inckley fox

To me, I'd have Ricardo in too. But, he barely played in his last two PL seasons, and was played in a custom-made role last season which became defunct this year. And, based on the degree to which it was getting exposed in the second half of last season, you can see why we abandoned the inverted full back. There are doubts over his ability to still play the conventional FB role. He was very poor pre-season. There are all sorts of reasons why, even if you and I would like to think Ricardo is much the better option, a person with greater insight might be inclined to disagree.

Well, I agree with you on a lot of that. Why drop Skipp? Why bring in El Khannous over Facundo? Why not deal with the degree to which sides are exposing Justin? Why not sub Ayew off when you could see he was knackered, like last match, on 65 minutes? I have tonnes of doubts. But I also thought he got the Palace line-up badly wrong, when he was right, so I'm willing to accept that I'm no authority, and results are predominantly what I've got to go on.

In response to your questions: 1. The PPG isn't good enough. But the results have been good enough to be 15th, which would be a great outcome at the end of the season. 2. We've been competitive in every game. So the performances haven't been too bad either. 3. We're unbeaten in two so, yes, the results have improved. 4. I hope that whatever style of football the board favour, that we've at very least disavowed the 7-8 year-long supposition that possession-based football is more sustainable than that which saw us go up two divisions, win the league and reach the CL quarters. Oh, and that's how we played in the FA Cup Final too. And our best ever performance under Maresca. 5. How on Earth would you measure the degree to which Cooper has learned over the course of his career? I mean, he's gone from years of managing in the second tier to years of managing in the first, so you'd imagine he's picked something up along the way. 6. and 7. Whether the fans believe he'll keep us up, or feel satisfied, is ultimately secondary to whether we actually look like we'll stay up. They loved Allen and Ollie and Sven. They wanted O'Neill gone after 12 games, and Pearson gone in 2013 and 2015. Their track record is shaky.

I don't think it's that clear at all. Our league position - our most important yardstick - certainly doesn't back you up.

Should you be booing the players if your problem is with the governance of the club?

Honestly, I think any manager whose newly promoted side looks competitive deserves plenty of credit. But his decision-making (e.g. excluding Facundo and Skipp today, and the late timing of the changes) isn't always helping us to turn that competitiveness into results.

Pretty sure lots of people also thought Enzo would get us relegated. And based that on the fact that we were well short of promotion form in the second half of last season. It's not like Cooper had it all made for him. We'd been out of form. We changed manager. We were newly promoted. And a hefty points deduction was widely expected. On top of that, while I have plenty of doubts, the reality is that we haven't even got off to a particularly bad start. We're 15th in the provisional table, and if we ended the season there the season would be a triumph.

There have only been five of them! We were poor today, and again I disagreed with his decisions, but we've still been competitive in every game. A club who sacked their manager now would rightly lose a lot of credibility, especially as he's a new boss at a newly promoted club who's had a lot of behind the scenes stuff to deal with. You simply can't do that when you're in our position. At the end of the day, it's a run of five fixtures in which we've only picked up three points. That happened countless times under Pearson, Ranieri, Puel, Rodgers and Maresca without us pulling the trigger. If it goes on - alright. But we can't be panicking on the basis of this. In 6-7 games' time, at this rate, we'll still be in with a great chance of survival if we calmly surmise that it isn't quite working. So why make a laughing stock of ourselves now? We're 15th, for what it's worth at this stage. We just picked up another point. Yes, I have plenty of concerns, but this degree of negativity among fans, when it's clearly too early to call, isn't going to help our chances.

