Next Manager

[Guppys Love Child]

26 minutes ago, Sooper Steve's shin said:

One of the great unknowns is what Enzo would have done with us. We can moan about the Board for the last two managerial appointments since Maresca, but we should give them some credit for appointing him - by no means a nailed on success when we brought him in. Rather than “building his team around” those players you mention, he dealt the hand that was played and made a pretty good job of it. You can’t deny his system worked well for the first half or two-thirds of the season before our wobble. We had a team still getting used to it and players still adapting all through last season really, but they all enjoyed it. With a full pre-season and a few signings aligned to his vision, I don’t seriously think we’d have gone into this season with Ndidi as a PL central midfielder in the same role we were forced to play him. We certainly wouldn’t have been forking out for Ayew or Decordova-Reid. I imagine he’d have made much better use of his contacts to get good youngsters and loans than Ruud (who made a big thing of that). And we were miles better at playing our system than Southampton. 

It is a great unknown, and I think you make valid points about alternative signings to Ayew and DeCordova-Reid, but even with new players, who were more intune with Enzoball coming in and a full pre-season,  your other point of being 'found out' I think would have played an even bigger part towards our having success, or not.  We were lucky to get promoted if we are honest, and if not for our closest competitors "fudging up" we may have been spending last season still in the championship.  

 I think playing Enzoball this season would have yielded more points than our current p1ss poor tally, but I guess we'll never know if it would have been enough.  I think it would have been very very close.

 

[Unabomber]

Ruud not sacked till July gonna make a shit show out of next pre

season 

[Parker Pen]

2 hours ago, Foxdiamond said:

Still annoying that Chelsea went for him and kiboshed us

It will be even more annoying when they sack him!

[Pliskin]

42 minutes ago, Unabomber said:

Ruud not sacked till July gonna make a shit show out of next pre

season 

Yep. This is exactly what will happen. 

[Phil Mitchell]

Cifuentes put on gardening leave at QPR, they were nailed on for relegation when he took over, half a shout. Phil

[inckley fox]

2 hours ago, Sooper Steve's shin said:

One of the great unknowns is what Enzo would have done with us. We can moan about the Board for the last two managerial appointments since Maresca, but we should give them some credit for appointing him - by no means a nailed on success when we brought him in. Rather than “building his team around” those players you mention, he dealt the hand that was played and made a pretty good job of it. You can’t deny his system worked well for the first half or two-thirds of the season before our wobble. We had a team still getting used to it and players still adapting all through last season really, but they all enjoyed it. With a full pre-season and a few signings aligned to his vision, I don’t seriously think we’d have gone into this season with Ndidi as a PL central midfielder in the same role we were forced to play him. We certainly wouldn’t have been forking out for Ayew or Decordova-Reid. I imagine he’d have made much better use of his contacts to get good youngsters and loans than Ruud (who made a big thing of that). And we were miles better at playing our system than Southampton. 

I get that promotion is always a fine achievement and should never be taken for granted. Even so, we were expected to go up and we did, albeit with some very sketchy patches in the second half of the season when we certainly weren't miles better at playing our system than Southampton. And if we were adapting over the course of the season, you'd expect to see things getting better, not worse. Our evolution suggests that, in spite of what Enzo said publicly, we'd actually adapted very quickly (as you'd expect, given that these players were way more expensive than anything else in the FLC, and had mostly been signed for another very possession-centric boss in Rodgers) but then became too one-dimensional. The key issue, though, was whether we'd gone about promotion in a manner that allowed for success thereafter. To me it was quite obvious at the time that we hadn't. And not purely for PSR reasons.

 

Whichever way you dress it up, the side still largely consisted of a backbone - in Faes, Justin, Mavididi, Vestergard, Winks, Ndidi - which was going to be too poor at this level, and require a level of spending that we didn't have in order to rectify. Even if we also consider the players who did well under Enzo and haven't disgraced themselves since - the injury prone Ricardo, the unproven Fatawu, the increasingly past-it Vardy, the up-and-down Hermansen, and KDH, who would have been on his way regardless - you still think 'a lot of these guys were going to need strong competition in the PL'.

 

So Enzo would have had to play a blinder in the market. Now, you have faith that he'd have found a more Enzo-esque midfielder than Ndidi. So what about Winks - would he have been just great under Enzo? And what about KDH - would he have stayed? And surely Enzo would have had less money to play with than Cooper too, due to the compensation package, and would have had to go through the same scouts. Would he have managed to do better than Cooper in replacing KDH, AND found a replacement for Ndidi?

