inckley fox

Well, if a player isn't selected because the manager doesn't deem him good enough, and is then mostly substandard when he finally is picked (under two different managers), I wouldn't classify that as a strong start, at least. Are you suggesting that we've been held back a great deal by not having Stephy as a first teamer? That's a hard sell. If you're arguing that Reid was no better, that's not such a hard sell! But by and large, we're talking about two players who haven't been good enough. I'd have lumped for Stephy too, just about, but I can understand perfectly why he was sidelined, and I doubt the stats, for what they're worth, illustrate that one should have got the shout over the other. Reid ended up playing more than he should, largely because two different managers were unimpressed by Stephy. As many glaring errors as Cooper and Ruud may have made, I wouldn't class that particular decision as anything exceptionally weird.

Well, the examples you gave would explain why he had that approach. Fatawu was poor in his early performances. McAteer doesn't look anywhere near a PL player. Alves is with a bottom three second tier club who can't decide whether he's good enough for their team. Mavididi has had a poor season. If those guys were the ones kicking up a fuss, I don't know how they felt they were in such a position, nor why the club would pay attention. But we also have good reason to believe that Owen isn't entirely on the money here, and that Vestergard, Winks and possibly Faes were also unhappy. Now, they don't have the credit in the bank to be heeded either, but their discontent would nonetheless paint quite a different picture. Specifically, it would dispell this slightly silly idea that Cooper was obsessed with experience, sidelining and isolating all our young talent, and in some way we're doomed as a result. That incredibly simplistic argument - possibly conjured by people who are still trying to justify views on Cooper and Van Nistelrooy which haven't aged well - doesn't stack up. I'm sure, given we'd spent around 20m on wingers leading up to his arrival, he'd have preferred bargain basement signings like Reid and Ayew to serve as back-up to them. After all, there's plenty in Cooper's managerial back story to suggest he wouldn't be averse to young talent, and the major fees we parted with under him were all for under-24s. But both Stephy and Fatawu started the season poorly, one got injured, then the other continued to be underwhelming. So the bargain buys ended up playing more than they should have.

The hefty sum on Winks worked well for the Championship, until the New Year at least, but if the idea was that he formed part of a new backbone to the team for a return to the PL (and if you're paying those sums in the FLC, as with Coady and Cannon, it should really be with one eye on what comes next) then that was another dud. I honestly don't think we can be too complimentary about our business that summer. Yes, we went up, but that always had far more to do with inherited talent than with shrewd recruitment. The team-building was quite poor and left us with too much work to do when we got promoted. The jury's out on Fatawu at the top level and Mavididi hasn't cut it. That's the best part of 20m dedicated to wingers - almost our only transfer outlay on those positions for years - meaning we had zero left in the kitty for those positions this year, after the botched attempt at replacing KDH with Skipp. Hermansen did well in the FLC and early on in this season. In spite of his poor form now, we'll make a profit on him and he'd appear to be an example of good recruitment, even if there have to remain some question marks about him at this level. Coady came in for a big fee, presumably with a view to him replacing either Faes or Vestergard at CB, and being a key player. He wasn't, and he hasn't been much use in the PL either. Cannon was a poor signing, offered us nothing. We got our money back for him, but that's the best you can say. Of the loanees, Doyle did well early on but lost his place, and is still playing at that level. Casedei was poor. Akgun wasn't good enough. So, for an outlay of nearly 60m, we got a decent enough keeper, a winger who is good in the FLC but not good enough in the PL, another winger who may or may not be a bit better than that, a midfielder who was good at first in the second tier, fell away, and became an utterly hopeless, half-arsed troublemaker the moment we went up, an even more pointless CB, a flop of a striker, and some negligible loanees. If that's brilliant (and it's not) then Cooper's transfer business would also require positive reassessment, even though it doesn't especially deserve it. After all, it's roughly the same outlay on players (if we consider that the Fatawu signing was largely agreed in advance), and his options were severely limited by the financial chaos at the club. Everyone seems to think Okoli should be in the side. Bilal is highly rated by fans. Ayew and Reid cost next to nothing, and were only intended as back-up to the wingers who we'd actually parted with significant sums for (a purpose which they might have fulfilled if Mavididi had stepped up, and Fatawu had both avoided injury and improved on his early displays). And fans are always telling us that Facundo should be a starter, and was our best performer until Ruud got his hands on him. That leaves Skipp - and Edouard - as the only straightforward sticks you can beat Cooper with. And, just to underline how poor our recruitment has been for years (including in 2023), it's not clear that Cooper wanted Skipp, Edouard or even Okoli. He overlooked all three repeatedly. And the fact that, in his defence, Maresca never seemed interested in Coady or Cannon only seems to emphasise that our post and pre-2023 recruitment issues were also perfectly evident in that solitary, not-so-brilliant-after-all summer.