Far be it from me to tell you what you should or shouldn't enjoy watching. I didn't particularly like Puel's football, or Rodgers' (after the two 'hybrid football' seasons of transition), and I thought Enzo's game was both boring and easy to suss, given time. I enjoyed Little and O'Neill, when others didn't. And if I were pushed, I'd say the most entertaining football I'd seen was latter Pearson and early Ranieri when we were positive and direct. The period when Pearson said 'we attack fast because that's all we know'. But it wasn't to everyone's taste. I won't argue on any of that, not least because I agree with you on 99% of the stuff you post, and enjoy the honesty of everything you write. It's just a difference of opinion on a fine point. But if you take a step back for a moment, I hope you'd see that this is very, very early for us to be deeming the side, as it's set up, to be unfit for purpose under Cooper. And I don't think it's been unbearably dull for a newly promoted side. Neither do I think it's fair to say that this is simply an extension of an awful PL record for Cooper. Given the circumstances he managed under, he was deemed to have done pretty well in his previous post. They weren't as easy as the circumstances that Potter dealt with at Brighton and Chelsea, and were far less conducive to getting plenty of points under the belt. I know he was getting poor results at the end of his previous management tenure, but it's a bit misleading to think that one carries on into the next. If it did - and at risk of repeating previous posts - we'd have been stuffed under Ranieri, for a start.

It's strange to see some using the fact that we look competitive, or that our players seem to be adapting well, as reasons for getting rid of a manager. The argument seems to go that he's in some way holding an amply talented bunch back, but overlooks the fact that he's clearly getting performances out of players who in some cases weren't good enough for us the last time they were in this league, others who haven't yet played at this level yet, and others that he's brought in himself. So yes, I'd like us to open up a little too - it's a valid concern. And, with the benefit of hindsight, so are some of his in-game decisions (as is the case with every manager when they're not totting up wins). But to conveniently pretend that the ability and competitiveness that the players are showing - or the squad he's assembled - isn't to his credit is unbalanced. Like you, I've got my doubts, but I also see more cause for positivity than I did the last time we were in this division, and more than I'd necessarily expected. It might go wrong yet, but some people are coming across as a bit absurd in calling for the manager so hastily.

I'm afraid I found it very hard to take the analysis seriously with a title like that. There were some decent points, but having looked back over the match thread it seems your personal bias has got in the way from the moment you've sat down to write. Perhaps some people are a little too wed to the idea that Enzo was a once-in-a-lifetime tactical luminary for their own good, and that Cooper scrambling around to put points on the board is unworthy of similar levels of reasoned, respectful evaluation. Well done, of course, if you've picked up clicks for sensationalising the debate, so long as you bear in mind that it's not particularly helpful, and neither does it reflect well on someone who purports to be a tactical analyst. There are a lot of experts on here who were sure that the manager was making schoolboy errors in his in-match decisions. To me, and with the benefit of hindsight, I'd agree that they were wrong. It's true, the analysis here sensibly questions our change of shape. Did everyone know their distances? Were we worrying too much about what was happening in the centre of the play, rather than picking up those full backs who'd been switching the ball to our detriment all game long? But I, like many of these self-same people, thought he'd also got the line-up badly wrong. And it turns out he didn't. So can't the armchair analysts give him proportionate credit for what he got right as well as what this god-awful 'coward' got wrong: The part we didn't agree with, and were incorrect over, as well as the part where we were equally pessimistic and turned out to be right? After all, on paper, we picked up a very decent point, given that we're a newly promoted side playing away from home. With that in mind - and hoping dearly that we don't create a 'Megson 2007 Moment' where when our zeal to get rid of one manager effectively leaves the next boss with precious little chance of success - isn't it time for people to be a bit more realistic in their expectations?

My first reaction was that it sounded like a fairly unspectacular cock up by someone in the office, but I can't deny that you're right. How hard can it be to say 'we need to be extra careful when it comes to personal donations'? Unless part of your motivation for being in the job is, to an unbecoming extent, precisely that sort of perk, it shouldn't be that hard to steer clear.

In retrospect we can take the view that this was right, or this was wrong. But those people saying that the manager made schoolboy errors which absolutely no competent boss would ever make were, in most cases, also saying that the line-up - which, it turned out, he got spot on - was substandard. So let's accept that we're not always in the right, that the decision-making wasn't as amateurish as we might have taken it to be, and that we ended up with a decent point. And hopefully we'll improve over time, as many of our finest managers have needed to. I have plenty of reservations, but there's nothing which comes close to suggesting that we should be at panic stations. We're not even in the relegation zone for a start, and given that 17th would represent a perfectly successful season, I can only surmise that some people aren't being rational about all of this. Four games. Jesus. Doesn't anyone remember what happened at the beginning of some of our most successful managers' tenures?

