the worse group of signings ever...

[CliftonCliff]

4 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Bitter ex manager in rant against former club shocker. I don't doubt things were bad, but Del hardly helped the situation with this cracking array of signings, did he? Possibly collectively the worse group of signings ever...

Bit harsh. They weren't all rubbish by any means. This is a recurring theme on OTIB. Slag off players who were here during a disastrous spell for the club, even though they have gone on in many cases to have perfectly respectable careers elsewhere. (Bolassie hasn't fared too badly. Kilkenny I think played pretty regularly during Preston's promotion season last year.)

This misses one of the main points of the whole thread. Players come and go, managers likewise, and both groups often do well subsequently at other clubs. The long term, common denominator underlying successive failures is not to be found in the dressing room or the manager's office. The only possible conclusion is so blindingly obvious it never ceases to amaze me that people still look to locate blame elsewhere. The commenf by Sir Alex Ferguson that someone quoted in an earlier post tells you all you need to know about the main reasons for this club's history over the last 6 or 7 years.

[Fordy62]

2 minutes ago, CliftonCliff said:

Bit harsh. They weren't all rubbish by any means. This is a recurring theme on OTIB. Slag off players who were here during a disastrous spell for the club, even though they have gone on in many cases to have perfectly respectable careers elsewhere. (Bolassie hasn't fared too badly. Kilkenny I think played pretty regularly during Preston's promotion season last year.)

This misses one of the main points of the whole thread. Players come and go, managers likewise, and both groups often do well subsequently at other clubs. The long term, common denominator underlying successive failures is not to be found in the dressing room or the manager's office. The only possible conclusion is so blindingly obvious it never ceases to amaze me that people still look to locate blame elsewhere. The commenf by Sir Alex Ferguson that someone quoted in an earlier post tells you all you need to know about the main reasons for this club's history over the last 6 or 7 years.

Indeed. But let's not pretend that McInnes is quite as innocent in this as he likes to make out. He was rubbish. But he's hardly going to take any accountability in his bashing of the club now is he?

[Mad Cyril]

7 hours ago, spudski said:

In the past, players knew they were onto a good thing coming here...managers came and went, and often muttered after leaving, that things were not as they seem.

Word gets around...football is a small world.

It's no coincidence that we have struggled to secure certain players...not just because of wages, but because players speak to people, and find out about how the Club works.

That is an interesting theory spoilt only by Lee Johnson agreeing to come back as manager.

He would be fully aware how broken this club is from his playing days and chats with his old man. Presumably therefore he only agreed to the role off the back of significant blackmail from the board - possibly involving photos of him in ladies clothes with farmyard animals at a 'special' party organised by Jody Morris.

Quote

 

[Monkeh]

1 hour ago, ChippenhamRed said:

Presumably by pricing tickets "correctly", you mean a reduction. If, for example, we reduce tickets by 20% to increase our crowds by 20%, how does that help us compete any better?

(this is not a defence of current ticket prices).

Most money in football these days comes from sponsorship deals, better sponsors will increase revenue, we are more likely to get better sponsors with 22k crowds and the ground looking full then we are with 14k crowds and the ground looking empty,

Also from next season we will have an additional revenue stream that this club has never had before being corporate boxes so theres no reason why the board can't reduce prices to a more affordable rate,

Imo you shouldn't be paying more then 20 quid to watch second division football

['Orns]

4 hours ago, Just Red said:

The rot started with GJ...

Wouldn't disagree with that. The club, admirably, wanted to look after the lads who got us so close to the Prem, and years down the line DMac was still picking up the pieces. It seemed every summer on here we'd all talk about this is the time to get rid of the deadwood, but it took years and years for it to finally happen

@Olé - only just read the thread, but I'm shocked that the wages were so high going back a few years. Which really boils my piss about all the posturing about the wages players wanted this summer, if we were paying ridiculous money last time around why would it be any different this time? We were obviously part of the problem last time around, so we shot ourselves in the foot

Pretty dire reading for a Friday morning

[Taylor10]

Ha. Derek. What a bitter fool.

I think it's well known that the club was a rudderless ship for sometime, but unfortunately the main role of a managers job is on the training ground and pitch on a Saturday. Things may have been bad but bitter old Del didn't help himself. Bizarre team selections, clueless tactics and abysmal signings have obviously slipped poor old Del's mind. In fact, he probably signed some of the worst players the club has seen since the Tiny Penis era. Mark Wilson made Steve Jones look like Usain Bolt for Christ sake! He moaned about a massive squad yet clogged it up with utter shite. This is the bloke that let Pitman go for virtually nothing as well. 

Poor Del was so hard done by he would constantly play the likes of Pitman, Stead & Chris Wood on the left of a 5 man midfield. His decision making made SC's of this season look like common sense.

Yes the club was in a poor state, but McInnes was completely out of his depth. He's back where he belongs now in a league that still use jumpers for goal posts. Jog on Derek you bitter man.

[BCFC_Dan]

45 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Bitter ex manager in rant against former club shocker. I don't doubt things were bad, but Del hardly helped the situation with this cracking array of signings, did he? Possibly collectively the worse group of signings ever...

3 of those were signed by Millen, not McInnes.

I agree with you, though. In summary the story reads: man takes on difficult job, fails, lists excuses.

Plenty of others need to take the blame but he still failed to do the job that needed doing.

I put this down to him, and SO'D being the right men at the wrong time. They'd have been fine choices in around 2009 and I'd say they'd be OK now too, but they are builders, not firefighters. It takes a manager like Gary Johnson or Steve Cotterill to turn a club around. Someone with methods that may be a little dated but who takes no nonsense, identifies the players with the right character and builds them up whilst booting the others out. When your house is on fire, you bring in a fireman to put the fire out, then a builder to rebuild it. We let a fireman (GJ) build a house, and put builders (DMc, SO'D) into burning buildings.

[Cider red]

All this I told you so stuff is playground bullshit. We knew the wages were to high and so did the board, this time round the board are taking a different approach, SL has said as much. People are wondering why we're not doing the same again? Its not rocket science. Yes the transfers in the summer were a shambles, so has this season been so far. But that's a combination of the board and cotterils ineptitude at this level Imo. If we do go down this year, we at least won't be riddled with awful players in the twilight of their careers. Saying that I don't think we will go down....

[Fordy62]

11 minutes ago, BCFC_Dan said:

3 of those were signed by Millen, not McInnes.

Don't ever make me look this stupid again. Or we'll have to meet somewhere.