I'm of the opinion he's a **** up with inferior skills, fam. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
His diction was far better than fletch mincing words. Even used a made up word on last week's 1904 club.
I always listen to the away commentary these days....the man is just a talentless oaf...as for people saying he's great for city and the area are clueless, i was in the Reading premier inn a couple of seasons ago and the aforementioned oaf was in the bar,calling absolute **** out of city and rosenior in particular..
Last time I pointed out how utterly rubbish that guy was I was accused of being a Gammon! He is so bad it is actually hilarious.
That's a bit of a rewrite of history... On the 1st January we were 8th with 39 points (16 points away from relegation) so the squad was good enough on the whole to get to that position. I acknowledge we lost our two best players in the transfer window and didn't replace them (Allam's fault), but as it turned out we'd only need 9 points from 20 games to stay up. Even a poor team could have managed that (and our defence was largely OK if we got up to 8th surely?) We only got 6 more points from 20 games. That's at McCann's door for not changing enough about the side in the run in, you can't blame the Allams for that (even if they did give him poor tools to work with). I compared it with Selles because he had a similarly unbalanced squad but concentrated on making us hard to beat. McCann failed at that and had a worse run, despite starting from a higher place in the division.
We majorly overperformed in the 1st half of the season and that became the stick to beat him with. We crumbled as we know but it's easy to say change it when he had a defence of Burke, De Wijs, Pennington, McKenzie, Tafazoli and Elder. Unlike Ruben, he didn't have the luxury of bringing in a Egan, we didn't have the funds to do that. We know players downed tools, we know we had the covid issues, also things like George Long going from being a decent keeper in the 1st half of the season to not being able to catch a cold in the 2nd has a major impact. When Jarrod was contributing almost a goal a game it breeds confidence and that evaporated overnight. I still don't see what he could've changed, once that side had gone, they were completely gone and they gave up. One thing that Grant undoubtedly learnt from that season was the need for leaders and strong characters in the dressing room as that's what we brought in plenty of the following summer and won the league. He did the same at Donny and won the league again. In hindsight, the biggest error was not bringing in more characters/leaders in the window. That would've kept us up.
I'm a bit in both camps on the 'relegation was inevitable' front. I do think we were trending that way and even in the summer McCann came in we were sourcing players predominantly from good League One clubs. Eaves, Honeyman, Magennis, Tafazolli, and Elder were our 'main' signings that summer, and while Elder came from Leicester he'd obviously plied his trade in League One. We were selling players or letting contracts run down without really replacing like for like. Largely down to a disastrous summer after relegation where we really had no idea what we were doing. The club needed a hard reset which the League One season (and COVID) allowed for. I do however agree that Bowen and Grosicki were performing at such a level that if we had invested smartly in that summer or even to start the January window (I mean wtf was Samuelsen, Wilks and Kane for a side on the cusp of the top 6??) we could well have pushed on for a top half finish even if we did sanction Bowen and Grosicki's departures. It's clear at any level of football though that attack is often the best form of defence, and Bowen and Grosicki's ability to let us transition up the field rapidly put teams on the back foot and meant they couldn't over-commit against us. Once those two were gone, teams were able to dominate us, press us, and score bucket loads as a result, as it exposed how poor our defence really was.
There's an argument that a hard reset of relegation would've benefitted us this year too. The relegation wage drops (assuming they're in there), would've brought the salaries of Giles, & Omur amongst others down drastically and probably enabled us to get rid of them permanently. It probably would've given us the fresh start of a new ownership too which I think we need. There's also plenty of players within our squad, the likes of Kamara, Burstow and Joseph who could do with a spell in L1.
