inckley fox

Well there's someone else I'm never going to take seriously again. Along with Mr. Pye.

Superb post.

They were very similar protests in their execution but very different in their motives and outcomes. O'Neill was a manager who'd been at the club for 12 weeks or so and experienced poor results during a transitional period. Shipman a chairman who'd been in charge for around 12 years and overseen decline at all levels. One protest came way too soon, the other felt overdue. O'Neill stayed and brought us unprecedented success. Shipman quit when the board voted for Pleat's dismissal, and it was that change which played a key role in our resurgence. But you're right about the big thing they have in common: after Shipman left, the fanbase reunited and we stayed up. After the O'Neill protest, we won promotion. In the latter case, the 'before' was a prolonged period of poor form and the 'after' was an immediate upturn. I wouldn't want to claim that these protests did anything to improve our on-field performances, because I'm not sure there's any solid evidence that they were a decisive factor. You could argue that Shipman's exit paved the way for Gordon Lee to keep us up, but we were actually out of the drop zone at the time. You could also argue that the Sheffield United protest in March 1996 gave O'Neill the fire in his belly to take the team by the scruff of the neck and turn things around. But he'd probably disagree with you. One thing is for sure, though, and that is that there is no clear evidence that fan protests - and certainly not the ones which took place this season - provoke downturns in results. If you're looking for reasons for the relegation then financial mismanagement, subsequent punishments, lack of funds to rebuild, poor managerial appointments and years of awful player recruitment under different managers (but the same board) would be the obvious causes. All of those were Top and Rudkin's responsibility. The fact that some fans pointed this out and argued that things had to change has to be way down the list of decisive causes for our decline, and most likely had no impact one way or the other. The argument that they did smacks of someone not so much clutching as flailing hopelessly in a desperate bid for the last, elusive KP-branded straw.

Isn't he supposed to be a long ball specialist? Not an expert, so I may well be wrong, but I vaguely remember that being the case when we were last linked.

Yes, I have to be honest, if it were Martin I might slip into the 'let it all go to s**t as soon as possible, because only then can we move forward' camp. I think a lot of people who previously toed the line would feel that way, and it would even fracture the KPFC bunch. As someone said earlier, instead of galvanising the fans it would pit them against the club. It'd be suicidal. The problem is, we've already gone through half a dozen 'surely we have to change course now' moments without changing course. The chairman is comically incompetent, and the only real question is whether we survive him.

I would prefer Top or Rudkin not to decide how we want to play. We need the right boss, and to empower him. Which is a long shot, admittedly.

Are they decent numbers?? Was it really 29K?

He's even crapper than you thought!

Is that what they're saying?

I can't for the life of me understand why they're negotiating to renew Begovic's contract. He was dreadful and clearly well past it. He managed to be no better than Stolarczyk, which is really going some. Incredibly, Hamer wouldn't be any worse than either of them.

He didn't win promotion with MK Dons did he? I thought that was before he took over. They were lower mid-table in League One under him, I think.