I'd tend to agree with you. I thought the line-up was too negative - but I was wrong. I thought the subs were far too negative, and perhaps I did better on that score. But the takeaway from all of this is that what seems obvious to us is not necessarily right. In general, it's absurd to be calling for the manager's head in the first 10-12 fixtures. In our case, the circumstances weren't easy either. We've been very competitive in all of the games, we're not in the drop zone, and surely we knew that there'd be things we agree with, things which work out, and things which don't. I have no idea how people are baying for blood based on what we've seen. We all know that some great managers have lousy starts (Wallace, Milne, O'Neill, Pearson mk2 etc.) and some lousy managers have great starts (Hamilton, Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Kelly, poor old Sven and so on). I don't understand the tidal wave of negativity about a first few fixtures which haven't fallen below expectations, and have offered plenty of promise.

Four games for us. Some of which have been promising. If we judged every manager on the basis of how they'd been doing in their previous appointment then Ranieri would have been gone before the season started.

We're newly promoted. We're 4 games in, after a tumultuous summer. No, I didn't agree with all of the decisions, but we've competed in all four games, we're not in the drop zone, and we picked up a good point away from home. If we have 5 points after 10 games, okay, let's worry. But 2 from 4 tricky fixtures, regardless of your take on the intricacies of the decision-making, doesn't warrant mass unrest. If we hounded our manager out on that basis, we'd be a complete laughing stock. Clubs make erratic decisions every so often, but some people on here are taking stances which are preposterous, unbelievably negative, and not at all helpful when we're not actually looking all that bad, and need a bit of support. We're not pushing for the top six anymore, and there are going to be lots of disappointments if we scrape PL survival. We need to get used to that reality. Yes, with retrospect, it's fair to question his in-game decisions. I understood why he did what he did, even if I didn't like it, and even if it didn't work out. That'll happen sometimes. But he deserves credit for getting us into a strong position in the first place, and with a line-up which most on here deemed worthy of a complete pasting. So we're not all authorities on here, clearly, and when we're at such an early point in his reign, some are making themselves look a bit ridiculous. Like I say, I have my doubts. In a month or two's time we might have even bigger doubts. But no competent club would even be contemplating a change of boss right now. And to hear comparisons with Sousa is hilarious. If we'd finished 5th in this division last season, had no significant off-field issues to deal with, a competent budget, and nonetheless been comfortably swept aside by opponents, then that comparison could stand. But that is far, far from the case. The negativity has gone wild. And to think people on here always used to call me a mardy arse.

Can't we wait to see what the team is first, and then whether it works or not? Mind you, yes, that midfield three would worry me a bit. Edit: Oh okay. Ignore the first question!

How would that piss Vardy off? I'm sure he's used to not being the only senior pro whose voice gets heard.

Mahrez and Slimani! But he said he often did that. I think it's about creating an inclusive environment, and encouraging maturity and objectivity in the whole team. Or consensus between players, even those on the fringes, and the recruitment network. It's not hard to think of reasons for doing it. I take your point, of course. I often get the feeling that journalists who've never kicked a ball make better TV / podcast analysts than players. But I understand why a manager might do something like that, even as a new boss. Perhaps he'll look at the players who shirk the responsibility and take the view that those players haven't got the mindset he's looking for. Whatever the reasons, it's not unheard of for good managers to do this, and it's far too early - and we have far too little information - to say that it's been a mistake. If anything, that article adds weight to the notion that some of our players' application / sense of duty for the wider team hasn't helped our cause in the past. It brings to mind what Marc Albrighton said about negative cliques emerging in the dressing room in 2023.

