Gulliball wrote: 09 Apr 2018, 00:20
It does get very tiresome when every matchday thread, and pretty much every other one as well, ends up going exactly the same way, despite nothing having changed regarding Kevin Nicholson since August last year.
The blame for the current mess and mix of players lies with those who run the club. They did not want Nicholson as manager but didn’t have the courage to sack a popular manager last April after a great escape. So he was allowed to build a squad over the summer with his vision, including some players on two year contracts, and then sacked three weeks into the season, leaving his replacement to work with a squad someone else assembled and the initial budget spent.
Whatever your opinion of Nicholson though, his involvement ended last August and that’s the last moment he could affect anything. Everything since then is with a new manager, and no matter what happens will just be confirmation bias of your existing opinion.
It’s a common post on here that our current position is because of the players signed last summer by Nicholson. What would have happened though if Gary Owers had come in and overseen an increase in form? That would be proof that Nicholson had assembled a good side, right? Or proof that Owers is a better manager than Nicholson? If we get relegated that will be proof that Nicholson should have been left in charge, or proof that the squad he left was rubbish?
The reality is that this group of players would have been totally different under the manager that signed them. That’s not changed since August, but we’ve ended up with a very boring situation that if you weren’t a fan of Nicholson then every bad result under the new management needs to be explained away. People that were fans of Nicholson are then drawn in, with the only result that the worse Owers does, the more Nicholson is discussed. We’re at the point now that it is so entrenched that it will just be repeated ad-infinitum. I can’t wait for next season when Gary Owers producing a good squad will be proof of what he could have done with his own players this season if only if it wasn’t for Nicholson signing Yan Klukowski.
For what it’s worth, I liked Nicholson as manager, as I felt he held the club together during a very difficult time. Our biggest battles during that time were off the field and he was a popular figurehead that helped keep the club united - fans donating to the player fund, huge increase in season ticket sales, community projects etc. On the field we had no money, which meant losing a lot of games, and it was his first job so he had to learn as he went, but he did an excellent job to turn things around and keep us up in 2015/16, and then kept us up again in 2016/17 with his own squad.
I thought sacking him when we did was crazy. We’d picked up 1 point in 4 games, against the sides currently sat 3rd, 4th, 5th and 14th in the league, so a draw and three defeats is probably not far below what you'd expect on paper. To have let Nicholson build his own squad and then sacking him after 4 games was stupid, but despite taking that action we were in no way prepared and spent a further six games with a caretaker before the new manager came in.
It’s think it’s fair to say that Owers has been totally underwhelming to date. He’s faced many of the same issues that Nicholson faced, and our biggest battle is still off the pitch, but we’re still losing a lot of games, we’re still conceding far more than we score, we’re still conceding late goals, we’re still conceding a crazy amount of penalties, we’re still having a huge turnover of players, the success of signings is still hit and miss…
I don’t see why signing loanees is a sign of poor planning – it is the way football is going with the biggest and richest clubs stockpiling talented young players, and when you don’t have money it is a way to add quality that could otherwise not be afforded. The Hereford promotion winning squad of 2007/08 is perhaps a very good example of how loaned players can be used to great success, and since then the rich have got richer and the poor only poorer. Our trouble this season has been that players like Romain arrived too late, whilst the first wave of Owers signings (Murphy, McQuoid, Myrie-Williams) flopped. That is just the nature of signings for clubs in our position though – there will be some defect and the success rate will be hit and miss. It won’t change until we can beat other clubs to players that are in demand, which means an injection of finance or getting relegated low enough that we’re one of the richer clubs. There’s nothing inherently wrong in Nicholson (or Owers) relying on loan signings, non-contracts, trialists and freebees, given the position they’re working from.
I think that sort of summarizes much of my own disappointment. If we had replaced Nicholson with a more successful manager, then it would have proven to be a good decision. Every manager has a shelf-life, and when you’re losing games you’re going to come in for criticism, so replacing Nicholson could have been a fresh start. Yet for every area that Nicholson was supposedly weak in, Owers hasn’t been able to improve any of it, which if Nicholson was failing so badly should have been achievable.
We’ve replaced a young and potentially promising manager that cared about the club and was forging links with the fanbase, community, ladies team etc with a yes-man for those running the club, at a time when great scrutiny of their actions and motives is required. And for what? A lower win % as manager and not pulling off a great escape.
If Nicholson’s position was untenable with his record and 1 point from 4 games then where is Owers now? He got 2 points from the 4 reverse fixtures that Nicholson managed, went 9 without a win during our worst run, crashed out of both cups at the first hurdle, and hasn’t been able to turn the club around.
I don’t doubt that it’s a hard job, that there’s restrictions, and he’s inherited players that don’t match his plans – but all of this was known when he took the job. You don’t take over a club in the relegation zone because everything is rosy, and he didn’t take over as manager to get us promoted next season when he can have entirely his own players. He knew the circumstances, knew the squad he was taking over, knew the budget and he left another job to take this one.
He inherited a squad with some good players and has been backed to sign 22 of his own players to improve the other spots in the team. He’s had 36 of the 46 games to rise up the league and publicly backed himself to do it. It’s now six months since he declared we’re not rubbish any more, and then we were told we’d be out of danger before Christmas – and the simple fact is that he hasn’t improved us. We are still rubbish, we’re still not safe come April, and could very well be relegated by the weekend.
on the wider picture.