I know the board don't care a great deal about public opinion, and I appreciate what you're saying about a new influx of Glover-scouted players not necessarily being a good thing - but I think even our fans might grumble if they adopted a 'sell everyone / buy no-one / persist with Ruud' policy.

I've spent all this time saying that nobody can come up with a coherent argument for keeping him, and you've gone and done about as good a job as anyone conceivably could. However, I reckon you'd pick the same holes in it as I would. I'll go through it point by point anyway. 1. Not having a 'squad of his making' is not a justification for going with a manager. That's the case with literally every new manager, so the same thing we can say in his defence (albeit with the mighty caveat that in Ruud's case he's shown himself to be an exceptionally poor fit for the squad) can be said as, if not more, convincingly about any of the alternatives. 2. Even over the past two games, I've not seen anything which would make me stick with the boss. He rode his luck in one game and deservedly lost in the other, which was the latest installment in an all-time record for being awful. 3. Yes, he can probably get rid of Vardy, Ndidi, though perhaps it won't be so easy with Winks. In the case of the first two, I'm not sure they've actually been among our main offenders this year (off the top of my head, Faes, Winks, Justin, Kristiansen, Soumare, Skipp, Reid would be among those higher up the list). But yes, it'd help to clear the decks - though again, that applies to literally any of the alternatives to Ruud. Personally, I wouldn't entrust someone whose judgement has been as questionable as this manager's with a squad overhaul. 4. Will Ruud be such a draw for potential signings after this season, compared to bright up-and-coming bosses? I'm not so positive. These players don't look all that bothered about playing for him, and I imagine most of our targets will be less interested in meeting Ruud than our chairman, or maybe Woyo, apparently was. They'll be more interested in actually doing well. 5. Yes, he has worked with young players in the past. It's not really what he's done here, though, in spite of the recent debuts. We've seen attacking threes of Vardy, Ayew and Reid while Alves is out on loan, Monga is still training with the kids, and Facundo and Mavididi are benched. And I think, once again, there are alternatives out there with better records at bringing on youngsters than Ruud (or Dyche or, up to now, Rohl, for that matter). 6. If it's too expensive to fire him, then that's pretty much the end of the discussion! I've got no interest in bankrupting the club. However it would also be mind-blowingly dim, even by their standards, to appoint an inexperienced boss to a relegation fight without a clause. Maybe they didn't, and if we have to keep him then we have to keep him. But if we don't, then we shouldn't. 7. He has indeed had all of that time to look at the squad, but still drops Okoli for Faes after a decent performance, still picks Reid, still persists with Soumare. His responses to our performances, like his slowness in coming up with anything approaching a new idea to arrest our decline, have been baffling. His decision to prioritise defensive stability - given his dire track record for defensive stability and the fact that our only positive outfield attributes had previously been attacking ones - just about sums him up. 8. I don't think he has sorted out those problems, including the one with Winks. That's why we keep hearing about them! If standards are poor at a club, you do have to wonder why you see so many of those whose standards are visibly too low in the line-up.

Part of it is because I accidentally voted for him to stay.

I honestly didn't know! And, by the way, I suppose you could change my opinion on most things under the sun if you argued your point well enough, and the facts backed you up. I doubt you'd need to work very hard to prove that out current owners are rubbish. I'm not trying to defend the club, nor fly the flag for woke culture. Not at all. I'm just not sure that negligence and an inability to appoint well-qualified people to key posts are emblematic of woke culture.

Is this serious? If not, it's very good.