 

If you look at the Enzo-Glover signings in 2023, it shouldn't fill you with confidence. Winks has been poor since January 2024. Hermansen was good in the FLC but up and down since. Coady was a dreadful waste of money. Mavididi was decent enough at a lower level, but poor beyond. The jury is out on Fatawu as a top level player, and between him and Mavididi we spent 20m (five times more than Cooper spent on the wide players that you single out for criticism). Cannon was another expensive flop. None of the three loanees were good enough. It's hardly stellar stuff, is it?

 

Whether the players enjoyed playing for Enzo or not is of little concern to me. I know for a fact that several of O'Neill's players were terrified of him, and even disliked him. Nige made his enemies too. It isn't a popularity contest, and if they all adored being told that they could be a new Man City, and hated the reality check of being told 'Actually lads, no you can't', then that just underlines the fact that Enzo wasn't such a tremendous appointment after all. He's like the cool Year 10 teacher who everyone loves, before going to the serious, results-driven Year 11 teacher who tells them that, no, they're not all geniuses and no, we can't just watch films all year.

 

But, like a bunch of Year 11s, I would take these players' critiques on management with lashings of salt.

 

What I think is that Enzo leapt at an opportunity that McKenna turned down because of (a) financial constraints, and (b) being aware that he couldn't possibly fashion a competitive side at PL level, and with limited resources, that played his style of football. I also think that if he had stayed we'd have seen the same mixed bag of signings that we've seen under every manager, including Enzo, for years, and that these players (and they would have been largely the same set of players) would have been shown up every bit as much.

 

What I actually know, on the other hand, is that we did end up changing our style dramatically, and lots of players with a massively over-inflated sense of their own worth got very upset about it, and then subsequently demonstrated a fatal lack of professionalism. None of them, including Enzo's signings, made the grade. And the side that came up with us, and continued to play in a vaguely Enzo-esque manner, were the only side that were worse than a team that some have called one of the most appalling in PL history.

 

To me, all of that suggests that in 2023 we should have appointed a manager who would build something that didn't need overhauling the moment we went up. And if we want to end this terrible cycle we're in and establish ourselves in the PL again, then we have to learn from that mistake.

[Permafrost]

56 minutes ago, Phil Mitchell said:

Cifuentes put on gardening leave at QPR, they were nailed on for relegation when he took over, half a shout. Phil

WBA apparently 

[fox_favourite]

https://saintsmarching.com/southampton-hold-talks-exciting-new-candidate-danny-rohl-admission

 

Sounds like the saints are being proactive. It'll never catch on here. A lot of clubs will be ahead of us next season because our board are currently dithering. 

 

They have put themselves in this position, so they need to at least try and sort it out. But we're doing absolutely nothing. 

[The Horse's Mouth]

12 hours ago, Parker Pen said:

Both Wellens and Challinor are in with a chance of promotion with their respective sides so could find themselves in the Championship due to their efforts this season. Challinor has an impressive 53% win rate.

As mentioned in the thread above both Brian Little and Martin O’Neill saw success at Darlington and Wycombe (via Norwich) before joining us so it would be worth considering them both.
 

Michael Appleton and Kevin Nolan are others worth considering  from the cheaper options . Appleton has  100% win rate at Leicester from his two matches in charge let’s not forget, and Nolan has been assistant to Moyes and experience of coaching the England under 20’s.

 

Michael ****ing Appleton  **** me I thought I was a bit of a drip for liking the idea of Nathan jones 

[SafewayFox]

8 hours ago, inckley fox said:

I get that promotion is always a fine achievement and should never be taken for granted. Even so, we were expected to go up and we did, albeit with some very sketchy patches in the second half of the season when we certainly weren't miles better at playing our system than Southampton. And if we were adapting over the course of the season, you'd expect to see things getting better, not worse. Our evolution suggests that, in spite of what Enzo said publicly, we'd actually adapted very quickly (as you'd expect, given that these players were way more expensive than anything else in the FLC, and had mostly been signed for another very possession-centric boss in Rodgers) but then became too one-dimensional. The key issue, though, was whether we'd gone about promotion in a manner that allowed for success thereafter. To me it was quite obvious at the time that we hadn't. And not purely for PSR reasons.

