by Gulliball » 20 Feb 2017, 18:16
DevonYellow wrote: 20 Feb 2017, 13:18
All of which is very admirable but will not help with his primary objective which has now been downgraded to keeping us in this division.
As Merse said earlier it was KN who set his own target of challenging for promotion and playing football we can proud of. He's achieved neither. He knew his budget and this is HIS squad.
Being a football manager is a hard job, demanding long hours on the road scouting players...you only need to have read Garry Nelson's excellent "Left Foot in the Grave" to understand that. He talks about driving hundreds of miles to watch a reserve team player and he never even got on the pitch!
I don't doubt his love for the club and passion for it do well but his record shows that this might not be enough.
I don't think Garry Nelson is any different to the Shaun North example. Neither were the manager and so did not have the responsibilities that come with that, and both were when we weren't so strapped for cash. We had to borrow money to pay the December wage bill, and players drove themselves to several away matches because we couldn't afford transport to take the first team squad to first team matches. What is the scope within that workplace to fund scouting missions? We have several issues to address before we get anywhere close to acting like a professional football club, never mind a well run professional football club.
I may have misread the quote, but I don't think promotion this year was ever the intention. Getting back to the Football League is certainly a long term goal, but until we have stability off the pitch that is just never going to happen.
I don't see the community work as nicey-nicey stuff either. It is essential, otherwise you lose this generation to the Premiership sides, and you can't just win them back as adults. We've been through four years of depression, frustration, anger, apathy and every other emotion, losing almost every other week in the process. The fact that we still have a hardcore support of 1800 that stick with us through it all, and more around the world, is in a large part because of the work done by community programmes with schools and whatever else. I think that right now Kevin Nicholson is the glue that's holding a lot of fragmented pieces together, and you can't under-estimate that. If GI were owners with their own yes man as manager, then I think you'd very quickly see things deteriorate from where they are now, even when we're already at our lowest ebb in history.
Last year we picked up 30 points from a 15 game spell. That's title winning form, sustained over one-third of the season, and without being able to offer a win bonus, without which players apparently don't want to win as much. I won't argue that this season is below what we hoped for, based on that run of form, but all we've actually done is regressed back to the mean of what you would expect for a football club that's run in the manner that ours is. I would rather back the manager to carry on his project and give us a football club to be proud of, rather than waste money paying off another manager and repeating the mistakes of the last few years. An in form target man on the end of just one of those crosses on Saturday, and we'd have an extra two points and whatever other positive effects that spin off from winning matches. That's how close we are to being a decent enough side in this division.
[quote=DevonYellow post_id=200528 time=1487596721 user_id=8158]
All of which is very admirable but will not help with his primary objective which has now been downgraded to keeping us in this division.
As Merse said earlier it was KN who set his own target of challenging for promotion and playing football we can proud of. He's achieved neither. He knew his budget and this is HIS squad.
Being a football manager is a hard job, demanding long hours on the road scouting players...you only need to have read Garry Nelson's excellent "Left Foot in the Grave" to understand that. He talks about driving hundreds of miles to watch a reserve team player and he never even got on the pitch!
I don't doubt his love for the club and passion for it do well but his record shows that this might not be enough.
[/quote]
I don't think Garry Nelson is any different to the Shaun North example. Neither were the manager and so did not have the responsibilities that come with that, and both were when we weren't so strapped for cash. We had to borrow money to pay the December wage bill, and players drove themselves to several away matches because we couldn't afford transport to take the first team squad to first team matches. What is the scope within that workplace to fund scouting missions? We have several issues to address before we get anywhere close to acting like a professional football club, never mind a well run professional football club.
I may have misread the quote, but I don't think promotion this year was ever the intention. Getting back to the Football League is certainly a long term goal, but until we have stability off the pitch that is just never going to happen.
I don't see the community work as nicey-nicey stuff either. It is essential, otherwise you lose this generation to the Premiership sides, and you can't just win them back as adults. We've been through four years of depression, frustration, anger, apathy and every other emotion, losing almost every other week in the process. The fact that we still have a hardcore support of 1800 that stick with us through it all, and more around the world, is in a large part because of the work done by community programmes with schools and whatever else. I think that right now Kevin Nicholson is the glue that's holding a lot of fragmented pieces together, and you can't under-estimate that. If GI were owners with their own yes man as manager, then I think you'd very quickly see things deteriorate from where they are now, even when we're already at our lowest ebb in history.
Last year we picked up 30 points from a 15 game spell. That's title winning form, sustained over one-third of the season, and without being able to offer a win bonus, without which players apparently don't want to win as much. I won't argue that this season is below what we hoped for, based on that run of form, but all we've actually done is regressed back to the mean of what you would expect for a football club that's run in the manner that ours is. I would rather back the manager to carry on his project and give us a football club to be proud of, rather than waste money paying off another manager and repeating the mistakes of the last few years. An in form target man on the end of just one of those crosses on Saturday, and we'd have an extra two points and whatever other positive effects that spin off from winning matches. That's how close we are to being a decent enough side in this division.