I always take the view that these people are being watched all the time, and you can't expect them not to crack a smile at some point or other, regardless of how upset they are. The problem here is that, when these images suggest a lack of concern and their running of the club suggests the same, one is always going to seem reflective of the other.

It sounds a bit like you've been possessed by Ian Brown, but yes, I agree.

A home side mostly uninterested in attacking, up against underwhelming and arrogant Champions Elect who thought they just needed to turn up to win, or wait long enough for us to implode. Which, in fairness, will most probably happen. It's unspeakably dull though.

You're right, more or less. I thought Winks was targeted by sides in the FLC post-Xmas and struggled with the attention. Mavididi did well, but we saw enough in the way of limitations, and dips in form, to be wary about his prospects at a higher level. Ultimately, it depends whether you want success in the second tier built around a large number of players that you know to be too poor to make the step up. The Enzo project capitalised on the strengths of players like Faes and Vestergard, that we already knew to be unfit for top tier football but suspected were, in the right system, a class above the second tier. And we were right in that assumption. But without ample funds to rebuild the squad upon promotion - and with the dressing room largely unwilling to compromise on Enzo's footballing ideals - we were doomed before kicking a ball. If, from here on in, we predominantly build around those two and Winks / Coady / Justin / Kristiansen / Mavididi / Ayew / Reid / Daka or even Vardy / Ndidi, then promotion would most likely be pointless to everyone outside the accounts department. We'd be giving ourselves too much to do thereafter. It'd be nice to see us show some desire to be a top flight club again. That means as a general rule looking for people who haven't been tested (at least not thoroughly) at the top, but you believe to be capable of stepping up, rather than exploiting the strengths of those who nobody else wanted at the highest level because they're either no longer good enough or never were. Naturally, that can't be uniform. You're bound to need a few short-term fixes (as we did in 2015 with GTF, Philips etc.), but if the backbone of your team needs dismantling it's never going to be easy. Sadly, I think we'd be seeing major changes in the recruitment department now, with an eye on a different approach for the forthcoming summer, if we'd woken up to this.

That's what bothers me. It's precisely what I expect Top likes, and in line with his previous decision-making: short-termist (if we'd have to tweak the style upon promotion; see Enzo), possession-fixated (like Puel, Rodgers, Maresca, and to a lesser extent Sven and Ruud), presentation-fixated (they love someone who looks the part, has a bit of hype behind them, and brings their own determined 'brand' of football), Southampton-centric (like Puel, the Head of Recruitment, and many of the defenders we've signed or tried to sign since we put nine past them) and would appease the players who like to believe they're budding Man City stars (i.e. the ones who were fine at a lower level, but kicked and screamed and got a manager fired when they weren't allowed to play that way at a higher level, and whom - if we had an ounce of sense - we'd be marching towards the exit door now) . Maybe we can add the Buddhism to that list now. I increasingly believe that the assumption should be that it's an awful appointment as long as it has Top's fingerprints all over it. Until there's an overhaul of the club staff, I wouldn't trust any of the conclusions they come to. In fact, I'd be inclined to presume them to be horribly misguided.

It wasn't him who loaned him out, though. Assuming we're talking about Alves here.

I have to be honest and say that I dislike Lampard about as strongly as I'm capable of disliking anyone, save for murderers, tyrants and sex offenders. I have to lay that down before I say anything else because I'm probably incapable of being balanced about the guy. I also think he tends to do very well until those who work with him start to clock just how thoroughly obnoxious he is. Of course, I'll grant you that he's a bright bloke. And yes, he did well at Derby (though not quite as well as Rowett the season before) - early in the season especially. He blew the play-offs by committing the schoolboy error of celebrating the semis as if he'd just won the league, but nobody is perfect. He also started well in his first stint at Chelsea, at Everton, and right now with Cov. But the less said about his success over a longer period of time, and the state he leaves clubs in, the better. Results dip after 4-6 months. Recruitment is poor, unless it's a Chelsea loanee. Discipline isn't his strongpoint. Bearing in mind short-termism, ill discipline, poor recruitment and a fixation with 'football played the right way' have been significant factors in our undoing, I'd really give that one a wide berth. Every bit as wide a berth as Russell Martin, in fact. We need someone who is going to give us a lot more than a short-term bounce, or a quick fix.

