ClaphamFox

I know! He wasn’t even tagged

I had no idea Alan Nixon was such a sensitive soul, but it seems he doesn't take kindly to having his credibility questioned. https://x.com/reluctantnicko/status/2062665817326514247 Nixon is sometimes right, but often wrong. That's the price of publishing stories that are essentially gossip he's heard from an agent rather than from somebody connected to the club. While he's the only one reporting it, there is still a good chance it's not true. Let's just hope the sky remains clear of unexpected Percy bombs...

A couple of days ago he was insisting that the Blackburn job was between Bilic and Mowbray and was dismissive of any suggestion it might be Challinor.

This is the way to look at it! And here’s to many more!

As the first knock-out round is a round of 32, does that not mean that 16 teams go out after the group stage?

1. StanSP 2. Jiggers the Fox 3. Alf Bentley 4. davieG 5. Tuna 6. Scotch 7. Nick 8. KingCarr21 9. Foxfanazer 10. Thefox81 11. Hollism 12. Craig 13. TiffToff88 14. Brizzle Fox 15.Raj 16. Whoareyaaa 17. Foxytalk 18. East Anglian Fox 19. FoxesDeb 20. Shen 21. ramboacdc 22. Glenny_Fox 23. ClaphamFox 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Presumably it would matter if we sold him before June 30 as we'll still be operating under PSR until then? If we sold him from July 1 onwards, it wouldn't matter as much apart from, as you say, being terrible business.

We were reported to have strongly considered Thelin before appointing Rowett. If that's true, it wouldn't surprise me if we went back for him.

A £3m fee would mean letting go of our best centre half for a PSR loss. If he genuinely does not have a relegation clause then it may have to be done, but that one would sting.

Rowett had a clear track record of turning around clubs in trouble. There was logic to his appointment, even if it didn’t work out. Yes, Martin got promoted with Southampton but since then his considerable shortcomings have been exposed in spectacular fashion. He’s not comparable to Rowett. We have suffered three relegations in four seasons largely because we forgot how to defend, which resulted in a total collapse in confidence across the team. Martin is famous for not being able to coach a defence. After all the frustration and misery of the past two seasons, we finally have the chance to move in a new direction. Appointing Martin would be tantamount to saying, “Well the last two years have been great—let’s just carry on the same way!” Even with our owners, I just can’t see it.

I have never once claimed to be iTK. And my track record of dismissing rumours about Russell Martin joining us is second to none—I was doing it ‘23 and again in ‘25 and I was right both times. I’m confident I will be again this time

I have come to that conclusion because: a) there hasn’t been a single credible source linking him with us; b) it would make no sense whatsoever; c) the KP group, for all its mistakes, has no track record of taking speculative punts on managers whose stock has fallen as much as Martin’s; snd d) I think he’ll try to rebuild his career overseas. Who will we get instead? I have no idea mate

Russell Martin is not going to be our next manager.

I can’t see us taking a risk on someone who crashed and burned in spectacular fashion in his only job in this country.

The sticking point with Bilic and Blackburn seems to be that he wants a massive pay-off guaranteed in the event they sack him. I’m not sure we want to go down that road again.

Yes, we really do. We’re in an unusually difficult position: on the one hand, we’re a much bigger club than most others in League One and have enjoyed spectacular success in the past decade, so we should in theory be able to attract some strong candidates; on the other hand, our spectacular fall from grace and financial misdemeanors will likely mean those candidates will need a lot of persuading before agreeing to join us. This process will take time. In an ideal world we’d recruit the strongest manager possible today so he can get to work before the transfer window opens. However, if the choice is between rushing to recruit a lower quality candidate or waiting longer to appoint a better one, then it has to be the latter.

Nor BDCR. This goes back to Henry Winter's comment about us being a 'manager's club'. We'd have been targeting a certain type of player under Enzo, then Cooper came in a said he wanted a completely different profile of player so we gave him what he wanted. Then we sacked Cooper a few months later and it turned out those players weren't especially suited to the way RVN wanted to play. It takes years to assemble a squad—managers can be sacked after a run of 5-6 bad results. It doesn't take a genius to understand that constantly changing your transfer policy at the behest of whoever happens to be manager at the time will result in an incoherent mess of a squad. And that's exactly what happened to us.

I remain sceptical. Martin would be an absolutely terrible choice for so many reasons—it’s almost impossible to identify a logical thought process that would lead to him being appointed. Having been plunged down two divisions by our defensive abjectness, are we really about to appoint somebody who is famous for his inability to coach a defence? At a time when the club’s relationship with the fans is at an all-time low, are they really going to make an appointment they know will make things even worse? Left to their own devices, I suppose Top and Rudkin might just make a decision as bad as this—hopefully our new Sporting Director and CEO will steer us away from it.

Not well documented exactly. The media vaguely linked him with us before we appointed Maresca in 2023, but that was before he trashed his reputation with Southampton in the PL and then Rangers.

Why?

Top class vagueposting, that. Masterful

I know—hence my comment that my logic is not flawless. It could go that way again, or it could be that McCarron is working hard to bring somebody decent in. At this precise moment, we have no way of knowing which.

I'm trying to comfort myself with the thought that the longer it drags on, the less likely it is to be one of the free agents we've been linked with, such as Martin. I realise my logic is not flawless.

Well, yes—hard to disagree with any of that. We can only hope that McCarron's appointment signals a shift away from being a manager club and towards being a club with a long-term strategy. I guess we won't know until the managerial appointment is made.