The Voice - Match preview Gillingham vs Bradford City Saturday 16th December 2023 @ 3:00pm

In at least 10 years, no L2 has sacked their manager after the season has started and got promoted. The last to do it was Burton, who were already in Stockport's position, when Gary Rowett left (note; not sacked) to join Birmingham.

 

Gent has been fine. If he gets a one great signing per three players, with a say one in every five been a dud - he's doing as well as anyone.

Even Man City don't always get it right - i.e. anyone could see that Phillips style does not suit them.

I think our recruitment is light years better than those terrible days around Covid.

 

I agree tbh, even the likes of Fergie and Parky for us got plenty of duds. There’s no such thing as a 100% success rate, even 50% is difficult when you consider only around a third of your contracted players can start a game.

 

Agree with this, anyone who backed Hughes right to the end needs their heads examining. He was the problem.

 

Yes. I back his sacking even more than I did than the Bowyer and Adams ones

 

Completely expected from Williams after Swindon last year. I think the lads knew it too which is why a couple of times they tried to leave one on him. I'm not sure there's a lot of love lost there.

 

I was never that bothered about missing out on him. Couldn't understand the signing and showed Hughes's muddled thinking - Walker plays a similar role and is simply, far more pragmatic and resilient at this level, with similar ability.

Pattinson was / is far more of what we needed.

 

Plenty have achieved promotion within 18 months though.

That particular stat is imo, a bit misleading as it usually involves a club with far too much ground to make up to be involved in a promotion race anyway.

 

I agree. At the time we definitely didn't need a central attacking midfielder and certainly not one that only completes about 2/3rds of the seasons minutes on average.

The troublesome area was further back in that central midfield area but with the signing of Pattison, the excellent form and improvement of Gillead and now, under GA, Richie Smallwood revealing himself to be the player we all thought he was when we signed him, we actually look very good in the engine room.

 

The poor signings have been the loanees .Slightly different to players signing on a contract which haven’t been too bad, but some we could have done without.

 

It will be great if we can get all 3 points at Doncaster then home to Morecambe Boxing Day (we owe them one) there could be a near full house.

 

I'm surprised they haven't locked him up lol

 

I accept that but he had such negative tactics and lack of intensity in his play. We got decent results at times through defensive tenacity but concede early and it was game over. And in my opinion he cost us the plaunoff tie with Carlisle through lack of ambition in both legs

 

Oh FFS. A few wins on the spin, and now Gent is not so bad. Rupp a great guy too, we should give him some slack.

Reminder how long we’ve been in this division. Reminder we failed to leave this division last season despite it being our so called remit.

 

I was right behind the goal and it was a fantastic save from Lewis but is was nowhere near over the line.

 

Interesting that Hughes recruited in the summer on what looked like a change in formation to 3 CBs and 2 wingbacks but couldn’t get it right and reverted to 433. GA seems to have found a way of getting the 532 system to work really well and our squad is actually better suited to this system than 433 anyway.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in January with regards to players leaving. I would expect the 2 loaned forwards to go back plus a handful of others to leave if possible.

 

Bang on they may have won a few but this group could easily fall back into there old ways.
Glad that the manager aint getting carried with it and knows that a lot of the players Gent has brought in are simply not up to it

 

Agree Kevin, compounded by the fact we have a 19 year old better than any of them.

 

Who can't seem to get into a matchday squad.

Surely he would only improve us. Madness really.

 

Never seen cookie take a free kick (not saying he hasn’t, I just don’t have the best of memories). This is obviously a GA suggestion from training sessions and a very welcome one at that

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, I’m a bit late to the thread