Pearson consulted senior players over signings. Ulloa was one specific example that I remember. He shared some targets with them and the defensive players present - Kasper, Wes, Konchesky and Wasilewski perhaps - said he'd been the toughest target man they'd been up against. I reckon there are other examples too with other managers. It might have upset someone, but it's certainly not a beyond-the-pale thing to do, so long as they're only a small part of the process. I mean, Puel would send senior players on scouting missions, so I'd say that's an even greater level of involvement.

To an extent, yes. But his job is exceptionally tough for a few other reasons. 1. We're newly promoted, and that means you're automatically among the favourites for relegation. 2. We were nowhere near promotion form in the second half of last season, suggesting there were already problems afoot. 3. We've changed manager, and even though there may have been some problems with what he was doing, many players clearly enjoyed his methods. 4. We relied hugely on certain players last season that we can't rely on this time round. KDH is gone. Vardy is 37. 5. The likelihood of a points deduction, even if it's resolved now, will have done a lot to set the mood around the place, and may well have contributed to key targets choosing to go elsewhere. In our favour we have a lot of PL experience, and the nature of our 'non-breach' enabled us to keep hold of players that other clubs couldn't have. But, even with the recent good news, this is probably the toughest set of circumstances any manager has walked into at City since the 2008-12 period when promotion was always the expectation, despite us at times falling short on the necessary ingredients.

If we sacked a manager for getting, say, 12 points from his first 10 games - as you suggest we should - then what sort of maniac would you expect to want to succeed him?

I suspect they mean us going into administration in 2002/03. Lots of clubs - including Coventry - went into administration, the only difference being that they didn't get a points deduction until after that. But we'd have gone up even with the then-standard 10 point deduction, so I don't really get the point. I'm not sure they do either.

Number nines who receive no supply generally look a bit ineffective. I'm not sure what more anyone would have expected him to do against Villa. But for a bounce off a ref he would have bagged one with pretty much his only opening, and his off-the-ball running - which at 37 is still superior to anything I've seen from, say, Iheanacho - was impressive. We just lacked creativity.

It depends what period of time you'd class as a manager's 'starting period'. Pearson, in his second tenure, did well in his first few games but then had a very poor few months, falling off the pace when many demanded a promotion push. Seven months in, we finished 9th and a lot on here wanted him gone. And if you go back before Sousa, just look at the poor starts by Gillies, Wallace, Milne, O'Neill - or, conversely, the very promising starts under Hamilton, Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Kelly and Sven. With hindsight you can pick out one manager - like Sousa - and say you were right to be pessimistic, but even then the realistic expectations were totally different. Sousa took over a side which had just finished 5th and was expected to push for something similar, or better. But you could hear the rumblings of discontent about fitness levels, and players like Hobbs, King, Howard, Fryatt getting sidelined. And on top of that, Sousa had never made the top six as manager, and there was always the suspicion that he was a photogenic 'it' manager who talked an expansive, tactically-complex continental game without much substance to back it up. Cooper, on the other hand, has kept a team that was in quite some disarray, and who were never expected to go up in the first place, in this division. He has achieved what we need to achieve. He's anything but an 'it' boy, and it's clear from the players' application that the dressing room is behind him. For now at least. I didn't understand some of his decisions on Saturday, but his explanation was very honest and not at all arrogant or impatient in saying that one of our players had had a minor groin strain, another was new to the club, and he felt we'd be better to go with more settled players who could square up to the opposition physically. But for a bounce off a ref and an offside, we could have got a great point. And a couple of games before that, we did nick a point, and nearly all three against another top five team. The margins are still very fine, and they're still very, very early days. I have my doubts too about seeing such a lack of creative options at home, but there are certainly reasons for optimism. And, I should add, when people say that if we go down it'll be because of apathy, inaction or just 'Steve bloody Cooper', I'd have to add that the sense of uncertainty at the club, the change of management, and the looming points deductions are - from what little we've seen so far - as, if not more, likely to do for us as the manager's inability. Perhaps (and I'm not aiming this at you at all, because I know you're not daft!) undue and overly aggressive negativity from some quarters won't help either.