The Voice - Match preview MK Dons vs Bradford City Tuesday 24th October 2023 19:45

Blimey don't say that! I'm always very paranoid that i'll get a ticket when going through those "50 average speed" sections, it is very easy to lose concentration and creep up to 55 ish especially when the motorway is quiet, but doesn't the 10% over rule apply?

 

Well, after just having seen the highlights - wow, what a shambles. Makes last Saturdays excitement forgettable.

 

I've given you very recent factual data on the strengths of replacing potentially underperforming managers in league two.

It's up to you how you interpret that data but your default position of "too much change is always bad" isn't one that I believe makes sense. Especially not when considering how change, for many teams, had brought success.

 

Thought we might have had an announcement today tbh.

 

You can use stats like that however you want. Last season 100% of the clubs who got relegated sacked their manager so does that mean that sacking a manager doesn't help with saving a club from relegation?

 

Forget stats. Mean nothing in this context (and Im as statto as they come!).

when assessing if a manager deserves the chop its about weighing up their performances versus the aims they were set by their board.

Hughes’ brief was promotion. He was failing. He deserved the bullet. We were underachieving.

 

But I know that it's not particularly relevant how many teams made one change immediately preceding success. It's about how completely unstable a club is.

For example:

Bolton Wanderers: 3 managers in 7 years.

You're using them as an example of how a lot of managerial changes isn't a bad thing, but they're not an example of that. They're an example of stability.

Forest Green Rovers had Mark Cooper in charge for a full 5 years prior to Rob Edwards coming in. That's stability.

Cambridge United had 5 managers in 8 years, but stuck with Richard Money for 3 years and then Shaun Derry for 3 years before settling on Calderwood. That's nowhere near as insane as we've been. They only really had 3 flash-in-the-pan gaffers, no 10.

Bristol Rovers - Darrell Clarke was manager for 4 years. Before that, Paul Trollope did 5 years. They've had a few caretakers, but they stick with managers.

Carlisle United haven't really stuck with anyone since Keith Curle, but he got 4 years. They had 3 full time managers in the interim before Paul Simpson. That's not as insane as we've been.

Port Vale have had 3 full time managers in the past 4 years, and 1 of those remains in place.

Leyton Orient and Stevenage, sure, they're crackpot clubs like us, but that's really it.

Whittle it down and the chances of winning by playing our roulette game with managers are extremely slim.

But you know this. If you're saying we've run this club in a sane fashion and it's made sense to have a go on the managerial merry go round, I'd suspect you were being totally disingenuous.

Sorry to nerd out on you, but you disagreed with the sacking of Gary Bowyer, saying it would be 'insane' a month before he left. You've joked like everybody else about the insanity of rehiring Stuart McCall over and over.

This is your real opinion objecting to the sacking of Derek Adams.

"Absolutely. Sacking yet another manager isn't the magic solution that suddenly turns us around.

With the current owner of the club disinterested and budgets being lowered year on year only long term planning, and that includes retaining a manager, can give us any chance of that now."

Honestly, at this stage you're arguing for the sake of it, and totally against your own longstanding opinions.

If you want to do that, that's up to you. But I don't believe you even believe what you're arguing.

 

One is the football SPECIALIST recruitment expert. That’s his paid job ….hes largely failed . Sparks ‘s job is to find the money to pay for the player the SPECIALIST has identified . If you don’t see the difference I’m really wasting my time Jon .

 

You're ignoring the fact that Sparks recruited the recruiter. They're both in the business of recruiting. Did one do a significantly better job than the other...?

By the way, I do understand what you're saying, I just don't agree Sparks gets a free pass. If Gent goes, it's a very bad look for Ryan.

 

Great post Jon but it's way too long to pick through and reply to properly. What I would say though is that the quote on Adams without a timeframe is meaningless. Views change as time and matches go by, as we've seen most recently with Hughes.

I suppose though, the Sunday is that if you wanted Hughes to remain then fine, that's uour opinion and I'm not knocking it. Similarly though I think we've made a good decision and retains us the possibility of having a successful season that I don't believe was there under Hughes.

 

That's fair enough, too.