I sometimes feel that our lack of atmosphere is down to people for some strange reason equating it with the opera, ballet or theatre. But I never had any proof that people genuinely did that, until now.

His 7 or 8 goals, or whatever, still amount to one of the few positive contributions that anyone has made, alongside Mads' early form, and the glimpses we've seen from Bilal. No striker would thrive in this team, and while there's a valid debate about whether he stays or not, he's hardly one of our standout problems. It makes me smile to see people who have spent the past decade saying he's finished having their tuppence worth about this. I mean, eventually they're going to be right, but I don't get the eagerness.

I suspect most managers would, in an ideal world, prefer players to be based in the area. If they don't act on it, it's most likely because players usually move of their own accord, and those who don't tend to have accommodation or some kind of second / third / fourth home nearby. O'Neill had a flat, I think. Les Ferdinand practically lived in a hotel. Or maybe no problems present themselves as a result of living a long way away, which is what Pearson probably thought. If there is an attitude problem across the squad and a high number doing long commutes, it's makes more sense that a manager would propose a change, and a show of commitment. Winks' behaviour regarding Cooper, his dire performances and very visible lack of effort on the pitch at times would indicate that there is a problem with him, and maybe that's why the manager has asked him for that demonstration of his commitment. Perhaps it's not a blanket rule, but rather a case-by-case approach, and in Winks' case you could easily see why a manager would ask more of him. If he's clashed with the manager over it, then I'd be more inclined - based on what I've seen and heard of the player - to back the manager in taking action, and take the view that it's probably not an arbitrary flexing of the muscles. It doesn't take much imagination to suppose that Winks is one of those characters we need to be working hard to get out of the door if we're to instill a new ethic at the club. Of course, it still doesn't change the fact that Ruud has done a lousy job, and given us no reason at all to believe that he's the right man in the long run. The fact that failure is understandable with such an unspirited set of substandard players (that he's tended to stick by, and for whom he's hardly exhausted all of the alternatives) isn't a great argument for his continuation.

In the old Double Decker, if you sat on the front row upstairs in the winter - Pleat/Lee/Little era - your feet were always in about two or three inches of freezing water. I could never feel them by half-time.

Yes, that Southampton game... The one a week after after the loss to Plymouth and the subsequent crisis meeting which followed it, when we finally showed what could be done by abandoning a few of his long-since-sussed footballing fixations, adapting to the opposition for once, and hammering them with very little possession. We secured the title pretty much in the process, as a result of - just for a moment - parking some of Enzo's less well-judged convictions to one side. It was great, I agree, and an indication of what Enzo would have to learn to do if he wanted to become a top manager. Not nearly enough of what occurred after the New Year was particularly inspiring though, which was, I suppose, the point the chap was making.

Pragmatism and short-termism aren't the same thing. Pearson was often dubbed pragmatic - was he short-termist? Brendan was the absolute opposite. Did he have his eyes on longer term building? And neither did Enzo. Obviously I understand that managers don't negotiate contracts. I'm sure you're also aware that they sometimes insist on them. It's hardly a little-known fact that Enzo looked for an extension for Vestergard, and that's why he got one. And a totally different approach last season? Of course it was! We had to move away from that approach because if we had continued to play in the manner that we did in the second half of last season (which, I repeat, saw us fall well short of promotion form), it would have been no better whatsoever. We'd have been picked apart even more effortlessly if we'd attempted to be a Pep-esque, expansive footballing side. We don't have the players, and were well beyond a transfer window or two off acquiring them. I accept that Enzo has his merits. If he learns to be more flexible, he may even become a very good manager some day. But I don't think these are convincing defences of him at all.

