I forgot to say. Devonsurfer please stop agreeing with me it's quite off putting. Statistically there is no basis for agreement between us.....
I give up with you Sensible, swayed by the facts you are not. Statistical analysis shows that clubs who change their managers stay exactly where they were, except they have less money to spend on players, which is the real determinant of success or failure. Do you care? No not a jot, sack Fletcher, save the whales. Holloway was by your own admission as trustworthy as a snake when he left us. Do you therefore discard immediately his explanation of why he left? No you do not.
Sensible, is Evans that urk from Crawley? We do not want that weasel here. Be worse than Benitez to Chelsea... Brent sort the mess out.. its nearly saturday and another dull performance to look forward to with a dull manager..
Please feel free to give up on me anytime you feel like it notdistant. I said we will not know the truth of why Holloway went and it could be either version given the players involved. I neither believe nor disbelieve him just point out he has an alternative story which could just as easily be the correct one. You on the other hand just believe those in charge like a good team player on the executive side. As for statistics well I'm not a great believer in them to be perfectly honest. Often you can make figures or statistics say what you want. Might not be in this case but I'm sure if you took the figures in a different light and argued the opposite you could no doubt make a case. My love for the green machine is not about statistics. That's just cold. I care about the club and what happens to it and right now I happen to think that Fletcher is the worst possible manager we could have. I want a change irrespective of the stats. Who knows we could get that 1 out of 20. I've said before that you don't sit through it. I know you can't and probably would if you could but simply you don't. I do and it is painful to watch most of the time. The occasional decent performance is not good enough. I am fed up with the mediocrity served up for seasons now. I had hopes for this season that it would not include a dogfight for once. Wasn't expecting promotion or some silly out of reach finish but at least a competetive team who played some decent stuff and gave me something to cheer about. I'm still waiting and believe me with Fletcher in charge it is going to be another touch and go period. This will not put bums on seats and why would it. The supporters owe Argyle nothing whatsoever. The club does owe supporters something given their support of a failing team. Brent has run out of goodwill from people whether you like it or not and frankly it lasted longer than I thought it would.
I've just read something on the beeb website and this is a quote from Fletcher. "We have had a tough run of games recently but we have held our own in most of the games" News flash for Mr Fletcher. The STATISTICS show you have one point from a possible eighteen. You haven't held your own you have drawn one out of six and lost the other five. I think he needs a lecture on stats and their worth notdistant.
Get the man away from Argyle.. he talks crap also.. its not good for morale surely.. one point from 18 .. he seems pleased... Brent wakey wakey...
sensible..........thats my job, how dare you moan about me being a one-track pony over Fletcher.....and heading for a heart attack.........have you been to your Doctor for a wellman's check-over yourself recently......as the well known advert tells us........."calm down Dear,calm down".
No Sensible, proper academics can't make statistics say what they like. Here's a [last] question on this topic from me. Sturrock is clearly a man who can beat the odds at financially struggling clubs in the lower leagues. He took Argyle to the brink of the Championship but we never got to see what he could do up there with his own squad and momentum behind him. He's doing well now at Southend on gates 5k to 6k. He got Sheffield Wednesday promoted from League 1 but lost it when they went up to the Championship. He got Swindon promoted from League 2. He's flagged up specifically by the statistics as a manager who can lift a club above where its wage budget would place it naturally....... but you don't believe in science. He signally didn't do it at Southampton, so perhaps that and his time at Sheffield Wednesday shows he doesn't have what it takes in the top half of the league. We are now a club which is financially stretched and in League 2. If it were not for the obvious objections that we can't understand what he's saying, he's dull on TV, stands awkwardly on the touchline, isn't a snappy dresser and is old & fat, all things which apparently exercise Argyle fans' minds, do you think we'd now be better off with Fletcher or Sturrock in charge?
