putting aside a controversial decision..........we really need to start getting at teams more, a little bit of early pressure then nothing......and for me this is where its all going wrong..................just 5 pts above the relegation zone with teams in the top 7 to play! Just cant see how Awfs can continue like this.........
How many wins in the last 24 games? There is also something awfully wrong with refereeing - some terrible decisions being made. But we should be better than we are at this stage. Too much tinkering with the team, very little pace available, we may be getting better but still not good enough.
Andy needs to resign and we need to appoint a manager with EXPERIENCE FFS Still, at least there's Waddock in the wings.....
its a bit disappointing to read in the news that Awford is blaming everything on the ref, fair doo's the decisions were appalling but we are seeing it at all levels, even in the prem...........but you cant rely on getting the "rub of the green" every week, you need to play ball and get on with it. Word on the grapevine is there is starting to be a division on the board.......so I guess Awfs days are numbered. Place your bets lads, I am going to give him needing 3 wins from the next 5 or we are in trouble and he is gone!
General sense seems to be we were unlucky today to get nothing and tbh I didn't expect us too....just look anti's prediction league -most of us didn't. I'm not sure sacking Awford is the answer. I suppose the irony here is didn't we try to get Edinburgh after Guy? I agree it's no longer about looking up the table but over our shoulder - however I really hope he plays the same side in his next game as that may give them a feeling he believes in them rather than his Ranieriesque approach this season to date.....and at least today we sounded like we pulled the trigger a few times which has been one of my biggest gripes.
I have never been a supporter of the idea that you sack a manager during a bad patch. It's hit and miss if it ever works and its only ever a short term solution. What we need as a club more than anything else is stability and you dont get stability by having two or three different managers every year. I've said all along as so long as we remain in the mid-table and safe from relegation then this will have been a good season and will be a basis for us to build upon for next season. This season should be the start of our rebuilding process since we haven't had one really since we were relegated from the Premier League. If we challenged for promotion that would have been fantastic but given the upheavel of the recent past a mid-table season was a reasonable goal - which we are still meeting albeit at the lower end of that expectation. I will be extremely dissapointed with the club if they dont let Awford see out the season at least. We have spent far too long chopping and changing managers and it's far overdue time we looked at the long term instead of panicking whenever the team goes through a bad patch.
But he was. Whether you supported the decision to give him the job or not he is the manager and my statement still stands - I dont support sacking managers during bad patches because its a short term solution that doesn't guarentee results and we need to be looking at long term so panicking and sacking the manager is not going to do any good overall.
I'm sorry, but 3 wins in 15 league games is not on course for mid-table. It's on course for only one thing, a relegation battle. We got 10 points from our opening four fixtures. Without them we'd be second from bottom.
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Andy Awford is a fantastic youth coach, but not capable of making the step up to managing the first team. After that run we went on after Ritchie Barker left should have warned us - isn't hindsight great? His tactic, as he clearly told us, was to tell the players "chin up/chests out/smile/have fun". There was no way after that though that the board would have got away with not appointing him, everyone thought he should be given the job. (Apart from PL that is ). Since then some of his decisions have been perplexing this season. He chased Miles Storey all summer, kept playing him in the wrong position, dropping him, Miles had a great game down the left, next game he was put on the right then dropped again. One of the couple in the team with plenty of pace and he offloads him. He's loading the team up with defensive players but so many played out of position. Hollands is an attacking midfielder playing in a defensive role. Awford must be getting worried now, Guy was sacked when we dropped to 18th in the table. At the moment we're 17th. He needs to turn something around, find a settled team for a start, or he will be sacked, I can't see the board letting us get down too near to the relegation zone again.
I agree......I am not an adversary in sacking managers willy nilly......at the same time it can be argued that a change in mangers does mostly have the desired effect. Waddon is doing a good job as a second, and in fairness we did play much better yesterday than we have on the road in other games this season, so I guess if we took it in round figures, to play two games against two teams in the top three consecutively and only loose one and draw the other is decent enough.........the problem stems from the fact we played teams whilst we were in 7th spot and had appalling results........so now those earlier results do come into play! The team he had out yesterday could be argued to be strong contender for the starting 11, once we have foggy back in contention things could be much different, we are missing that play maker in the middle............ As for Awfs............for me the jury is out, club stalwart come icon come fans favorite all goes out the window when results are poor......I would love to see him steer us to upper mid table safety, knowing we have secured some good players for next season with more to come back from injury too..........but I fear that he could just be in over his head......keeping us up last year with nothing to loose as were gone is a totally different pressure to managing a club from scratch..........results get prizes.........and if you don't get results..............well it comes down to pressure on the board to act............. PUP
As Awford's only on a rolling one-year contract, if we don't suddenly improve somewhat and do keep him for the reason of the season, I'd hope it wasn't renewed in the summer unless there are genuine signs of improvement (by which I mean being mid-table in the form table as opposed to bottom where we are now).
A rolling contract is just that, it doesn't get renewed because it rolls over to a new year automatically, until it's cancelled and paid up ie. 1 year's pay in leiu of the contract.
Is there any point before it's renewed where it can be cancelled and you don't have to pay the next year? Say if we decided we don't want to renew it now, we can cancel it and it'll come to an end in the summer or whenever, so we don't have to pay for next year?
Nope. Obviously I haven't seen AAs contract, but normally a rolling contract renews each day, so if he is sacked today then he is owed 1 year's pay, and if he's sacked on Wednesday he is owed 1 year's pay, and if he's sacked in 6 weeks he is owed 1 year's pay. There isn't a point where it's renewed because it doesn't run out. A contract with an "option" to renew or extend is what you may be thinking of here. Paul Tisdale has a 2 year rolling contract - if he is sacked then he has to be paid 2 year's wages.
