inckley fox

Cooper isn't a substandard manager. He struggled in difficult circumstances, and fans who thought we were top ten material turned on him, followed by a set of players who had nothing like the credit in the bank to turn on a manager. As such his position became untenable while we were still 16th. He had to go, and almost certainly would have got us relegated, but a huge part of the reason for his departure being necessary was the fact that people weren't willing to get on board. A whole load of nonsense was subsequently peddled about him being way below the mighty Leicester in terms of his credentials, and that notion has seen other clubs point out how silly the Leicester fans and players have been. There's no doubt that we haven't covered ourselves in glory with the Cooper-Ruud switch, as of yet. Was he the best appointment? Quite possibly not. Was he some sort of chancer way out of his league? No. Was Ruud the upgrade that his detractors claimed he was? No. And can he blame Cooper, as opposed to years and years of mismanagement, or a squad packed with utter dreck, for being ill-prepared? Definitely not. The funds Cooper had weren't spent wisely - that's true. But we signed one asset, made a couple of howlers, brought in a good loanee, and then signed some squad filling individuals who have ended up featuring way more prominently than they should have. It's not a starkly inferior window to the one where we brought in Daka and co., or the one where brought in Kristiansen/Souttar and co., or the one where we brought in Coady/Cannon and co. The suggestion being that our recruitment is systemically poor, regardless of who is in charge.

Well, that might be a good call. I've watched him from a distance but don't know enough about his style of management, nor the set of circumstances he's had to deal with, to be certain. People also mention Rohl, of course. Without question, those are the sorts of coaches I'd be interested in. While I have no particular interest in how 'English' we are, it might be a good time to go back to the Pearson-era ethos of developing a home-grown backbone to the squad. I remember when we signed Mahrez he said 'we can sign players like him and Knockaert now that we have a native core to the squad established'. If we want to uproot the dressing room politics, it might be a good starting point.

He'd have been an unintelligent, uninspiring choice who, like Ruud and Cooper, has looked like he's not cut out for management at the highest level. I'd honestly prefer a bright, upcoming manager from the lower tiers if he's (a) adaptable, and not stubborn enough to be unwilling to entertain new ideas and (b) a character who doesn't mind being unpopular with the players (unlike Ruud, according to that BBC article) if that's a necessary consequence of making them brutally aware of their own shortcomings.

The risk is we splash out now on a manager tasked with survival, and without a vision for the long-term. If and when they sack Ruud, they need to either bring in a guy for next season and make clear that survival isn't necessarily the expectation, which is a big call, or allow a member of the coaching team to have an extended stint as caretaker, and save the money for a guy who can start with a clean slate in the summer. The alternative would be an interim team, but they tend to be quite costly. I certainly think it'd have to be accompanied by a significant boardroom change at the club. If it were, the mood around the place would at least mellow a bit. It's very hard to see Ruud having any joy this season. He's simply waited way too long to explore solutions. And there's absolutely no reason, as many have said, to believe he's the one for a rebuild in the second tier. The question is whether he's even managerial material.

He's probably got more in common - in terms of circumstances/outcomes rather than style - with Bassett rather than Taylor. He's making a hash of an admittedly difficult situation. As for Taylor himself, there were quite a few arguments put forward at the time by people who felt he'd been hard done by. I didn't agree with any of them, but they went along the lines of 'he inherited an ageing squad which was held together by a manager's unique charisma, started the first season superbly, was undone by a freak cup game (at the end of our best FA Cup run in two decades) but still got a respectable 13th place finish... and it was too early in the following campaign to sack him'. The dismal nature of the relegation and the subsequent financial catastrophe kind of swept that argument away, but I suppose there are at least achievements of sorts you can point towards with Taylor, even if they're set against a backdrop of complete Armageddon.

Speaking of the last four appointments, it's worth adding that the successful 'first two' have their share of the blame for where we are now. Rodgers recruited poorly, with his success depending on the youth set-up, and the Pearson-to-Puel era squad-building. Obviously his negligence led to the first relegation. Maresca had the most expensive second tier squad ever, and still nearly blew promotion, with us falling well short of automatic promotion form in the second half of last season. He also introduced a possession-based game which was simply never going to work at this level with the squad we've got, then buggered off, leaving us scrambling for a more tactically flexible manager. It was the worst kind of short-termism.

I don't think we do know that. Which manager would you be talking about? Or is this going back to the totally unfounded Ranieri-era rumours? If we ever intended to be a serious top flight proposition then we should have set up to use Vardy sparingly. Regardless of our failure to do that, he's still the least of our problems right now (especially given the alternatives). And no striker on earth would thrive in this team.

Yes, but at least he only played 15-20 games before I had the pleasure of seeing him fired.

I've just never seen such a void of new ideas from a new manager. Shape? Nothing. Personnel? His major statement has been to drop Facundo, our principal goal provider. Style? An attempt to appease those who felt we needed to enjoy a bit more possession. Which has also been a spectacular failure. He's been outright awful, with no caveats, even considering the circumstances. Just a complete failure to come up with solutions. But my god, what a glorious aura he has.

