Next manager

When?

 

I think we’re probably a week to 10 days away and I’d expect the next update from the club early next week to be we’ve narrowed down to a short list of candidates, maybe saying the number of too

 

Before he joined us.

 

Hughes wasn't such an unmitigated failure, to justify the narrative that an extensive interview would have revealed what happened at the end. Or am i just imagining that he took us to our highest D4 position since 1982. That might only be nine seasons - but he still tops that D4 chart.

It's too simplistic to talk about lack of experience of L2 footie. He has Hodges there who successfully kept a low budget L1 club in that division. Also he learnt at the last season, with us been far more street wise in the second half, than we were in the first.

We lost out on fine margins last season. If our nutty fans hadn't let off a firework at Crewe - we could easily have gone and taken the lead and then won. We take our chances against Carlisle in the first leg and we're at Wembley, etc.

Hughes lost his way, the moment he took Banks off at Carlisle. In fairness Banks had done nothing all match - but once he'd set up our equaliser, he was highly likely to be on fire for the remainder of a draining game. Very poor understanding of what makes a player tick, i.e. man management.

It was man management that was a bigger factor than knowledge of L2, because his record against our main rivals (i.e. the teams in last season Top 8 or faves for this season) is very good during 2023, but he often couldn't get us over the line, i.e. all three Carlisle matches, Mansfield at home.

 

I defended Hughes for a long time on here, anyone can look back to see that I’ll always try give any manager who gets employed a fair crack. But he was a failure by his and Sparks’ own definition, they said only promotion would do, we didn’t get promoted so it was a failure. That way have been excused had we kicked on this year but sadly the football got even more boring and we went from promotion hopefuls to looking over our shoulders losing to god awful teams like Walsall and Tranmere. Fine margins I disagree with as these things often level out over a season, there were times we got lucky to earn points as well.

 

Totally agree. Just think though about us being 24th in league 1 and managerless. We have been in that position fairly recently.

 

Totally agree. Just think though about us being 24th in league 1 and managerless. We have been in that position fairly recently.

 

Hughes was a crap manager who underperformed from the day he took over. We must do better than him whoever it is

 

I went to Swindon Johnny and thought we played well. If it wasn't for the Chapman injury that completely stalled our momentum I thought we'd have won the game.

 

We should have scored at least 4 though. Let's have some balance please.

 

Agree. But it shows that it's more of a gamble. However, it was our best performance, since Salford at home last season

 

Hindsight is the only reliable way to evaluate a sacked manager's tenure. What's your point ?

 

Really!!
We were at the meat end of the season and auto's still in our hands.
0:0 half-time, game in balance, no one had taken game by the scruff of the neck.
Second half, AC totally isolated, MH's made his intention clear, play for a point to get play-offs , scrap the three points towards auto's.
Which as it happened ( as you'll well know) we lost 1:0 anyway.
This was on the back of Swindon's dismal form.
The week after Stevenage went there and ground out a 1:0 victory, many ways to scrape a promotion and lacking a back-bone isn't one of them.
Thank goodness he's gone.

 

I'm confused. Why is it a gamble if we constantly create more good chances than the opposition?

Under MH this season we were constantly creating less good chances than the opposition (albeit in much smaller numbers) but surely that is more of gamble if the actual aim is 3 points?

 

If I remember Darragh MacAnthony mentioned it on his podcast.

 

Neil Redfearn now into 7/2, I would expect this is in reaction to his name being linked last week and himself & Steve Thompson announced as leaving Oldham today

 

And compared with the previous 3 games at home where we only had 4 shots on target in 270 minutes it was night and day.

 

I don't disagree we lost momentum in the second half and can certainly see your point of view but I still believe, without the Chapman injury and Cook (I think) missing that glorious first half chance we go on to win that game comfortably.

I do concede though that under Hughes, similar to most games, we never sustained enough forward momentum to really merit the 3 points we would have needed and typically lost the game from yet another headed goal.

 

Odds mean absolutely nothing.

Leam Richardson was well odds-on, now is 6/1.

 

Failure based on stated objectives yes, but significant progress nonetheless. Since our relegation, no other manager has even remotely come close, some of whom had big budgets too.

Hughes has rightly been criticised for some of his decision making and an overly cautious approach to games. However, for his 20 months of being in charge he only endured 1 sustained month of really poor results and paid the price. Football is a very fickle game.