I don't see any reason why we would both change our opinion on changing managers without actually having any success in doing so - which we haven't had since Adams and Bowyer. Although we nearly did, under Hughes.

I suppose you are right that feelings change, and if you're happy Hughes is gone (I say hounded out, again, but that's just me) then you will naturally feel better about the change this time around.

I guess ultimately the proof will be in the pudding. I hope the next gaffer gets us up, I think we all do. But I am very concerned about where we are as a club right now, which is probably why we're not seeing eye to eye at this moment.

That's okay though. No harm, no foul!

 

Just one last note Jon, how long in your opinion should Hughes have been given? This season? Or longer if we hit the play offs but ultimately failed again?

For me he'd had 19 months and I saw no improvement in performances on the pitch during that time.

I was also bored by the football his team played, a view seemingly shared by plenty of this forum. That obviously played a big factor in my opinion but if you enjoyed the possession based style then perhaps that explains why you're not as happy with the change as me.

 

In an ideal sandbox world, he'd have had this season without any pressure. If he made the play offs again, that would be an underachievement, but not sackable.

One more year, basically.

But as we know, the pressure was on from game one, so it played out kinda as expected. The players didn't like it, Hughes got tetchy, Sparks pulled the trigger.

Booing passing sequences at home was unfortunate, so I guess in some sense we need to be more direct for our fans - I guess that is our dna?

 

I'm not sure the fans booed passng sequences as such, they booed possession for possession sake.

Rightly or wrongly City fans seem to want to see the ball in the opposition box and the team getting shots off, irrespective of how the ball actually gets there.

 

I tell you what this club is not good at laying out a plan for the supporters. Communication with the fans is mainly commercial.

Promotion we all understand that. However. We have noway of measuring achievement in the steps that are necessary to get there. Who is going to be involved and who is responsible for each part of the plan. How much will it cost, obviously that cannot be published but everyone involved should know. How long will it take to get us there and what are the building blocks to achieve this mission. Achievable? Is it achievable and if not what will it take to get us there?

This kind of planning is done by all successful business. We as fans put a large part of the finances if not all. Yet here we are in the dark wondering if we will every achieve. I am a great believer in you get what you pay for, but we are not allowed to know how much has been invested in all aspects of the club. The club need to be transparent and honest the fans need to know when this mythical promotion is going to happen. Other teams have come into this league and sailed past us with seemingly lesser resources.

 

Did you, I or anyone, suggest that Sparks made a bad choice in recruiting Gent for his football recruitment expertise? To save face , the answer is NO, yet now you suggest it’s Sparks fault to suit a narrative. Until a new buyer comes along prepared to invest £10m to buy the club and invest another £5-6m in quality players as far as Rupp is concerned Sparks is doing precisely what he wants him to do. We may not like Rupps tenure, because all he’s doing is preserving his asset. As long as any proposed sale returns his expenses , we are we are.

Perhaps we want to be like all the other debt ridden clubs in the league , of which there are many , as we all full well know. I’m sure that’s not what you or I desire.

The footballing side was run by Hughes and the recruiting was done using Gents so called expertise. Both failed , one has gone , so should the other.

 

It's only three weeks ago you called for MH's to go!

 

The players didn't like it because it didn't suit their skill set. Hughes and Gent picked the players. Fans don't boo good passing football, they love it but it has to have an end product. He persisted with a game plan that didn't suit the tools available and it was painful to watch and must have been equally painful for the players. Why give a failing plan another season? I don't get it at all.

 

But surely all of the managers you mention saw progress under their tenure and only left when the club stalled and started to go backwards. The reason clubs are'patient' with managers is because the perception is that progress is being made.

 

Uh huh.

It was time for Hughes to go. He had no support from the crowd, the players were demoralised from being booed every time they didn't win, or even mid-game regardless of the score, so what do you expect?

Without the ludicrous amounts of pressure and impatience piled on where fans for example were going nuts on the first game of the season because we weren't magically winning a game with 10 men, he could have stayed.

That's what I meant by 'ideal sandbox'.

But we are where we are.

We don't live in an ideal sandbox world, and you can't just ignore fans who have very little patience, won't tolerate play off-level achievements and pretend it's a failure, and get upset every single time we don't win a game.