I honestly can't remember a player I've disliked as much as him.

Cliff's fine. He's thriving.

There is literally no reason to believe that the guy is even a vaguely competent manager. To the contrary.

While I agree with you that it's hard to judge any manager when he's been thrown into such a difficult set of circumstances, I'd also add that (a) Cooper also came into a really difficult set of circumstances (pending points deduction; limited funds, squad of players which had largely suffered relegation at this level last time round, fans with an irrational hatred of him and the ghost of Maresca with his brand of football that was always going to fail at this level, with this squad). (b) He's thus far offered no new ideas in terms of shape or personnel, and his tweaks in style have consisted of an unsuccessful bid to improve results by upping our possession stats. (c) There aren't many of Cooper's appointed coaches left. And (d) there is nothing in the manager's track record to suggest he can secure promotion (or be a survival specialist for that matter). I have sympathy for him and agree that it's hard to tell whether he's any good or not. But is there any reason to believe that he offers any long-term solutions? I'd advocate for seeing how the coming weeks and months pan out before leaping to decisions. Throughout our history we've gone down with managers that were popular enough to get a second chance (Johnson, Lochhead, Wallace, Hamilton, Adams) and it's only ever worked out once (O'Farrell). If he starts to come up with bright new ideas and improves things, then by all means debate keeping him, but if the collapse continues don't - whatever you do - invest in the long-term vision of someone who's given you absolutely no reason to believe that they can do the job. Other than the 'aura' that impressed Top so much.

He was pretty lively, I thought, considering it was hardly a game for the strikers. The commentators rightly pointed it out. I have no idea why people keep feeling the need to single him out as a major problem for us, given the clearly very major problems we do have on display. The lack of meaningful cover/competition for him is a huge issue. Not him.

Totally. I didn't really agree with how they went about it, but I don't think you can say they failed to make a point.

It's the complete absence of new ideas that I find so depressing.

It doesn't bother me that he's flying the flag for a section of the fans that don't agree with me. I just think it's his track record for doing this which means the writer of the article was misguided in choosing him as the counterargument. There are others who might have a lot more credibility. After all, he was the ultimate apologist in the Shipman-Pleat years. Thank god the likes of Martin George and Brian Little had more ambition than he did.

I agree totally with the sentiment, and think it's essential for the future of the game that they get to grips with what's basically the trading of children for significant sums of money. Surely there's something fundamentally immoral in that, and it wouldn't be hard to establish some norms which protected youngsters and the academies that nurture them. But I'm not sure we're entirely innocent either when it comes to Monga, or did I misread something?

He's still a heck of a lot closer to a solution than Daka is.

You obviously see things in him that I've never seen. And don't see things in Vardy that I do.

I don't blame Ruud for where we are, and I didn't really blame Cooper either. The financial mess discouraged many of our top summer targets or priced them out of our range, and what we ended up getting wasn't anywhere near enough, unsurprisingly. I felt he had to go but mainly because fans and players alike had made his position untenable. My biggest gripe with Ruud is the absence of new ideas - in terms of personnel or shape or style - which you and others have indicated.

I think she went out of her way throughout her life to say that her problems were a result of her own decisions and she wasn't led astray by others. There are quite a few interviews where she stressed that she wasn't a powerless victim and had control over her destiny. Perhaps she was kidding herself, but personally I found it very refreshing that she took responsibility for her actions when it would have been very easy to point fingers. And she was seriously underrated. The original 'Sister Morphine' is great, but stuff like 'Why do you do it' / 'Lucy Jordan' / 'Strange Weather' and then latter day cuts like 'Vagabond Ways', 'Incarceration', 'City of Quartz', 'Last Song' and the Nick Cave collaborations are all brilliant.

Some really good points. When we went down, there were lots of voices of caution that year. Even from the off, some raised eyebrows at the sort of business we were doing - not necessarily the amounts spent, but certainly the sense that we were bringing in players who might have been on our wish list if we stayed up (e.g. Coady, and we'd also been linked to Winks in the past). And then there was the style of play, which Enzo insisted would never change and yet, it seemed, would have to be seriously tweaked at times at a higher level. Enzo is a competent manager so he may well have adapted more than he was letting on, but I felt at the time that our dealings back then were designed to secure a quick return, and didn't seem to be bringing in the breadth of options to allow us to restructure long-term. I didn't see the plan for what happened when we actually got up with Faes and Vesty as CBs, or Vardy still up top. When the winter came and talk of deductions, my thought was that any promotion would be followed by heavy restrictions on a squad that for the most part went down previously, and relegation was a near-certainty. Plenty on here felt that this was a necessary evil financially (I still don't entirely see why if we were staying compliant for that season, though they may have been right), but at that stage I'd have preferred us to avoid the throwaway top flight season. Others disagreed, of course, but it seemed the club had always been heading down that route. They've made missteps, even with that being the grand plan: At least one managerial appointment, the Skipp and Okoli signings etc. But at this stage I'd prefer them not to prolong the cycle you speak of with further short-term fixes. I'd have liked to see one or two longer term ones, but there you go! I don't think Forest's strategy was the way to go. They've ridden a great deal of luck and if PSR restrictions remain tough, I think we'll see other clubs try what they've done and get it badly wrong. At this stage it's best to get our house in order - including that reset in the boardroom and beyond - and then rebuild properly, from a more sound financial footing, and with longer-term outcomes at the forefront. As for whether I have faith in that happening, well...

