Think this is a literally bat **** appointment personally. Nowhere near a good enough record for me. We have a small window of time where we are a big fish in the championship, we need to go with a big statement appointment. I think SR have ****ed it again.
Agree with most, except I'd be keeping Che and Stuie. If J-Rod can score double figures in the Championship, then Che should get 20+ no problem. Not only that but his all-round play as a number ten is very good. And Stuie is still a level above most Championship playmakers. He'll create a lot against weaker defences. And of course, they are both experienced heads, which we need more of. The rest you mention I'd be happy to leave.
The first job our new management team must do is a series of one to one’s with every player to interview them to gauge their intentions and attitude before deciding on who is in and who is out whilst quickly back filling with suitable players to enhance the playing style we are going to introduce We have a bloated sub standard squad so we need twice as many out as we need to bring in so we need to be brave and patient as things start to change over as it might get messy
I feel ok about this. Sounds like with more investment he could of done more with Swansea. I’m quite looking forward to it. Seems to be a clearer plan from SR finally, so let’s wait and see. Hope he brings Grimes and the striker fella! It will be nice to have a clear identity, as we’ve been about as uncertain as an introvert at a summer ball.
Yeah, not about ability for me any more. I could sum it up with Could, should, would but don’t. Both those players have been rumoured to want out for years now. Seeya.
The truth is that nobody knows how it will pan out but I have a good feeling about this appointment and the reasons behind it. He is still young but has a clear philosophy about how he wants his team to play, pretty football with an attacking purpose and I want to be entertained as well as being a winning team. There is no doubt that he will have much more talent at his disposal than in his previous jobs a bit like Nigel Adkins when he came from Scunthorpe and I hope that he is allowed to get his own players in too.
Dunno I’ve seen quite a few Swansea fans saying our team isn’t good enough to play the style he wants
Probably true, but then again hopefully our team will look very different in personnel and mentality come the start of the season!
I doubt if the Swansea fans are that familiar with our squad, I certainly don't know a great deal about theirs!
The lone Swansea fan who came in this thread said the same as well “ I don't think he is ready for a move, especially to you lads who have so many bad players who haven’t a clue how to play a possession driven game” It’s pretty easy to say that we have a Championship level team when you see our overall performance this season, whether it is better than the team that finished 10th in the Championship is another matter
We were appallingly managed and coached this season that is the main reason that we were so poor imo. Perhaps we are better suited to a different style of play, it hasn't been tested yet. We've got a few lads that came from Citeh, i'm sure that they will be comfortable playing that way.
Literally two months ago their fans were saying they want him gone and he is taking them down: https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/footb...ur-mentality’-but-russ-this-is-relegation/#19 Instead they put a run together and did ok. I would rather Parker or Bilic (or anyone with championship promotion / top level experience) than this guy personally.
This is where the appointment feels a little bit of a gamble to me. Martin has had fits and starts in both his previous clubs. Last season he's had both awful and outstanding runs. Even those out and he would appear to be decidedly 'just ok'. I have no doubt that he knows his stuff but he hasn't yet shown anything that would indicate he is a thoroughbred just waiting to be let off the leash. If he hadn't finished the season on a run of ten wins or whatever he had, would he have been a serious contender? It has the feel of another NJ appointment where we have crunched the numbers trying to find a DeZerbi or Arne Slott style of coach and ended up with Martin. The upside is that I would love to see us playing that way, the downside is we need to get rid of most of our squad and start from scratch with the mental and cultural side which can only slow the football side down. Powerless to change it, pointless to whine about it so all I can do is support it. Get in Russell Martin!!
I'm also not convinced that having a team that swings wildly is worse than one that is consistently middling. Ralph's teams stayed up almost exclusively because they'd have a couple months of being absolutely spectacular, while playing like dogshit a lot of the time. Even our promotion team had a long malaise (relative to the rest of our season): we had a run of 12 matches where we only took three wins, and remained in the top two only because our opening 3.5 months had been otherworldly. We were eight points clear of third on Nov 19th, and went to Birmingham on Feb 4th knowing that a loss could drop us to fourth in the table (luckily, that was the infamous snow game where either team scoring was virtually impossible, so we remained ahead of Birmingham, and Cardiff was just kicking off their own two-month-long collapse by losing at home to Blackpool, so second we remained).
