I, like you Nuggets, feel a tad underwhelmed if his appointment is confirmed BUT I feel the key point here is, will ME back him with extra ££`s, another intriguing point is that it will be interesting to see if PL can get a tune out of the current crop of players. We will then see if PH failed as a championship manager or the players he recruited are not up to championship quality. PL has two months before window opens so that should allow him enough time to scrutinise each player and make a fair assessment of their talents. Could be a very interesting run up until end of this year, but I will give Pl that time before passing my opinion (for what its worth) on him ( will be hard to get over the Norwich connection though)
Do you think a bit of small praise is due to ME in acting quickly before things got too far out of control. ME did say before appointing PH that the appointment was a calculated risk and now sees clearly that this gamble has not paid off. So fair play to him in acting quickly to try and stop our slide I know that ME is public enemy number1 and having read all the posts regarding him it is hard to argue against any of the points raised, so why do I feel a bit uneasy of him walking away, I don't know,
You must remember that Evans holds the purse strings so everything will be done on the cheap, Lambert is not a name I would have even thought of but high profile names that are available wouldn't touch us with a barge pole, you cut your cloth to suit your pocket.
If Lambert is installed today and it’s true that Evans has been talking to other managers over the last couple of weeks then it goes a long way to explaining how we went from a very good performance against Swansea to such a terrible one against QPR. The players probably knew. The club is poisonous and Town are in a state, I don’t think Evans deserves any credit.
I'm not buying that Swansea from what I've been told by people I trust. We should have been 2 / 3-0 down before it was 1-1. We then caught them cold to make it 2-1. They battered us for 90 minutes, we had 3 shots, and at 2-2 their manager was incredibly naive - essentially doing ' all out attack ' including full backs on championship manager and we managed a sucker punch. Incredibly naive from the Swansea manager. Don't get me wrong, I'll take 3 points any day of the week - and from what I was told we DID have one of our better performances of the season ( in spells ) however the bar is so low that's hardly surprising.
My biggest concern is that Lambert is just another one of the merry go round managers who has had one decent spell which he then seems to live off, along with a lot more mediocre and abject spells.. But somehow keeps getting linked to every single job. That said, I actually quite liked him.. When I say like, I mean I remember enviously watching him assemble an exciting attacking side with an identity and wished we had someone like him, though I'm not sure I ever wished we had him. I've always thought his record has got progressively worse since Norwich, but on closer inspection I'm not sure that's entirely fair on him Aston Villa: 115 Games | 29.6% | 1.11 ppg Blackburn Rovers: 33 Games | 36.4% | 1.33 ppg Wolverhampton Wanderers: 33 Games | 42.4% | 1.42 ppg Stoke City: 15 Games | 13.3% | 0.87 ppg His numbers in the Premier league are not great, but that is of very little concern to us and I was surprised to see he actually had a decent record at Blackburn and Wolves, particularly considering the ownership issues and huge turnover of players and managers they were going through.. so they are certainly very respectable numbers he's putting up there. Wolves in particular looks very promising as 1.42 ppg is very positive considering what he inherited and he made some great signings that went on to be core players in a team that went on to storm the league a season later.
Having slept on the news and heard some more considered, balanced appraisals of Paul Lambert, I guess it's not guaranteed to be quite the catastrophe I'm anticipating. Lambert does have a wealth of experience in this division and undeniably did a great job with Norwich, making that side attractive and entertaining to watch. He has a lot of contacts in the game and will presumably know the area well after being at Colchester and Norwich. I may have been slightly harsh on his Blackburn and Wolves stints, as Scowey mentions above he had a decent win rate and clubs with turbulent ownerships. However, Lambert did benefit at the start of the monied Wolves ownership and had a very good squad to work with, but struggled and was rightly sacked. I guess I'd rather have Lambert than Hurst in charge, due to the latter providing no real sign of turning around the poor form and admittedly looking completely out of his depth. I feel bad for Hurst that's gone wrong, and during those early months I tried looking for signs of positivity and optimism. Changing the culture and style of the club, which had been ingrained with a certain way of playing for several years, was always going to be a challenge. On a general note, who would have thought we'd have Lambert in the dug out several months ago when everything was full of promise and aspiration. Such a change of mood, and I'm interested to see what the atmosphere against Preston will be like. Fans hating Lambert for his Norwich connection is childish. He is Scottish, Norwich was just a job, and a job that ended in acrimony as he took them to court.
From memory he inherited a squad that was incredibly unbalanced and had just just had an influx of Portuguese (big money) signings. He then brought in a couple of experienced championship players in January and quickly got them competing and playing decent football... Picking up plenty of points. He ended up leaving as he had a disagreement with the owner as they wanted to impose more structure above him, taking away any input or influence in the transfer strategy (I think he walked I don't think he was sacked ) Plus it was abundantly clear that they wanted to bring in Nuno regardless as they wanted a 'high profile' name and someone who would work within that structure more comfortably.
I stand corrected, Scowey, he did indeed resign after the power struggle. He apparently wanted to sign more British players at the club and was indeed against the profile of Nuno Mendes. However, despite those mitigating factors, he still only finished seven points from the relegation zone in his last season at Wolves. The new manager then bought some more players but took that squad up as champions, so Lambert arguably under-performed. I'll definitely support him and if he gets the level of control he wants (let's face it, Evans is hardly going to stand in his way on this as a non-football businessman), then he might be able to get us away from the bottom three and build for something in the future. If we do avoid relegation, I hope we stick with him and don't replace him for the sake of it. We need some stability and to go from a club that traditionally gives managers time to a club happy to hire and fire is an unpleasant thought.
I don’t recall Mick actually saying those words,it was more bandied about by his apologists and tv pundits who didn’t actually pay to watch the dross we had to put up with over his last Season and a half or so.
I went to the QPR game at the weekend as a birthday treat with my Son!! Well i guess it was the thought that counts!
We didn't outplay Swansea - the away team rarely does - but you don't score three goals in a match by accident. On another day the header for 3-2 just comes back off the post, but that time we had the rub of the green. Before the international break the performances were at the very least encouraging so I reckon the players already knew by the QPR game, especially given that Matt Holland said he was told it was happening and others have talked about Holloway and Sherwood. I could see it coming because Evans never came out in public to support Hurst, but when we're judging Hurst we have to remember this nonsense going on in the background has undermined at least the last couple of performances and results. We will never know if it would have been better to give Hurst the chance to build on getting the monkey off their back with the Swansea win.
Ha ha not much Warky, I have been asleep most of the time! I do feel some pity for Hurst. But we all gave him time enough to show us something, and apart from some glimpses of rare Ipswich attacking more fluent style, which had us all thinking, oh, alright, we like this new stuff...we then saw most players in a right old musical chairs and everyone playing in everybodys else's position! Some 20 players recycled over about 6 matches! A desperate man, out of his depth with League 1 & 2 players, with the old guard becoming less enthusiastic every game. and, perhaps aware of the behind the scenes manoeuvres, not frankly giving much of a toss last 3 games. What sorry state our beloved Suffolk Club has come to. Cue...tra lah trumpety trump tr-la enter stage right Warky, on his trusty Old Suffolk Punch horse to stir things up a bit!! Welcome back mate!
Hey good to see you on here Gaffer you old bugger! Hows life treating you? I hope all is well with you and yours