I guess the idea here is to simplify the messaging ahead of any protests so that everyone can be on the same page. If the aim is to 'go strong', then 'KP Out' is the obvious one, but far too many people are going to think twice before getting behind that - rightly or wrongly. They'll point out how good they've been for us on balance in comparison to past owners, and to owners elsewhere. You'll hear 'Yes they took a risk, but so does every other club - it's the modern game to blame, not them'. The protest will fall flat. You saw people losing interest just because we won a game last week, so it's not as if the movement is in any way focused. The alternative, and the one which people would be more comfortable in getting behind is 'Rudkin Out', of course. But I just feel it could be rather misguided. If those ITK have been right where they've said that he's basically one of the only footballing voices in the boardroom who has to run around doing his best to do Top's bidding, and who is effectively set up to shield the owner from some of the flak, then directing it all at him gives Top an easy way out without actually changing anything problematic. While the aforementioned could all be true of JR and he could still - as most of us suspect - be pretty useless as a DoF, making a protest about him may well backfire, because we simply don't know the dynamics at play. A large reason for Rudkin becoming the scapegoat in the first place is that people didn't want to direct their gripes at owners that they were very fond of. It wasn't 100% well-reasoned. All sorts of things we hold the DoF responsible for (and it's no exaggeration to say that he's been blamed for everything on here this week from recruitment to wage structure to team selection) will have very little to do with him. People might get on board with the messaging, but if the argument is fundamentally flawed and counterproductive, would it be worth it? There are plenty of very convincing voices on here who felt sure that everything would be hunky dory the moment Congerton went, or Rodgers went, or Cooper went. Then there's Rudkin. And now we're moving on to Ruud. What we know is that stuff has been badly done for some time, but part of the confusion is - and always has been - that we're not sure how, nor who is responsible. What if - and it's a serious possibility - Rudkin is indeed not up to scratch, but is the closest any of the higher-ups come to being competent in a footballing sense? What's Top going to learn from that sort of protest? And if you doubt that there's any serious danger of that being the case, just look at how people have dismissed people on here who have said 'hang on a minute, perhaps that isn't Rudkin's fault?' Bearing in mind we're all annoyed and all looking for major change, it doesn't bode well if people are too busy pumping their chests and yelling 'I want blood!' to be willing to respond to those points without accusing people of being Rudkin in disguise, or just boring. Personally I'd keep any co-ordinated message simple, and in line with what little we have in common on the matter: People want change in the form of a substantial reset which we can see and hear. Beyond that, pockets of people can call for Top or call for Rudkin as they choose. But that's not concretely what the protest is about. If it's about the former, it'll fall flat. If it's about the latter, it may well be pointless. If, like me, you suspect that Rudkin would be one of many casualties if the necessary restructuring ever too place, then the best way of seeing the right changes and the right people moved on won't be to (a) alienate fans who might be willing to protest by aiming it at Top or (b) to direct the protest at people who aren't the main ones to blame, which might be the case if it's aimed at Rudkin.

As bad as our finances were, we still managed to spend huge sums on players we didn't really need. And while the finances may be better now, I still think we're roughly mid-table for PL wages, unless I'm mistaken. So the situations aren't entirely dissimilar. If we spend big on PL cast-offs when we go down and build a side around players who took us down, then any promotion with that side would be as futile as it was this time round. We'd be giving ourselves too much to do in terms of replacing substandard players in a short window of time, and with limited resources. I disagree that Enzo built good foundations, and that the gamble on splashing out for an instant return paid off. Much of the spending was unhelpful and left us with too much work to do this summer (needing two first choice CBs, a CM, to make the Fatawu deal permanent and sign a new starting striker was way beyond our resources). Even the playing style was going to need seriously looking at. We were sold a dream that we could be a budding Manchester City, play glorious football and storm the league with a squad packed with PL talent, but no thought was given to what came next. While I have no gripes about the manager himself, who did exactly what he was brought in to do, the Maresca era is part of the problem rather than an indication of how wonderful things are when Top gets it right. Bearing in mind that, as you say elsewhere, we could well evade punishment for a hefty spend last season, doesn't it also indicate that we could have been a bit more conservative in our spending; recruited, assembled and developed players that other clubs couldn't have attracted on lower wages, and in doing so given ourselves a serious long-term project? It might have taken an extra year or two, but if - as some believe - we could yet skirt PSR for last year then I see no reason why instant promotion was as essential as you've suggested at times. At some point we're going to have to build the squad more thoroughly and more equitably, and success might not be immediate. For the most part, what we've done is to kick the problem a couple of years down the line.