 

Whichever way you dress it up, the side still largely consisted of a backbone - in Faes, Justin, Mavididi, Vestergard, Winks, Ndidi - which was going to be too poor at this level, and require a level of spending that we didn't have in order to rectify. Even if we also consider the players who did well under Enzo and haven't disgraced themselves since - the injury prone Ricardo, the unproven Fatawu, the increasingly past-it Vardy, the up-and-down Hermansen, and KDH, who would have been on his way regardless - you still think 'a lot of these guys were going to need strong competition in the PL'.

 

So Enzo would have had to play a blinder in the market. Now, you have faith that he'd have found a more Enzo-esque midfielder than Ndidi. So what about Winks - would he have been just great under Enzo? And what about KDH - would he have stayed? And surely Enzo would have had less money to play with than Cooper too, due to the compensation package, and would have had to go through the same scouts. Would he have managed to do better than Cooper in replacing KDH, AND found a replacement for Ndidi?

 

If you look at the Enzo-Glover signings in 2023, it shouldn't fill you with confidence. Winks has been poor since January 2024. Hermansen was good in the FLC but up and down since. Coady was a dreadful waste of money. Mavididi was decent enough at a lower level, but poor beyond. The jury is out on Fatawu as a top level player, and between him and Mavididi we spent 20m (five times more than Cooper spent on the wide players that you single out for criticism). Cannon was another expensive flop. None of the three loanees were good enough. It's hardly stellar stuff, is it?

 

Whether the players enjoyed playing for Enzo or not is of little concern to me. I know for a fact that several of O'Neill's players were terrified of him, and even disliked him. Nige made his enemies too. It isn't a popularity contest, and if they all adored being told that they could be a new Man City, and hated the reality check of being told 'Actually lads, no you can't', then that just underlines the fact that Enzo wasn't such a tremendous appointment after all. He's like the cool Year 10 teacher who everyone loves, before going to the serious, results-driven Year 11 teacher who tells them that, no, they're not all geniuses and no, we can't just watch films all year.

 

But, like a bunch of Year 11s, I would take these players' critiques on management with lashings of salt.

 

What I think is that Enzo leapt at an opportunity that McKenna turned down because of (a) financial constraints, and (b) being aware that he couldn't possibly fashion a competitive side at PL level, and with limited resources, that played his style of football. I also think that if he had stayed we'd have seen the same mixed bag of signings that we've seen under every manager, including Enzo, for years, and that these players (and they would have been largely the same set of players) would have been shown up every bit as much.

 

What I actually know, on the other hand, is that we did end up changing our style dramatically, and lots of players with a massively over-inflated sense of their own worth got very upset about it, and then subsequently demonstrated a fatal lack of professionalism. None of them, including Enzo's signings, made the grade. And the side that came up with us, and continued to play in a vaguely Enzo-esque manner, were the only side that were worse than a team that some have called one of the most appalling in PL history.

 

To me, all of that suggests that in 2023 we should have appointed a manager who would build something that didn't need overhauling the moment we went up. And if we want to end this terrible cycle we're in and establish ourselves in the PL again, then we have to learn from that mistake.

I won’t lie, I had to stop reading this after you tried saying that Ayew/Reid were cheap in comparison to Abdul and Stephy, in a positive way.

 

You completely ignored that we needed pace on both wings to have any slim chance of staying up.

 

Enzo ball was boring as hell but when it clicked it was about his two explosive wingers taking their full backs on/getting into dangerous positions.

 

Ayew and Reid were both heinous signings for what we needed but let’s bemoan that Fatawu cost more 🤯

Edited Wednesday at 06:50 by SafewayFox

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Muslic at Plymouth has been mentioned a few times on various threads 

 

will we be proactive enough to try and get him?

[teblin]

The last appointment from Plymouth went well. 

[Bob Weasel Fox]

9 minutes ago, teblin said:

The last appointment from Plymouth went well. 

Ian Hollow Words Holloway

[foxfan92]

16 minutes ago, Bob Weasel Fox said:

 

will we be proactive

No.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

3 minutes ago, foxfan92 said:

No.

I would be shocked if there was any other response 

 

we are the pits currently

 

says it all when TopBottom and Rudkin were laughing as we got relegated 

 

 

[teblin]

21 minutes ago, Bob Weasel Fox said:

Muslic at Plymouth has been mentioned a few times on various threads 

 

will we be proactive enough to try and get him?

I can't see it being him, too much of a risk for our guys.

