Rosenior's Done One

the Plymouth game proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Rosie is incapable of changing - the Stoke game was awful but so was Plymouth - no lessons learned, not listening to owner or fans or even the players, served up a feast of turgid slow moving, slow witted passing the ball backwards and sideways with no positive direction, frustrating and as bad as any football I've seen in over 50 years of watching City - so bad, I question whether I really want to put up with it at times - I'm not surprised he's gone, no doubt Acun left him in place until the end of the season as he didn't want to upset the apple cart, so to speak, but it's clear that Rosieball was an awful version of playing out from the back - I wish Rosie luck for the future and hopefully he will get it right but if his teams start playing the backwards sideways version, I'm sure he won't get anything like the patience from his new club because he won't have the same history and affiliation with the fans that he does with Hull

 

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People keep quoting the Stoke game at home as an outlier whereas I think the Ipswich game was more the outlier.
Most of our excellent performances you refer to were the away performances.
There is no arguing with that. We would have finished fourth in the league if only the away games were tallied.

But this is the point for me.
Away from home, the opposition were expected to be on the offensive and this is where so often the pressurising their defences into making mistakes worked.

But Rosie expected the exact same tactic to work when we were playing at home, and it just didn't work as the opposition were more cautious in their play.
So yes we won all the possession stats at home but it just showed the fact that we weren't able to break down the other teams defence through our offensive play.

Another statistic I've heard but can't find myself is that we were near the bottom of the league in terms of number of touches/passes in the oppositions third.

 

I stand corrected then but not great for a promotion chasing team.

 

who are they? I dont remember them? where are they now??

 

that's just not good enough if we are aiming for promotion

 

I think we’ll see Rosie in the Championship next year, and I think he’ll be doing very well.

Hypothetically, if Rosie goes to another team and gets them promoted, and our new manager fails in that task with us, is Acun humble enough to recognise a mistake in judgement and learn from it? I’m not so sure anymore.

 

Out of that list, I think Danny Crowley is somewhere in L1, Dicko will have retired by now I suspect, last I heard Festus Arthur had been released by Halifax and I have no idea about the rest. Clark is Max Clark -don't know where he is now either.

 

I think the Plymouth game might have been the final straw for Rosie. After our Coventry and Ipswich performances perhaps he had done enough to convince Acun.

That Plymouth performance was just so flat we offered almost nothing all game and it just passed us by - we had nothing to lose but played as if we had nothing to play for. If we had gone out in a blaze of glory and still lost, but threw the kitchen sink at Plymouth - I think Acun might have had a few more doubts about wielding the axe.

 

A lot of big IFs have to happen for that, I’m confident it never will. I’d assume he’d learn as would be ludicrous not to in that situation.

 

In that scenario I'm sure Acun would congratulate Rosie - but what do you mean learn from it? Not sack whoever is our manager at that time?

 

So many other factors influence that

 

Learn that what he wants to see might not be what it takes to get out of the Championship? That progressive success might come at the cost of constant entertainment? Promotion and Premier League survival these days is football business, and free flowing attacking teams is football entertainment. Unfortunately, the teams that manage to do both are the exception, not the norm.

Personally, I’d be happy watching City play highly entertaining football, even if it meant staying in the Championship, but Acun clearly wants both, and I think we’ll see some managerial churn over the next few years.

Before anyone name checks Leicester and Ipswich as free-flowing attacking teams that have been successful: Leicester had the best defence in the League and it was just as important as their attack; Ipswich relied on coming from behind for 32 of their points this season – they won’t be doing that in the Premier League, that’s for sure. You’d have to think Leicester are the more likely to stay up.

 

Crowley is in League Two at Notts County (one of their players of the season), Dicko is in Ligue 2 at Paris FC, Clark is in League Two at Gillingham.

I'm not attempting to disagree with any arguments, just presenting some facts.

 

I'm amused that Leicester are being cited as an example of the free flowing football Acun wants to see. They have a Premier League squad in the Championship. And their fans have been grumbling all season about their style of play, occasionally booing them off the field.

 

There was a mixture of passing around for long periods in our own half which just meant that when we did move up the pitch we didnt have any options to break down the opponent's defence
when we did move quickly forward we could be fantastic
there was too much of the former
playing Slater as a mix of right back and right winger was always going to be risky - he wasnt like a normal wing back

 

It's not as simple as that.