Eustace has never done a full season as head coach so I’m not sure. Lots of coaching experience though
I'd argue Neil with Preston was better than anything McCann has done at this level and Neil only left Preston about 3-4 years ago.
I'd agree with that. I just don't think there's much between them and I think Grant would've done well with us in the Championship with a reasonable amount of backing.
Yeah I can see both sides of it, as I think if we hadn't sold Bowen or Grosicki, or adequately replaced them, Grant was on course for a play off push with us which is a decent achievement. But then you could say Bowen was a bit of a cheat code who we were lucky to get an extra six months out of and Grant relied on him to cover his other shortcomings. Neil has the runs on the board though, Grant is hypothetical.
It was a long time ago, and he's never come close to repeating it or looked like repeating it, so it looks like an anomaly
He repeated it with Sunderland, and had a 7th place finish with Preston, I don't know if I'd call that 'not coming close'.
We aren’t going to get a recent championship winning or promotion manager. Theres none available other than what we’ve listed and cooper and he doesn’t want to come. You can’t just discredit one of his achievements to fit a narrative
C'mon Sunderland was the league below and they still finished behind us with double the budget. He did a good job at Preston, no doubt. It just feels a bit like signing a striker who scored goals at this level 3/4 years ago, hasn't done much since and just hoping he magically comes good again. On his Stoke record, you wouldn't touch him with a bargepole.
Sure but he had an instant impact and uptick in their results. As I mentioned above they'd lost 3 in a row when he came in and they lost one game for the rest of the season. You can't just handwave that as 'oh well they had a good squad'.
He did a good job there but it was a lower division, he got them up binned them off and went and failed at Stoke. If it is him, it's an unambitious appointment
For me it's that from what I've heard and seen of his teams (which admittedly is limited and so I could be wrong) his football is regressive, physical, lump it stuff. I know some people will find that appealing in this age of possession football, but I don't want us to be left behind by footballing sides and I worry that you won't get promoted from this league playing that way. Rosenior still being fresh in the mind makes it worse to me, the fact we were better than Middlesbrough under Carrick and were building something... To go back to just appointing scrappers who we'll inevitably get bored of before long would just make us feel like a Stoke type club I think.
Out of all the managers we've been seriously linked with, he's the only one with a Championship promotion under his belt. He did struggle at Stoke, but they were a bit of a basket case at the time and they had some really random players that were on high wages. Sunderland was a decent promotion because they'd struggled to get out of that league for years and underperformed massively. One could argue he had a talented squad, but then the previous managers couldn't do anything with it so he obviously has something about him. His work at Hamilton often goes unmentioned, but they didn't even have the biggest budget in the Scottish Championship and went up through the playoffs, which is notoriously difficult to do in Scotland. They beat Hibs, who arguably had a much better side albeit in woeful form. In his first season in the SPL he won 12 out of 20, Hamilton only won 3 of the following 18 after he left.
Stoke are completely cursed, they’ve made consistent decent champ appointments and they’ve all failed. Started with Rowett, Nathan Jones, O Neill, Neil, Schumacer. All off the back of impressive jobs, none of them have looked anything like succeeding despite prior/recent success
Not really McGeady then but Danny Batth, Alex Pritchard, Dan Neil, Jack Clarke, Patrick Roberts, Ross Stewart, Dennis Cirkin, Lyndon Gooch and Corry Evans - a really strong L1 squad. Basically the team/squad that got to the Championship playoffs the season after under Tony Mowbray.