Obviously if it were Martin he'd have to get off to a flying start. In the unlikely event that he took us up two divisions over the next few seasons, I suppose that would be the perfect redemption arc for Top and his ideology. In fact, I'm sure the pro-KP faction would consider promotion from League One alone worthy of vindication. And you'd imagine we'll be the favourites, so a lot of people are going to be of the view that there's a good chance of Top being proven right whoever he chooses to bring in. There are three huge, glaring problems with this, however. Firstly, that it would be proof that nothing has really changed at a time when drastic change is required. Proof that Top is still fixated with possession-based football - an obsession which most likely contributed to us parting ways with Pearson in 2010 and setting our progress back by years, appointing Sousa then Sven. And which - back in 2017 - was deemed 'the only truly sustainable way forward' for the club (at a point in time when two promotions and a league title were our recent past, and a collapse of existential proportions our not-too-distant future). Proof that we can't look beyond gradually replacing everyone at the club with someone who was a bit of a failure at Southampton. Proof that 'outside the box thinking' doesn't exist in our boardroom, and that we can't get 'inside the box thinking' right either. Secondly, this would either mean that McCarron was another 'yes man', handpicked because he roundly reflected all of Top's and Rudkin's ideals, or that Top was still making the big calls, and McCarron is an utter irrelevance. The rule of thumb for some time has been that if Top thinks something is the right way forward, then it's probably the very opposite of what we should be doing, and so the same would have to apply to Martin's appointment. And to McCarron's. And, while we're at it, Glover's. And everything else from top to bottom of the club. Finally, the chances of it coming off would be slimmer than the average pundit might think. Many fans will make their minds up before a ball is kicked, and as we saw with Cooper, that in itself can make it very hard for something to work out. Even if - like most of us - you resolve not to boo him from the off, if the football is frustrating and pedestrian in Game One, there'll be restlessness. And even if that works out for him, when the first defeat comes the sense of 'here we go again' will be far greater than it would with other managers. Sometimes an appointment is so monumentally unpopular that it's really hard for it to work out, even if it should. And when you actually look at his record with clubs like Rangers, Swansea, MK Dons, and even to a degree with Southampton where he rather unspectacularly pulled off what he was widely expected to pull off (before it all went wrong) it all reeks of style over substance. Hype for doing things in an interesting way - the 'right' way, if you're of a particular school of thought - but not in a very effective way. Even in the third tier. So the chances of it working out with a crap, unpopular manager appointed by a chairman whose key decisions have almost exclusively been proven to be wrong, and at a club which is plummeting fast and opting to change pretty much nothing, are not all that great. Perhaps, as with Southampton, Martin will achieve what everyone expects him to next season - you can't discount the possibility - but even then I'd be very dubious that we'd learnt our lessons, fixed the club, got back on the right track. Instead of that, the club needs a genuine upheaval of its long-standing, failed ideals, for other people to make the big calls instead of Top or Rudkin, for a manager to come in who is custom-made for a budget rebuild and success in the third tier. It shouldn't be too hard for them to realise this, but we all know what past evidence suggests on that score.

Three things would concern me most if there had been even a hint of truth in our interest. The first is that he's not particularly good and is unlikely to get any better. He's pretty much a tier three-level player, so it would indicate another transfer window of trying to bring in 'oven ready' players for our level rather than any sort of building for the long-term. The second is that, for once, I do actually know a bit about Max Lowe, and there are certainly a good few Derby fans who felt that he lacked a bit of fight and desire when they were struggling and that he was also a tad too big for his boots. I even remember one incident where he himself admitted that his head was up his own arse. Pretty much verbatim. So that would suggest that we've not learnt anything about the need to scout character rather than simply playing credentials. In fact, it would indicate that instead of trying to bring in PL-standard players regardless of whether they're ****heads, we've dropped down a couple of divisions and are trying to bring in 2nd/3rd tier players who may well be ****heads instead. And the third very concerning point is that we don't have a manager yet. So that would indicate that Top, Rudkin, Glover (and possibly their new friend on the board, McCarron) are still plotting the future course, recruitment strategy, playing style and personnel of the team without any input from whoever is going to have to actually manage them, or stick up for them next season. I mean, that worked out well in January, didn't it?

The problem with Warne is what happens after promotion. His record in the Championship is absolutely abysmal, and while it'd be foolish to understate how crucial a promotion might be for us, I do think we need to look further than the short-term fixes for once. Going up and needing to either fire a popular manager, overhauling his style of play in the process, or get relegated, isn't a great choice. If we want a promotion specialist then someone a little less tainted like Challinor might be the better bet.

As others have said, it depends on what you define 'world class' to be. It's like when people coin the term 'club legend' and debate whether it should be applied to King at one extreme (great servant, great trophy haul, not a major factor in much of the success he enjoyed) and then, say, Kante at another. It's clear that you consider 'world class' to mean the best in the world at what they do, especially if you can only think of four PL players right now who are 'world class'. On that basis, you'd struggle to argue for even Banks and Lineker. Kante may well be the only one, in his City days at least. And no, Ricardo (who was second or third choice RB for Portugal even at his peak) wouldn't come near. I'm not entirely convinced, by that measure, that Rice would apply now, as great a player as he is. For me, though, 'world class' is to be among the very best in your position: To be able to truly excel internationally, continentally and/or within the best teams in the best domestic leagues. That would mean Vardy, Mahrez and Kante were nailed-on, because in terms of what they offered, they were among the best. Possibly even the best. And probably Kasper too, who I honestly thought was one of the best three or four in the world at his peak. That really is a reminder of how amazing Pearson/Walsh were, isn't it? And how our success had more to do with their immense ability to forge an elite side on a shoestring budget than with the investment in the club, as important as it may have been. The six or seven million we spent on Vardy/Mahrez/Kante was by no means an exceptional outlay. The fact that superhuman scouting brought us talent worth twenty or thirty times that amount goes a lot further towards explaining our ascent. And, of course, the people responsible for that were at the club a good while before KP were on the scene.