Wow. I'm really surprised that a forum which is fervently calling for change and for the club to stop repeating past mistakes, is also so keen for it to cancel out its latest ****-up by reverting back to one we made eighteen months ago. Several of the players we should aim to shift (Coady, Mavididi, Winks) were at least partly his work, as were a couple of those extended contracts you're all moaning about (Vesty, Hamza). Our failure last year to rebuild the backbone of the side effectively - CBs, CMs, CFs - simply resulted in us having too much to do this time round. And even if we work on the principle that dodgy recruitment isn't necessarily 'on' the manager, or that those players were only brought in for a short-term second tier purpose, which they fulfilled, then surely that would be cause to call for a changed approach now, rather than 'Back to Plan A'. Quite apart from how dull and purposeless it all was, the style of play was never going to be replicable with our calibre of players at a higher level. Their own belief that it was led to the total rejection of Cooper's methods, and the need for someone who would tell them what they wanted to hear a little more. And the fixation with being a Pep-lite footballing side has been going on for many years - it's a hallmark of the Rudkin/Top years and presumably one of the convictions which people would like to see questioned. Especially as football is starting to move away from that, and perhaps back towards the style which we made so famous when we were on the up. Their interpretation of what 'sustainable football' became a major factor in our downfall. As for results, the form in the second half of the season wasn't even promotion level, despite the whole world and his dog thinking that the most expensive ever EFL side would be a shoo-in for promotion. It was predictable even at that level - all designed to push the Enzo brand for a season and keep a chairman happy with the style of football he craved at the only level where it really was sustainable - and is proving predictable once again now. This place was awash with people sensibly wondering whether, with Enzo, we'd bridge the gap after promotion. I find it hard to believe that this bunch of players would be just fine if someone persuaded them to play a tad more like Southampton under Russell Martin. And if we do that again in the second tier then, if we ever do go up, we're going to have to change our style of play with or without Enzo. And that'll be a whole lot tougher if everyone's been sold a dream of a non-negotiable 'idea' of how we should play, which subsequently has to be abandoned. A good number of our current issues come from the short-termism of Enzo's cameo at the club. Yes, well done him for earning that promotion - he does deserve credit for that because it's never easy - but personally I'd like to see real change, new ideas, less short-termism and not for us getting stuck in a vicious circle of back-and-forthing between divisions. At best. Shouldn't the club be opening its mind to a new approach right now? Myself, I would dearly love to see us actually learning from our mistakes instead of the 'That worked once - for a bit - let's just do that again' strategy.

Nor the present, nor much of the recent past.

He probably is too old. In fact, he's almost certainly too old to be playing as much as he is. From what I've seen, he's still got enough going for him to be a fine impact sub or occasional starter for at least a lower mid-table side, but obviously we shouldn't be asking things of him which we didn't 3 or 4 years ago. But that's where we are. And unless people are deluded enough to believe that a youth team player, or Daka, or Edouard would be an upgrade, he's clearly going to have to keep on doing it. And frankly, if you think that any striker would have much of a chance in this team and with this set up, that'd be the most deluded thing of all. The seven goals he's got are quite an achievement. Some people have taken great pleasure (while claiming not to, of course) for the past 6-7 years in saying he's past it. Eventually they'll be correct, if they aren't already. But the idea that we're playing with ten men because of him, and that the rest of our team would be doing a whole lot better if it weren't for Vardy is - as it has been for several years - clearly well wide of the mark. Despite the pundits constantly pointing out that his is a borderline impossible job given the lack of support - something which seems painfully clear when you see him attempting to lead an uncoordinated press, or with no man within 30 yards of him - he may well be one of a hefty series of problems, but he isn't 'the' problem, by far. That's far too complimentary to the rest of them, and far too harsh on him. For me, people should stop saying silly things because they're upset and fancy pissing everyone else off too.

Yes, I wouldn't argue with that at all. From the players' perspective, though, that whole episode was about replacing someone they didn't like with someone that would be nice to them, play the way they wanted to play, tell them how wonderful they are and generally dodge taking them to task about how crap they are. The fact that he still doesn't acknowledge that our workrate/desire isn't up to scratch and continues to play some of the worst offenders is kind of confirmation of that to me. But you're quite right, none of the above means it was the wrong decision to sack Cooper. It will seem like madness to the footballing community because of what we did thereafter, and you can understand why, but in isolation that aspect of the decision-making was understandable. I'd only add the one asterisk to that, to point out that much of the necessity for Cooper's exit came from the hostility of fans, the rejection of his methods by players (which perhaps impacted on his final results) and before that, the way in which the running of the club had restricted the squad rebuild. I can't accept that these players' jurisdictions on who should or shouldn't be in charge are worth heeding, regardless of my view that - in spite of everything - Cooper still was never the right man for the task.