Watched this post match interview a few times. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26905697 Strong leadership is a key component in football and unfortunately we do not have that on or off the field. OGS is not leading his team and I get the feeling neither is his captain. Listen from 2 minutes 22, does he correct himself and admit he ran out of ideas how to break them down? (Clearly he looks uncomfortable and seems to be conscious of someone to his right throughout the interview) We were playing Crystal Palace at home for f**k sake not Liverpool at Anfield. I've made it clear for a while that I thought sacking Malky was a mistake. I'm the first to admit It wasn't all flair and City goalfests but at least I felt the team and manager seemed to exude a unified belief that we would come good and survive in this our first Premiership season. With a few more key signings I still believe we would now be safe in this division.
I agree as regards OGS but Malky's last few results did little to instill confidence and it is indisputable that a lot of money was wasted on poor signings.
Just for getting us into the PL he should have been given a season at least, always said that. But we will never know if we would have stayed up with him here, personally I don't think we would have as we never looked like scoring and you need to score to win games.
BfB! I think the Cornelius signing will always be the thorn in Malky's side but how much confidence have you now got in OGS signings?
MM got us promoted as champions with the 2nd lowest points total. His managemnt in the championship was reasonable but not outstanding. His performances in the premiership were what I expected, lots of defending and hope for a goal on a counter-attack or from a set piece. So the season was going as I expected, we were struggling and performances were patchy at best. If he had kept his mouth shut after Tan backed down he could have been our manager a little while longer but he didn't, he played a bit of politics and lost. He had to be sacked irrespecitive of results he called his boss out in public. MM was sacked for non football reasons, the poor results that followed his press releases helped show him the door. Ole isn't the manager to keep us up, but football people (allegedly) decided on him and I believe will give him time in the championship (if we are relegated) or the premiership. He is also on a 12 month rolling contract, so replacing him won't cost huge bucks (in relative terms) and a better equiped manager can be installed quite quickly.
malky would have been the man to bring us back up, as we will be relying on the players that did well for us in the championship next year. ole will probably be given a chance next year to bring us back up but i'd be surprised if we're in the top 2 after 10 games. however MM clearly annoyed tan with his comments and attitude and when you have a mad dictator as chairman nothing can surprise you. if he does get sacked at some point in the future it will be very expensive, its reported that his wage here is 75k a week, and £2m to sack him. plus we're stuck with kenwyne jones as stoke laugh their way to the bank. this appointment goes down as a very expensive mistake unfortunately......
Cardiff had a lot better chance at staying up by leaving Malky to finish his deserved full season ..Tan took things personally instead of businessly , if thats a word. Same as us , Laudrup would have us out of the relegation demise and in at least 1 cup still , but Huw got personal.
Ah ... I'm not sure I have confidence in Ole any more BUT I am confident that if he had been given 8 to 10 million to spend on a striker he would NOT have signed Cornelius. Ole's signings were mostly got in on the cheap (and had to be quickly) with any money that was left after Milky had squandered the summer budget, and I don't think it is fair to criticise him for the situation he inherited. He got in what he could - though Zaha has turned out to be a mistake. It was also a mistake to get rid of Odemwingie - but under Milky (who spent £2.5 million on him) he was wasted and looked useless. We needed a big striker, so we got Kennie Jones - if Cornelius had been any good that would not have been needed. This is going round in circles. We would have done better to keep Gestede - who scored again yesterday and was a player who had/has the potential to improve. Don't laugh - you think either Jones or Cornelius are vastly better players than him now? What do teams which go up generally fail to do? Score enough goals .. and this problem was not addressed last summer (not that Milky seemed that interested in scoring goals - and bolluxx to this build from the back stuff, it was terrible and we were not scoring, or even looking like we wanted to usually).
Looks as if there may be a perfect job opportunity for Malky just cropped up. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26916661
I thing it was the other way at Cardiff Daily Mail was given loads of unwanted information from the MM camp. Look at video where Tan put his hand out to shake and Malky brushed it aside. Tan has made far to many mistakes as Cardiff owner and not sacking MM 6 weeks earlier was the biggest.