 

If anyone at another club i'd have thought it would be Rohl.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Just now, teblin said:

I can't see it being him, too much of a risk for our guys.

 

If anyone at another club i'd have thought it would be Rohl.

You are probably right - it's so ****ing annoying we have turned into a shit show these last few years 

 

we need to be progressive and aggressive in the market to go out and get the next best young manager and players to take us forward again

 

 it we won't, we will probably end up with Sean Dyche and dads army again ffs 

[indierich06]

15 hours ago, Parker Pen said:

Both Wellens and Challinor are in with a chance of promotion with their respective sides so could find themselves in the Championship due to their efforts this season. Challinor has an impressive 53% win rate.

As mentioned in the thread above both Brian Little and Martin O’Neill saw success at Darlington and Wycombe (via Norwich) before joining us so it would be worth considering them both.
 

Michael Appleton and Kevin Nolan are others worth considering  from the cheaper options . Appleton has  100% win rate at Leicester from his two matches in charge let’s not forget, and Nolan has been assistant to Moyes and experience of coaching the England under 20’s.

 

Ruud had a 100% win rate at United, let's not forget

[ceebeefox]

The more I think about it, and the further away from Manager we go, appointing coaches who only seem to have half a say in transfers ( Ruud / Coulibaly??) , the more I think the money in wages should be going to a smart recruitment team? Let’s face it all these manager coaches know football and providing they get round pegs for round holes for a system, it should work whether its Appleton or Mourinho? Obviously I’ve not taken into account players egos and the show us your medals mentality, but once the goat leaves, who can say that.

[indierich06]

Basically it'll be a freebie, absolutely no way we're paying comp for anyone if we have to pay off Ruud. Last time we took a manager from another club was Rodgers, right? Can't even remember the last one before him.

[ClaphamFox]

26 minutes ago, indierich06 said:

Basically it'll be a freebie, absolutely no way we're paying comp for anyone if we have to pay off Ruud. Last time we took a manager from another club was Rodgers, right? Can't even remember the last one before him.

If we're restricted to out-of-contract managers because we can't afford the compensation for somebody in a job, we're in big trouble. We made that mistake last summer with Steve Cooper and have paid a very heavy price for it. The managerial appointment is more important than any single player transfer - if we have to pay to get the right man, that's what we should do.

[AKCJ]

They fluked the Enzo appointment. It won't happen again.

[Chrysalis]

17 hours ago, indierich06 said:

The Guardiola bubble simply must burst soon, for the good of football in general - it is the most turgid stuff to watch. Get us back to blood and thunder counter-attacking, **** possession - defend hard, attack hard. Nothing archaic about it, just high energy football that actually gets people out of their seats instead of boring them to death. Give it a fancy german or spanish name like contraataque and the foootball hipsters will lap it up.

It already is, even Pep himself has said its out dated now, and breaks down once you get pressed.  I posted in the EPL thread how football is changing.
Sadly it doesnt mean Top is in touch with this stuff.

There also seems to be a large portion of fans in favour of it, all the talk on here about direct football when it wins it means you lucky, and that slow intricate is the proper way to play the game.

Edited Wednesday at 09:15 by Chrysalis

[Muzzy_no7]

It’s going to end up being Brussel sprout isn’t it.

 

At least he comes with Pinder. My god she was special in that 00’s era. 
 

In terms of coaching staff Martin comes with: 

 

Matt Gill. -assistant 

Dean Thornton. -GK Coach

Colin Calderwood.  - Coach
 

Rhys Owen and Ben Parker. -Analysts and Sports science. 
 

Luke Williams was Martins right hand man at MK Dons and Swansea and he’s just had a pretty meh spell at Swansea, wonder if he could be tempted to work with Martin again at a bigger club like us? 

 

 

[indierich06]

7 minutes ago, Chrysalis said:

It already is, even Pep himself has said its out dated now, and breaks down once you get pressed.  I posted in the EPL thread how football is changing.
Sadly it doesnt mean Top is in touch with this stuff.

There also seems to be a large portion of fans in favour of it, all the talk on here about direct football when it wins it means you lucky, and that slow intricate is the proper way to play the game.

I hate it, honestly. Just feels like possession for possession's sake - for me, when you have the ball you should be doing something meaningful with it. Guardiola has always had the players to do it positively too, for everyone else it just ends up being passed around defence and midfield, there's no quick transition.