@OfficialFOXES: Tonight's #FAYouthCup tie between #LCFC and @hullcityteam Under-18s has been called off due to the weather http://t.co/kvFgJmJs
No surprise there then. I walked the pooch and went by the ground half hour ago and it was blizzard conditions. I'll have to make do with Man Utd and Real Madrid instead.
Yeah ok. Whatever. SAF actually said that it was his time with Wigan under Martinez that improved him to Man Utd standard. As for getting Man Utd kids, well we have Warren Joyce in situ @ Old Trafford and Steve Bruce as manager. That will trump anything that your Nige can muster.
If Nige hadn't have done a good job at Hull, you may never have attracted players like those Rosie mentioned or an experienced Prem manager like Bruce in the first place. You may have been planning a route back into the Championship instead. And Bruce did sign Prozzie. Just adding a bit of balance for those blinkered fans.
Nige did do a good job for us, but I don't accept for a minute that it had any bearing on Bruce joining us. And Bruce did sign Prozzie, who is better than McLean, who Pearson spunked £1.3m on.
OK, let's put it this way. If you'd had a poor manager and you were relegated last season, would Bruce have joined you in League One? Or even if you'd survived but the signs to the outside world were that you were going to struggle again, would he have taken the risk? I would doubt it. The fact that you were a top ten club made you an attractive option. That first season back in the Championship can be tricky (ask Blackburn, Wolves and Bolton). Pearson, as you said, did a good job and set you in a good stead, as he did for us in his first spell when we disastrously moved on to "bigger" names (Sousa, Sven). In fairness, at least McLean had an impressive record at an English club when you signed him. And he was half the price.
But he's only building on Nige's work, that's my point. If you'd had the two managers the over way round, I think you'd be in virtually the same position now - assuming Bruce could have installed stability as well as Nige did. Anyone can tweak and improve an already good team but it's much harder to stop a ship from sinking.
I'm not there, they're playing at the ground our reserves normally play at, which is only a couple of miles from me, but the missus did a roast tonight and I'm not allowed out, so I'm just getting updates from mates on Twitter. I'll ask though.
