I have followed with interest the debates on our fortunes and should we sack the manager etc. I canât really comment on that as you need to see a number of games to really be able to judge that properly. However, from the poll, opinion looks fairly evenly matched from those who go regularly. I suspect that the only reason it is not a unanimous âgo nowâ is because rightly we all know we do not have money to improve things. For me the basic problem is that the club is now being run by amateurs and they are making silly mistakes. GT is the only football man in place isnât he â and he seems to be keeping an awfully low profile â will be interesting to see how he behaves at the fansâ forum. Sean Dyche got the job only because they could not give it to anyone else and he does not seem ready for such a difficult challenge. Personally I would only sack him if I had lined up a replacement â to sack him and then go looking will be to court disaster. It will not happen but there is only one person I could see who could stabilise the ship with any degree of certainty at the moment and that is GT himself â but I suspect there is no chance of him doing that. We were well and truly shafted by MM and with hindsight it is a shame the Board did not bind him to the club for a year at least when they gave him the contract in March. But he could see the quality of the people he was dealing with and no doubt made (for himself) the correct decision. Giving an untried manager the ability to buy so many players at once was foolhardy â we had a reasonable team and needed to focus on replacing DG and Cowie â and continuing the excellent strategy of blooding and bringing on youngsters. SD no doubt felt he needed a group of more experienced players to counteract his lack of experience in his position â but bringing in journeymen players was never likely to work As much as it is not the âWatford Wayâ the sensible thing is to decide on the future NOW â waiting another month with three or four defeats n the next four or five games will not help. Waiting a month or two and then sacking SD is the âeasyâ way out. Those close to the team must know whether or not he will make it â so back him for the season â or sack him NOW. It is not as if we can wait till Christmas and then get a new manager and a shopping list for the January
You speak a lot of sense there Leo and I think your views and analysis are accurate ! The only thing I would add that GT isnt the be all and end all! You are right in the fact that we are relatively inexperienced with regards to those running the club and I would certainly like to see some more experience in key roles! with regards to Winters and Jones we still dont know the complete story! If we are to act then we have to act now at the very least sack woan and get an experienced Burtinshaw style mentor in as number 2 to teach Dyche! or sack dyche and woan and bring a new man in with his own no 2! Who knows Woan may well join Cotterill at forest! What I would like to see is us at least trying to play intelligent football , would rather go down playing good football than going down serving up tripe all the time! Team tactics and team selection leave a lot to be desired , Bennet whichelow hodson were good enough before , why not now!
Hodson, in my opinion, isn't up to it. He had an okay season last season and a bad season before that. He needs experience, but not to even more cost to us. A lot of what you say is true Leonardo, and very well said. I'm very torn between the two extremes of keep til the summer and sack now. The only thing i can hold onto at the moment is that we have plenty more in the team pool, and maybe...just maybe...we will suddenly find maybe Whichelow or Prince or Massey gets a game and becomes a hero. It's all we can hope for that the moment, as i truly don't think SD is going anywhere yet, and i'm not sure he should.
Good enough for his country H ,Lee did well at the start of his career then had a bad injury followed by illness and has taken a long time time to get back ! If you saw him in those internationals he didnt do too bad Lee is on his way back! What with Tiny out for a while will dyche have the balls to give Dale a go ,doubt it too much pace!! it will be the smirf!
We are in a strange time. There is a group calling for the head of an inexperienced manager, who admitted as such before the season started, and others willing him to change tactics and push forward. The scenario that worries me greatly isn't that he goes with a replacement already sounded out or that he stays. The removal without a replacement is the greatest threat to the club. If LB and the board decide that the SD experiment has run its course so be it; but they must get a replacement lined up. Of course the press will link just about every failed has been with us, Ian Dowie, Alan Curbishley et al and that is where our next manager will most likely come from, a manager down on his luck with hopes of usng a poor unsuspecting team will raise his stock enough to get back where he thinks he belongs. If SD is to go I would like to see Nigel Worthington come and work with us, at least he has experience of working with very limited resources.
Yes Zen - that is a well made point - if SD goes and we have not lined up a replacement we are in deep doggy doo - personally I cannot be in either the SD must go or the give SD a chance camp as I feel you need to be able to see enought games to make that shoult - I am sure two years ago I would have had very definite feelings one way or the other
An excellent post by all those who contributed, and a fair shout for Nigel Worthington! I would like to add that I don't think I could handle a full season of Dyche in charge particularly if the results consistantly go against us. I would like to see Dyche drop down to assistant manager (as MM did once) and perhaps the above take over the reins........
If Baz was a decent businessman he would be looking at alternatives to SD now and short list the best candidates so that he could move quickly - it's good succession planning as my bosses would say. As I have said elsewhere, I believe that the Posh game at home will be the tipping point - I don't expect us to pick up a point in the next 2 games, so if we lose at home to Posh then SD's days are numbered. I am not wishing it on him as I think he is a decent bloke who is probably out of his depth...but we cannot afford to go too far into November this close to the bottom. Dark days ahead..
even 33 0-0 draws wouldnt be enough! to save us! and I cant see our defences getting many clean sheets!
If Dyche were to go, Worthington would top my list of non-Watford candidates (obviously the likes of Gibbs, Ward and Hessenthaler will be linked to the post whenever it comes up). I disagree with the thrust of this post, because here are two times a year when it makes sense for the manager to be replaced. The ideal one is just after a season has finished, so that the new guy has time to put his stamp on the club in time for pre-season. But if a mid-season sacking is necessary, the proper time is during the last international break of the year. This gives the new manager a chance to call in any contacts he has to get a loanee or two in, and six weeks to get to know the squad before he makes rash or unnecessary transfer decisions. The signs don't look good for Dyche, but the part of the "Watford Way" should be to take strong decisions only when there are strong reasons. Our spending is still among the bottom three in the division and our current form is better than it was in the second half of seasons under Malky. With a quarter of the season gone even that dismal record has been enough to keep us out of the bottom three, and based on the players we know a lot about, there is clearly a lot more performance in the squad we have. What Dyche does have to prove, and fast, is that he is capable of bringing those improved performances out of the squad. But whether he does so or not, my opinion is that his job depends on whether we are above or below the relegation line at the start of the international break.