The following are a list of roles/activities that get carried out at most clubs: Coaching / tactical / training specialists in each field. High quality training pitches and facilities. Video analysis and feedback from games & training matches by specialists in each field. Professional scouting. Visits by specialists to opponents games in order to assess opponents players and develop strategies to win against them. Teaching sessions. Strategic planning meetings where all specialists feed into the manager to create tactical match plans. Followed by plan B's & plan C's for every scenario in a game. Sports psychology sessions. Do you honestly see any of that happening at Argyle?? I would love to be proven wrong but I sincerely and seriously doubt that it does, certainly not at the technical level it should anyway. All the evidence I've seen and heard points towards it being very much "back of a *** packet" approach and just Fletch on his own blundering along with his *** packet plan with Ro and Nance tagging along. None of them have experience in working in a proper professional management or technical specialist role, neither was there any existing technical set-up at the club. All the above are a snippet of the background activities which form the backbone technical excellence of a professional club. Argyle just seems so amateur when compared. Fletchers lack of coherent explanation in his interviews are further evidence of a complete lack of technical knowledge or awareness. Constant references to "bad luck" "rub of the green" "the lads put in a shift" "whatever happens I've got a great family" etc do not convey a sense of a technical manager in control and aware of what is required. Instead it very much conveys a sense of a very inexperienced, overwhelmed, recently retired ex-player hoping that the things that kept him going as a player will serve his transition to management and whole team technical / tactical ability. The man who runs Virgin Atlantic has a very different portfolio of skills to the man who flies his planes. Playing football is just the operations side of the business, the delivery of the final product. Being a good milkman does not mean you should be running the dairy.
I would take Sturrock for a third go anytime over Fletcher. Word on the street is that Fletcher has tomorrow and if it is the same result then he is gone. I still can't hope for my team to lose a match even it it meant getting rid of the person at Argyle I most want to get rid of. I have 50% of a glass filled. I have 50% of a glass emptied. Statistics notdistant. Spin is the magic word in what stats mean a lot of the time. Do you want a glossy outcome or do you want to worry the carp out of the recipient of the info. Talk it up or talk it down. In football each season only 8 clubs out of 92 can have proper success. A further 3 can play off for it. That makes 11 in total. That's roughly 1 in 10 successes. The rest are also rans. What do you measure success by when talking about changing managers? How many of them never stood a chance of a promotion anyway and would not have just finished safe from relegation. With Fletcher we are far from safe. With another manager we may well be which in Argyle's case would be a success.
It's not about short term success Sensible, it's long term trends of wage spending versus league position. You may have noticed Malcolm Allison and Alan Mullery mentioned as two of a select group who managed to move clubs BELOW their long term norm, so that gives you an idea how long back they've done their sums. Plot enough points & you get a pretty respectable measure of the normal position - ours is somewhere in League 1 I expect. I was thinking last night, in the doldrums of another defeat, since Sturrock Mark 1 was with us from 2000 to 2004, we've had: Williamson - 16 months Pullis - 8 months Holloway - 17 months Sturrock Mark 2 - 25 months (!) Mariner - 5 months Reid - 15 months Fletcher - 14 months Average tenure: 14 months So we've changed managers with the best of them, in fact you'd think Roman Abramovich was a silent partner. Hasn't done us much good has it?
A tweet from Fletchers Misses says; "Winners never quit and quitters never win"!! Enjoy your weekends. We would enjoy it if Brent had the Balls to sack him..
I'd argue with that tweet anyway joe. If I have one bet and it comes in and I quit then I've won. He won't quit because he has nowhere else to go who would have him. End of. Notdistant stop trying to baffle everyone with stats and the like. This is emotive stuff not cold hard factsheets. I could not care one flying fig if changing the manager would leave us exactly where we are right now and in the mire. I don't want Fletcher managing this football club and I don't want the management not even trying to change things. Leave it as it is and we are likely to go down. Change it and we just may have a hope of staying up. Stats or no stats that is my opinion as a supporter.