When discussing Malky I try to draw a line at the Anfield game and disregards between then and his sacking, as it was completely obvious to everybody that the manager didn't have the owners backing at that point - that will have filtered down to the players and indisputedly have effected their peformance levels. Up until the circus behind the scenes started, i thought we were an organised, competative team that was dificult to break down. Boring to watch, but picking up points here and there and not shipping goals by the barrel. All hypothetical, but I would say fairly confidently that had Malky retained the owners backing (which I feel his work up until this season entitled him to) we would not have lost 4-0 home to hull, 3-0 home to palace, meekly surrendered 3-0 in a s.w. derby, meekly surrendered 2-0 to west ham... We would, in all probability, still be in a relegation fight but we would at least be fighting. This is not to say Ole is a bad manager, the brief he was given by our lunatic owner was to attack and entertain, and he has tried to do that. Problem is we simply do not have the players for it.
Once it was accepted that the breakdown in relations was so wide, the mistake was not to sack Mackay sooner rather than wait for the hoo haa to go on and on and on. One will never know where City would have been had Mackay stayed. He was told he had no money available to him in January so he would have had to used the 25 man squad he started with. That was good enough to win 17 points after 18 games, a points tally which took until WBA to double with al those January signings. The obvious reason why City have failed so badly since Mackay was sacked is the appointment of the manager; a complete novice from a weak foreign league. That was solely Tan's decision. A complete lack of understanding of English football. Who on earth advised him to appoint such an unsuited novice? City ie Tan has nobody but himself to blame for this situation. Forge the red/blue thing, that is immaterial. The problem is so fundamental, and shows a complete lack of understanding in running a football club. Mackay was at fault for failing to bring in 6/7 experienced PL footballers and Solskaer is at fault for failing to do the same in January and then not knowing what tactics to adopt, what team to pick and how to compete in this division. It needed an assistant, director of football call it what you like but someone who could have done what eg Gerry Francis does at Palace. It is such a wasted opportunity and all so self inflicted.
I don't think Monk sits at the top of any tree, at least the last time I looked he wasn't our Chairman, I was referring to this wisdom from ninian below...... Like I said a clown at the top, and the sooner the Idiot is kicked out of English (And Welsh) football the better, complete embarrassment to the game!.........
Trouble is Phil, were he to be "kicked out" and that is extremely improbable then he he will want to take his toys with him. His toys being the estimated £160m he has put into the club. Some of that in shares but the majority in loans. However he tries to achieve that puts the club in financial meltdown. A set of circumstances Swans fans would sympathise with I'm sure having been there twice themselves before.
I think the transfer situation has been done to death on here. The only thing I'll add is Ole had a very limited budget and added attacking options on a budget. We have better options and a bench to change things, on the tiny budget by PL standards he was operating under that was not a bad achievement. The fact he has destroyed the defensive abilities of the side tinkering with selection, formations and the 'intent' of the side means we could have signed Saurez, Bale and Ronaldo and struggled to score enough goals. With regard to MM we have a split on the forum, some in total support others totally against. I'm in the middle and recognise genuine merit in both arguments. From a football point of view you could argue he should have been given longer, from a political and transfer policy point of view he survived much longer than he should of. All 3 are important aspects of a managers job. The 'we would have survived' with MM argument is very easy stick to beat Tan and the anti MM side of the argument with but it's obvious that no one can possibly know if that would have been the case. Man City showed the commitment MM could get from a side but under his watch we had already lost very tamely to Palace, Villa, Newcastle, West ham. Whilst being totally done tactically in 30 minutes by Saints at home. We'd scrapped a draw with Everton more by luck than judgement and deservedly lost to Spurs when their record number of shots in a PL game finally paid off. We'd controlled the game at Fulham but a lack of ambition meant we required a last minute screamer to win a game we should have been comfortable in. The same lack of ambition let Villa comfortably win in the end a game that was there for the taking. Craig Noone our undisputed best attacking player didn't kick a PL football for our first 12 matches under MM despite looking razor sharp in the cups........ We beat West Brom at home but a missed chance from 8 yards should have made that game a draw. In our promotion season I believe Burnley at home around November was the last time we won a game by more than a single goal margin. MM's defensive strategy would have given us a chance at getting results, what I do believe is that the squad we have had a better chance playing to the style it was built to play rather than attempting to become Real Madrid overnight with a few Norwiegens thrown in to try to make it work.
