Your point about tinkering being for pre-season still has me perplexed. I could understand tinkering towards the end of a season under two circumstances: (a) when you're a country mile away at the top of the table, have cantered to the title and have a few games remaining where you can afford to piss about a bit, or (b) when you're in the last chance saloon, desperately fighting off relegation, are losing left, right and centre, and nothing is off the table. So, why the fudge start doing in at the final furlong, with a shot at the play-offs winking cheekily across the room at you like a young Claudia Cardinale? Either Warbles received a blow to the head, or (as I've said before) it was deliberately scuppered on the grounds that the Board determined the club wasn't ready for promotion, both financially and in terms of playing staff. The latter sounds ludicrous to me, but stranger things have happened.
So rumours are Chair, Adomeh and McCallum have season ending injuries. Maybe half the tinkering has been trying to protect players like this and Barbet, Wallace and Johansen...all of whom are known to have niggles. We have used one of the smallest number of players in the championship. Yes because we have a small squad...which I know Warbs prefers...but is also cheaper for FFP. It has caught up with us... He has been tinkering trying to avoid what has eventually happened
The other option is simply that Warbles’ Plan A has been found out by the opposition, which is not too difficult, and he’s been floundering around trying to find an alternative, with the wrong personnel and not much intelligence.
Genuinely think injuries have been the key issue coupled with loss of form for several players. It's like a vicious circle, its hard for players to maintain form and momentum with constant niggling injuries, have we really seen a fully fit Johansen or Austin or Wallace at all this season for example. Warbs is certainly culpable to a degree but I think it was Ian at WLS who drew comparison between us and Blackburn who had a similar trajectory to us last season but stuck with Mowbray and are now on the play offs. Overall I think Warbs has done more good than bad so I'd be leaning towards keeping him, nothing less than winning the remaining games would do that though.
All the players you have mentioned Beth have nothing to do with not playing with a striker when there are strikers available. He has tinkered in desperation.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. There are mitigating circumstances, but I find the re-writing of history concerning Warburton's poor decision making a tad frustrating.
Apparently it was a joke tweet as they were at an Easter egg event with kids on the pitch what used to be known as the red ash...... We can put the indignation to one side in this instance.....
He only did that twice though didn't he? And we won one of those games. Not that I'm saying I agree with it.
We had the best 2021 across the 4 Divisions except Man City apparently. We have been in the top 6 for most of this season until just a few weeks ago. Best Manager based on results since Warnock won us the Championship 11 years ago. Holloway repeatedly had us on as bad runs as this one and kept his job. And all this on a low Champiobship level Budget. He and his coaching team have improved young players considerably and in so doing raised their value on the Market - Eze done, about 20 M, BOS, Chair, Willock a huge improvement the last 2 seasons and is hardly recognisable from the player that joined us, Dieng, Dickie, Dunne, Barbet, Moses, Field and even Dozzell is showing a but more. This bad run is based mainly on injuries to key players Willock, Dieng, and now Dickie, 4 WB's at once, 363 Keepers at once, as I remember it all 3 strikers were out at once. Also to the loss of fitness/ form of the experienced players we used much of our Budget on and couldnt afford to add to in January more than we did, Austin, Dykes, Johansen, Wallace and Jordi. I'm hoping we have Warburton going for Promotion again next season with a bit more quality in depth and new striker.
The thing you cannot quantify in all this is where we would have been under different management this season. My default position is that we would not quite make the playoffs but would have no worries at the wrong end of the table. Pre-season what was your prediction/expectation?
I'm still with you. Just about. But it seems from the WLS article that it's already decided? As discussed further up the thread, now time for SLF and CR to prove that the development & big picture progress is down to them too, and they have a coach in mind who can help them to do that and play with a similar enjoyable style, but with more cutting edge. Fingers crossed.
Top 6 hopefully or at worst finishing higher than last season, neither of which are gonna be attained ! You can make whatever excuses you want but if you think they'll be an improvement next season under him your clutching at straws.
I hoped to be in the play offs, based on how we ended last season. But this misses the point imo. I completely acknowledge that Warburton has done a very good job on a very low budget. It's blowing the chance we created that I'm criticising. I reckon you'd have struggled to find a bookie who would have taken a bet on us not being in the play offs as the AFCON ended. Warburton made wrong calls too often, long before the injury crisis set in. We were being found out and, imo, he had no answer to it. It's this missed opportunity that I'm upset about and critical of Warburton for.
I watched that discussion and all 3 of them seemed to want Warburton in the job at the start of the next season. Certainly Gallen and the elderly bloke. The young introducer seemed to be saying it was already decided, or nearly decided that he'd be off end of season, but that was not clear and he gave no source for any of it.
