Hopkin or Lawrence ?

I agree it was a shambles. And I hate doing this but the manager has had that squad of players for a while now and has had a restricted transfer window. I feel he can now start to face criticism. I’m nowhere near sacking but to have good players and play long ball is inexcusable.just remember where Blackpool are with their poisonous chairman

 

We need to look at the facts before we start saying PP did his job with relative ease, while Hopkin is struggling.

PP finished just 4 points above 20th, a position he didn't need to worry too much over since only two teams go down. In the end, we finished 6 points from safety. That was achieved in some part through 3 wins and a draw from the last six games. That's 10 points right there. Consider we finished on 50 points, with just 3 more victories (12 in total) than we have RIGHT NOW, and the comparison looks relatively favourable for Hopkin.

We need 18 points from our last 14 games for Hopkin to get the same tally PP got. That's six wins, five wins and three draws, whatever. In the last 14 games, we picked up 21 points, so we're well one course for that.

The best run of form across a similar 14 game period saw Parky earn 23 points, before we went on to pick up just 1 point from 7 games before a lad named Nahki Wells combined with James Hanson bailed us out. Hopkin is unlikely to have a Nahki Wells come through, but as it stands, we are on course to win more games under Hopkin than we won under Phil Parkinson in that 'similar scenario'.

Technically, if we reach game number 40 having amassed just 8 points from the next 8 games, we're in the exact same position we were under Parky.

If he's deemed to have kept us up 'comfortably', then I don't see any reason to suggest that we aren't in the same scenario here.

After all, on March 3rd, 2012 we had played 32 games and had 35 points.

We're only three points off that, and Hopkin has had to overcome worse conditions given that at least under Jacko and Christie, we were still run like an actual professional club ahead of the coming season.

Again, for me, the comparison is favourable.

 

Under PP, we had spent very few weeks in the relegation zone and 6 points when you're competing at the bottom end of the table is about 5 games. To clarify, i never said it was easy but in comparison to this season it was a much easier ride. It reminds me a bit of the 2014-15 season. We finished 7th, were 4 points away from a playoff spot and not even Park Bantam believed we had a chance of getting promoted.

On the 2014-15 campaign, here is the team that started the first game of that season:

There was obviously the odd tweak here and there such as Meredith in, Davies out for most of the season etc but those were pretty much the group of players PP was working with. A squad which on the whole was dire.

Then account for the job McCall did with the dross last season. Even if you dont want to draw comparisons between this season and our previous relegation threatened season, we've had 2 managers who arguably had worse players than Hopkin has now who got so much more out of the players.

I gave him a free ride when Rahic was here and the players were unfit but there are no excuses now. The biggest reason we haven't been good enough recently is because of the terrible tactics and that boils down to Hopkin.

 

Agree with a lot of what you write - but again, it's easier for Parky to avoid the relegation zone when it only included two teams.

We were in the bottom four for around a quarter of that season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%9312_Bradford_City_A.F.C._season

For what it's worth, I'm not 100 % sure about Hopkin - but I'm fine admitting I wasn't sure about Parkinson at that point, either. Wasn't he referred to as Plonkinson for a while?

He made some weird decisions, and brought in some terrible loan players if I remember right, but Parkinson's Bradford City came into it's own in his second season - and Hopkin actually has that in his managerial history as well.

He's almost certainly worth retaining next season, because if we DO end up going down, do we really need to be starting all over again with another manager none of us can be sure will succeed?

 

I think Hopkin blew it in the window. We needed a winger centre half and a physical forward to bring others in. We signed a centre half who can’t get a game no wideman or targetman. Instead he strengthend an area where we are strongest already and by all accounts is looking for even more in this area.
I am certainly not for getting rid of him but I think he slipped up this January