Been at the club a year, (well in 2 days) and has now been manager for 38 games, same as a full prem season. Gained 45 points, or 1.18 points per game. Games Played 38 Won 11 Drawn 12 Lost 15 Goals Scored 44 Goals Conceded 51 Goal Difference -7 POINTS 45 Clean Sheets 13 Failed To score 14 Win %age 29% Don't Lose %age 61% Goals Per Game 1.16 Goals Conceded Per Game 1.34 POINTS PER GAME 1.18
He had to pick up the pieces of a total disaster. He's got us to a cup final, made us safe from certain relegation and has the start of a decent squad. Might take another couple of transfer windows to get where he wants, but I wouldn't swap him for anyone right now.
I don't think he can really be judged on his first full year Comm, he inherited a load of **** and in house issues which needed time to sort out so he was off to a bad start straight away. Personally I love the bloke and I think his footballing philosophy is perfect for us, I was bored ****less watching MON's teams to be honest and would probably have stopped going to the match if he had remained in charge. PDC was just a lunatic but he tried to play decent football, just lost the plot trying really. In just one year Gus has taken us from fodder into a hard to beat team and we are now seeing signs that we can also play attractive attacking football, we're not there yet, but I reckon Gus is a man who will succeed. Give him till the end of this season to see what he can do, give him a couple more transfer windows then we can judge him fairly.
Jury's still out for me. He had a very difficult start, not just with a losing team but a fragmented club - Cattermole, Bardsley, Cabral all banished from training with the first team, etc. It can't have been easy. Having said that, he didn't lift us much until the last six games either. After six months in the job, we still looked odds-on for relegation - which doesn't bear comparison to what e.g. Pulis did at Palace. Since then, he's brought in some interesting players - Vergini in particular, Jones, Gomez and van Aanholt, and possibly Alvarez. So let's wait and see. There's good and bad to be said about him for now.
Considering the **** he has had to deal with, he has done a cracking job. I am confident that he is the man to, at last, take us forward. After Keane, all our other manager came in did brilliantly for a while then it all fell to pieces (Keane lasted a bit longer than the others). Poyet seems to be improving the team, getting his style of play understood and taking us forward at a steady rate - seems to be more than a flash in a pan. The players seem to love working with him as well, but he isn't so buddy with them that he is scared to hurt their feelings by dropping them. He has a plan and even a plan b in the games (even if we dont always agree with it, at least he has one) and Short seems to be backing him up by driving the philosophy across the entire SAFC setup. I see good time ahead.
Considering the mess he inherited then hes done fantastic. I think judging him on this season will be a better measuring stick. He's the first manager since Reidy to give us an identity and a pattern. We play nice football, are well organised and hard to beat. My only criticism is that he's at times overly cautious. A good manager is one who proves you wrong. When I saw the team he picked on sat I was scratching my head. He got it spot on.
He come in with no prem experience and saved a club that, with respect, looked beyond salvage. I'd say he's done great.
MON, Bruce, PDC all had instant impacts then fell apart. Poyet took his time getting going, but, as I said in my post above, is now steadily improving the team and playing style. He has got the mass influx of players he wanted in now, barring one or two, and we still look to be heading in the right direction. I much prefer the way things are going under Poyet to the flash in the pan effect we got from the others
We have the benefit of hindsight with the others. Fortune-telling on behalf of Poyet doesn't quite cut it for me. Jury's out and will remain out here.
I think before the next derby game in Newcastle we should get GUS to walk across the Tyne as an opener
who is fortune telling ? MON, Bruce and PDC had bright starts and fell apart. Poyet didnt have a bright start, but steadily improved the team performances until we hit a winning streak at the end of the season. Poyet bought in quite a few players this summer and got rid of bunch, and the new team he is forming has steadily improved since the beginning of the season. I much prefer the situation we are in with Poyet (steady improvement) over the flash in the pan of MON, Bruce etc. Not sure where fortune telling comes in? I am basing my opinion on stuff that's already happened or is happening. You took the fact he didnt "Lift us" until the last 6 games last season as a negative thing. I'm just saying that MON, Bruce instantly lifted us when they came in, then crashed and burned so I dont see the fact that Poyet took a while to get going as a negative thing.
At this point in his SAFC career, Steve Bruce was just about to hit Chelsea 3-0 at the Bridge. I'm sure we all much preferred him at that time. He fell apart later, and there's just no way of knowing if Poyet willl do the same. All we can do is wait and see.
Well nobody has the power to look into the future but it's fairly obvious to see when you find a good manager, forget about Bruce and what he might have achieved, he has never had a philosophy of sorts, he just tries to make teams based on individual ability, you could tell this when he turned up and started yapping about Harrods. That was ridiculous. That Bruce model is always, always bound to fail when you remove elements of the squad (by other teams buying them, for example Antonio Valencia, Wilson Palacios), same with Pardew overly relying on Cabaye to hide his managerial inadequacies. Poyet doesn't shy away from that, he's got no players who he relies on, he relies on his own philosophy to produce the goods. He's got objectives to meet, I bet you this season's objective is survival. He needs at least 4/5 years to transform the club, a great player or two here and there might speed up the process but it's a huge job. Hughes was fetched in to change Stoke's philosophy, he's done absolutely nothing, they play the same as they did under Pulis minus Delap's long throws.
And a neutral(ish) hits the nail on the head. Poyet dropped Adam Johnson and Jack Rodwell on Saturday to the bench. £22m+ they cost the club. Bruce wouldn't have done that and had a massive over-reliance on certain players. Whether they played well or not they got games. AJ had done OK but Rodwell has struggled this season. Both will learn from that and improve themselves - as Poyet said they have reacted professionally. That is something I would never have expected Bruce to do
I think he's done well, He's still a learning young manager so tactical naivety is part of the package. But he's learning, and it shows. He's had to pick up the pieces of three managers and a DoF who ran our club into the ground. So he's in charge of the rebuild of a historic club that's in the premier league, a missive job for someone in his stage of his managerial career. I trust him, he's clearly going to become a great manager.
Poyet had 31 games in charge here last season, and we were in the bottom three for about 25 of them. That is the only hard fact we have, and that is what I'll believe until I see something else. When I see something else, then I'll change my mind. But I'm not about to swallow fortune telling like "Both will learn from that and improve themselves" - Graham hasn't, Cabral hasn't, and if Altidore has it's marginal. All this optimism about Sunderland's great new manager has been going on since 1957, and look at some of them! See my signature below - I didn't write that lightly. Enough of faith - show me hard facts. And the only way we'll see facts with Poyet is to wait and keep an open mind. That's what I'm doing.
Do you not watch the games, or compare squads? I'm a stat man and even I think stats don't tell the whole story, in this case I think the stats show very little as they don't consider the **** storm he walked into. There's not a manager in the world who could turn that squad into a mid to top half team in 31 games imo.
