Is Hargreaves fit for purpose?

[Richinns]

Accept that but that's what happens when the key positions are filled by young lads with little to no experience in a team that has lost confidence. Courtney Richards is a good example, I think there's a player there and he started well but he shouldn't have been in the side for the last 2 months. Needed to be taken out, rested and brought back in but the alternative of Harding is so much worse and he's costing us a fortune! He should have been a leader we could rely on this season and last but has been bobbins when he's played. MacDonald also, but Downes is so consistently crap or stupid he costs us goals all the time or gets himself sent off when we're in games. It's those guys that have let this club down continuously.

Bang on. I feel sorry for Hargreaves. He at least cares and that makes me care about how he has been giving a toss hand and is now being blamed for the sinking of a ship which already had sunk before he arrived. In honesty the players he has brought in have all (at times) done very well this year and shown far more than the seasoned pro's (who so badly let us down last year) have shown. Downes at least cares about the club - but ultimately he is far more costly in terms of decision making. As for those crowing on about Pearce - my take on it is he just does not want to be here and not putting someone in a team who simply cares very little about the outcomes is an obvious decision to make.
Hargreaves undoubtedly has made errors and he has become a little lost this season but what do people expect? He is in his first season as a manager and has a group of young players who have all gone bang out of form and lack experience to deal with it - whilst the 'senior pro's' are sitting there picking up double the wages for warming the physio's table.
Let us also not forget the atmosphere around the club for the last few years has been poisonous - and to be honest Hargreaves has taken on (probably because there is no one else capable to do it) many more roles than manager this season.
Yes we are disappointed and angry but aiming this frustration at Hargreaves and players such as McDonald seems to be misguided in my eyes.

[Gloomy Gull]

My post on the "Excuses" thread refers!

[kevgull]

Hargreaves took the position of manager with his eyes wide open. Can we please have less of the excuses. If I were a Northampton fan I would be breathing a sigh of relief right now!

[royalgull]

If it was a straight choice i bet Hargreaves is hating his decision to come here more and more every day hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Can't believe i'm going to compare us to Man Utd but Moyes left Everton a job where he was 100% secure to take on after Alex Ferguson, it was an impossible job but it's one you just can't turn down. Hargreaves wanted to be a manager he had a stable job at Bournemouth but the opportunity arose here, whther he thought he were poor, indifferent or good he felt it was a job he couldn't refuse. the reality of it is much tougher than the thought and the squad he inherited simply was horrendous, surely no one can argue that? If we could have got rid and reinvested the money in the summer and we were in this position then i'd have less patience but as it is the highest earning players at the club are all lads he doesn't want and can't give away. So we're screwed, can argue all you want but it's fact until we can get rid of them in the summer. It will be tough next season because of the lack of parachute payments but at least he'll have more of a clean slate to hopefully try and get us a better squad.

Someone else made a valid point all of this going on and it's his first managerial job, everyone makes mistakes especially rookie managers and he's made some there's no doubt about that but I don't see the benefit of sacking him and starting the process all over again. I want to give him the summer and the opportunity to get rid of as many of these freeloaders as possible and then see where we are in October/November of next season.

[Richinns]

Yep - the club needs stability and CH deserves a chance when he can say "this is my squad and they play my way". If he fails with that then we should start talking alternatives then but for now it would be a poor choice to cut ties.

[Gullscorer]

My post on the "Excuses" thread refers!

Which unfortunately came across as more of a pedantic rant than anything else, and hardly addressed most of the points made in the other posts.

[kevgull]

Yep - the club needs stability and CH deserves a chance when he can say "this is my squad and they play my way". If he fails with that then we should start talking alternatives then but for now it would be a poor choice to cut ties.

How many more games do we allow him? Should he have the responsibility of next years playing budget?

At present he is a 50/50 gamble, it could go either way. It might be playoffs next year or it might be relagation.

22 games in League 2 failed to keep Torquay up
Bought in some promising players in the summer
Went on a little run early doors (thank god)
Poor FA Cup
FA trophy semi finalist (rolled over by a mid table Conference side)
33 games in the conference promising squad, now mentally and tactically at their lowest depths.
Infighting between supporters and players, total disharmony throughout TUFC

With 13 games left of the season how many wins/ draws/ defeats are acceptable.
At present we have Kiddy,Halifax and Maccelsfield in the top half to play, the othe rs
game are not playoff contenders.

39 points to play for,so what target should we set CH In order for us to have any confidence in him this season or he next? 7 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses = 24 points

Is that fair?

[Gloomy Gull]

Which unfortunately came across as more of a pedantic rant than anything else, and hardly addressed most of the points made in the other posts.

