Reading through that thread Johnny I wouldn't say there was a majority voicing concerns about the system. I think it pretty much reflects a similar split to this forum,some bemoaning his tactics and lack of goals/ a win and others who are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt for now and appreciating what he is aiming for. It's all too easy to cherrypick the views that concur with your own and ignore the rest.
I don't think anyone expects us to be " world beaters ", I don't think anyone expects promotion, but I do think its valid for supporters of ITFC to voice their concerns at the current situation the Club finds itself in early days or not. We play 1 up front which MM was slated for, we are not scoring goals so haven't won a game yet, we have a £10M surplus from the sale of players which has left us weaker but not reinvested, the bubble of enthusiasm will burst into apathy if the situation isn't remedied soon and nobody wants that. Its been pointed out yet again that Evans puts £6M a year into the Club as if this is the actions of a wonderful benefactor, it is not, if after 10 years a business is still making losses then it could be construed that the MD is literally in the wrong business, one he knows nothing about, draw your own conclusions. On a happier but not irrelevant note today I got 3 tickets for the Hull match at £12 each, yes that's not a concessions price but it's £12 across the board for away fans, I don't know what it costs away fans at PR but I think it might be a little more than that, we put ticket prices up but see little or no return for that.
My worry is that he has focused too much on lower league players who may have potential to step up and ignoring players from our league and above! The squad MM left was decent and only needed a few quality additions not the wholesale changes that we have now. He has basically turned us into a newly promoted team in all but name instead of taking what he inherited and building on it.. Yes its early days but the omens aren't looking great when we are struggling to score at one end and conceding at the other! If results don't soon improve the honeymoon will be very much over.
JWM - the side MM left was **** for 5 years of building to finish mid table. Ridiculous. fieldmarshall - Hull have had seasons in the Premier League without outlaying lots of cash on players, one season in the top flight would pretty much wipe out our debt, so they are in a completely different situation to us. I'm fairly certain that Evans would not have bought the club had he known how it would turn out. I do think there was probably something dodgy going on around the 2012 Olympics with Clegg in post, but that's the extent of it. Anyone who is watching the matches is concerned by playing one up, but Hurst gave a very good account for this and I'm behind him 100%. He also is not opposed to changing the system when he feels the time is right. The majority of signings are improvements on what we had. Not all of them will work out, they never do. It's not about how you react when you're winning - it's about how you react when things are not going your way. A lot of the supporters on TWTD, JWM and the like - losing their **** after 5 games - are reacting like losers. In his first season Sir Alex Ferguson won a solitary away game and finished 11th. He made no signings. The season before they had finished 4th. What he did do that year was set up the youth system that yielded Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, the Nevilles et al. In other words, get your heads out of your arses.
In season 1 so what? We're not going up this year. What's more important is to get into good habits and build the right foundations. I can see all that happening already. The chance creation bothers me but it's not necessarily the first thing that's going to click.
He was three parts pissed most of the time bless him! So long as the supply of White Wine in the boardroom didn't run out!
Seriously, we can't judge PH yet. He is going to need at least six months and a second transfer window to breathe some life back into the old corpse.
I recall that toward the end of last season, there was a thread on here that discussed what we thought about the quality of the squad Mick had left us, and I recall that the general consensus seemed to be that there was the basis of a good, Championship quality squad here. I agreed with that but I remember having concerns about how some of the squad would cope in a system that focused on possession and favoured attacking football. Unfortunately, my first impressions seem to confirm that Chambers and Knudsen in particular are struggling with this change. Also, as is the risk in using the loan market heavily, when CCV, Connolly, and Celina were returned to their parent clubs this summer, we lost an in-form, reliable centre-back, a first-team regular in central midfield, and an inconsistently effective game changer at left-wing. Add their departures to the losses of Webster, Waghorn, and Garner (all three of whom wanted to leave to further their careers, how much of that is down to Mick leaving is uncertain), which leaves us with the reality that Hurst was always going to have to bring in several additions just to get the squad competitive again. I get where Warky and Fieldmarshall are coming from with their concerns regarding the new signings. Time will tell if Hurst was correct to exclusively focus on signing players from the lower league (Chalobah and Edun excepted). In Hurst's defence, that market is his specialty, and one he knows well, so he cannot exactly be criticized for relying on lower league players and I get the impression Evans was well aware of this philosophy and supported it. Personally, I think, and hope, that it will all come good and we'll have a solid, but safe, transitional season. I don't think a credible promotion push is attainable in the near future, although we should not limit our ambition (just don't berate the club for failing to reach what is realistically viewed as a hopeful objective, and, as I mentioned elsewhere, we don't have a 'divine right' to be in the Premier League. No club does). In the short-term, as long as we notch a few wins over the coming weeks and continue improving performances and the quality of football, I should think most of the supporters (both in here and in general) will be satisfied.
I think it's ideology. I have always wanted Town to pick up the best players from the lower leagues. Assombalonga was on our doorstep and one we should have been in for, however ideally it would not be so many new players all at once. We have no divine right to be in the Premier League, but it's pretty pitiful that so many clubs have come from far weaker situations to gradually overtake us and get there. Where's the thread? Will be interesting to see what we all thought?
A lot of clubs that have gone up from weaker situations have typically been bankrolled by a generous benefactor. See Bournemouth, Wolves, Southampton, Watford, Brighton, Leicester, Fulham etc who have effectively thrown money to get out of this division, and they've admittedly spent that money well in most cases. A few clubs have not - Burnley and Cardiff spring to mind as sides that did not exactly spend a lot (we can probably ignore Cardiff signing Madine for God knows how much, he didn't play a big factor). Cardiff were led by Neil Warnock, a winner at this level who knows the divison well, and Burnley had a philosophy that was embodied by Sean Dyche. Huddersfield struck lucky with an effective philosophy and hiring a manager like David Wagner, they squeaked through on penalties in the play offs and maybe could have had a decent stab at promotion the season after or could have gone the way of Sheffield Wednesday. As for the thread, there were a fair few discussions around the squad. but I believe it was all brought together here - https://www.not606.com/threads/squad-overhaul-maybe-maybe-not.358344/
We may have bought a lot of lower league players but next year we'll have a team of championship players and a championship manager
There was an interesting debate the other night on sky with Carragher and Neville discussing the situation at Arsenal. Carragher was saying that Arsenal don't have the players to implement Emery's playing style, so they should adapt in some situations to suit them, whereas Neville's theory is that Emery should stick to his philosophy and playing style, even if it means losing more in the short term, because if they change and adapt, then the players will lose some respect for the manager as he doesnt stick to his guns. This is a similar scenario at town. Does/should Hurst change his system because it's not working or keep plugging away hoping the players we have learn his system and the results slowly baring fruit? My opinion is that we are in a transitional period, and the manager is still sussing us out so should try more than one system. The longer he sticks to one system, and the longer we go without winning, the harder it is to get out of the rut, and also makes it easier for teams to suss us out. I'm all for giving the manager time, but I'm also a believer that teams should have more than one plan
Nuggets, I think there was a similar thread more recently. I'm pretty sure the gist of my feelings at the time was that we have a spine of a team only and needed a lot of players in.