Must preface this as an ironic comment:

Gullscorer

I accept the "rant" but did you really mean Pedantic?? - A dictionary meaning of Pedantic is : someone who has a very narrow focus on a subject and tends to overly show off their knowledge by getting caught up in small details or by pointing out mistakes on the subject.
An example of someone who is pedantic is an English teacher who corrects grammar mistakes all the time. :rules:

Not sure what points were not addressed:

1. He applied for and accepted the job, so how is it the previous manager's fault?
2. If it turned out not to be what he expected/was promised ....buyer beware??
3. I cannot accept that he inherited the issues - he chose to take them on and has not been able to resolve them. Lack of money cannot be portrayed as the single contributor to the problems. We have all seen situations where throwing money at a problem will not always bring a successful outcome. No evidence that with an unlimited budget CH would be in a better position now....I would accept it is a likely outcome because given enough darts a blind person will hit the bullseye occasionally. :}

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not advocating sacking him at this stage, I am just tired of the same old excuses (money/left over players) being used to run interference and mask what I consider to be deficiencies in his management abilities.

Yes, he is new (perhaps not too young!) and lacks experience, and I am happy to accept that, especially as he is in an environment with little or, probably, no one to turn to within the club for guidance/experienced words and that must be lonely, but he must shoulder a large portion of responsibility for the current malaise in the playing squad.

Do you think it unreasonable to expect a person who puts them self forward as having the requisite skills to manage a group of individuals to a level of success, to not be criticised for not seemingly being able to perform that duty?? Or is it always the workers fault and never the bosses??

Or am I expecting too much from poor Chris??

[royalgull]

He deserves criticism in the same way anyone at the club does for us being abysmal this year but he does have a serious problem in that he can't address the biggest problem we have until the summer. high earning not fit for purpose players who he can't give away for free. It snowballs to him not being able to get the players he does want in because we then can't afford them, case in point we couldn't keep the best right back we've had for donkey's years because we couldn't offer the guy a contract while we have Tonge, Harding, Benyon et all taking a wage for nothing.

[SuperNickyWroe]

If it was a straight choice i bet Hargreaves is hating his decision to come here more and more every day hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Can't believe i'm going to compare us to Man Utd but Moyes left Everton a job where he was 100% secure to take on after Alex Ferguson, it was an impossible job but it's one you just can't turn down. Hargreaves wanted to be a manager he had a stable job at Bournemouth but the opportunity arose here, whther he thought he were poor, indifferent or good he felt it was a job he couldn't refuse. the reality of it is much tougher than the thought and the squad he inherited simply was horrendous, surely no one can argue that? If we could have got rid and reinvested the money in the summer and we were in this position then i'd have less patience but as it is the highest earning players at the club are all lads he doesn't want and can't give away. So we're screwed, can argue all you want but it's fact until we can get rid of them in the summer. It will be tough next season because of the lack of parachute payments but at least he'll have more of a clean slate to hopefully try and get us a better squad.

Someone else made a valid point all of this going on and it's his first managerial job, everyone makes mistakes especially rookie managers and he's made some there's no doubt about that but I don't see the benefit of sacking him and starting the process all over again. I want to give him the summer and the opportunity to get rid of as many of these freeloaders as possible and then see where we are in October/November of next season.

Pity he didn't ring me Id have told him to go to Northampton....
The thing is, he bigged himself up from the comfort of the spotlight sofa, but has seen to be lacking in several depts regarding being a manager.

[Southampton Gull]

Come on then Mr Expert from Barnsley, lets hear your expert analysis of where Hargreaves is lacking and how you come to that bold view.

[royalgull]

Come on then Mr Expert from Barnsley, lets hear your expert analysis of where Hargreaves is lacking and how you come to that bold view.

Love how people are holding it against Hargreaves that he commented that we were abysmal when he was being paid to be a pundit on a football tv show...... In fact actually unlike most pundits he had the balls to put his money where his mouth is and actually then try and do the job!

Especially when we were abysmal and Knill should have been sacked in October thus giving the new man whoever it was going to be at the time more of a chance to try and save the Titanic.

[Southampton Gull]

I'm just interested to know how our resident managerial expert from.barnsley can spout his usual bollocks on the subject of Hargreaves and assume he's right about anything. Nothing wrong with having an opinion but trying to sit there and say "He's a failure, I was right all along" is the biggest pile of crap I've ever read on here, staggering when you have 10000+ posts from our Austrian friend to add to the list

[goodluckgull]

Well said SG. I've been thinking the same about The Barnsley expert. A while back he actually posted "training counts for nothing" after I had expressed a wish that he could watch Greavsie take a training session and see for himself that Greavsie is a top coach. Training counts for a great deal in my book.

[Trojan 67]

Supes oop North has stuck with his assessment (there's an interesting slant on opinion) of Hargreaves from day one of his appointment as manager.

Failed to keep us up, failed to get us through to Wembley in the Trophy this season and will fail to make a play-off place. Avoiding a successive relegation will be seen as a success? Well, I suppose, at least no one will have died.

New investment is crucial and with it Hargreaves is gone together with Baker, Phillips . . . . .