I've said from day 1 that Phelan was never qualified for the manager's position. It was a mistake to appoint him and will probably prove to be a costly one to reverse. People get carried away by his time at Man U (under arguably the best ever Premier League manager), but under Bruce he has coached through a period of dour, uninspiring football devoid of attacking ideas and he has to take his share of responsibility for that.
The question I would like answering before anything else, is what has happened to this amazing spirit of the 10/11 that essentially got everyone singing his praises. As someone has said on another thread, when we had no choices we looked ok, we looked together and we looked committed, now there has been new personnel we are just laying down. My question would be, has the fact that certain people have been shoved aside just because we have a few bods that have cost a few quid 'have to play' affected the unity in the team..?... I can't and wont comment on a performance even one I see on TV as like many others I wont go, but if what I hear and read about Phelan wanting to play Keane to make him feel involved, is Division 2 management and if I was Hernandez et al i'd be saying **** you too..
Shoving aside players because we have bods who have cost a few quid doesn't really gel with puttin Keane in instead of Hernandez.
Those first 2 games we showed spirit and fight in an us against the world way, Davies tweet of "the squad" , it united everyone together.... trouble is that was only ever going to last so long, cant go on that for 38 games, lack of quality and a manager out his depth will be found out eventually , i couldnt get my head around the people banging on about , get Phelan in now, he deserves it etc, and i was pleased the club seemed to hesitate as i thought they may be another plan , unfortunately not
What are our expectations for this season? After the absolute clusterfuck of a pre season, and the state of our squad even after scraping the barrel on deadline day to get our 4th, 5th choice targets in, what can we really expect? Bournemouth and everyone else in the division are way out of our league on paper. If we stay up, the manager will have done a great job. Whoever the manager is, he should be judged against our realistic expectations, whatever they are. And after Bruce who was allowed years of poor performances before being turned on, Phelan, or whoever else we might eventually end up with, deserves the same.
I agree with what you say but today I feel that the team forgot the 'have a go' bit. This result will take some coming back from. Seriously what the **** went on today, how do the team explain away the fact that they allowed Bournemouth to put six past them?
Bruce knew what he was doing, he left Phelan behind and took our best coach. As I said in another thread MP is not for us, he just followed the dead football that was Bruce's way. MP did not bring any fresh ideas that he had hoped. Every team will know we are devoid of any ideas now and not fear us. Running around like headless chicken and sweating will not bring results, MP out.
I agree expectations need to be realistic , but shipping 17 in 4 is unacceptable at any level , and whatever was said at half time yesterday had zero impact , which is the most worrying part
Under our circumstances I really don't think it is. If we started like this under PB in our first season, as everyone expected we would, would we be calling for him to go and saying he could obviously only do it in the Championship? No we'd be saying ****ing hell this league's hard. If we hadn't somehow unbelievably won our first two games, people wouldn't have forgotten how utterly ill-prepared we are for a Premier League season and suddenly started expecting mid table. Phelan might be **** or he might be a genius, but you could get Mourinho as 'head coach' of this shambolic outfit and he'd struggle.
Always love the over-exaggeration on here. Also funny how there's calls for Maguire to start and when he does we ship 6. He's never been a PL centre half, least we have Dawson back next weekend.
Couple of bids wasn't it. Why they'd want him I have no idea. Shame we didn't have the players available to be able to cash in on him.
I do enjoy the demands for Phelan to be sacked. Remember, our owners were incapable of appointing someone else, and it wasn't for lack of trying. Do you think this would suddenly have changed? We're stuck with what we're stuck with because our owners are not fit for purpose, but have been emboldened by enough of our supporters to keep on going when they should have been hounded out of the club by everyone. You can't complain, you let it happen.
I'm sure most were expecting us to struggle and be in a relegation scrap with the 4 other teams who haven't got good enough players/squads to be in this league either. The opening two games were fantastic and the spirit was evident. But what really got us the six points was Leicester's champions hangover and the fact that Swansea are no better than us. The hammerings we've subsequently experienced are really worrying though. We have looked shocking and I don't think that the sendings off have had a great deal to do with it. You could easily have seen those two high score reversals had we had eleven men on the pitch. If Phelan is the man, and he may well be, his first job is to get us difficult to score against again. Up-front I think we are really going to struggle anyway. Hernandez needs a couple of players up with him, which we are not going to provide whilst tightening up at the back is the main priority and our other forwards are simply not good enough. I guess Phelan is either going to be sacked within a year or become our greatest manager of all time. I can't really see a halfway measure here.
Just a quick note for those saying to give Phelan a chance. He's been here for a long time. There's no bedding in period required. There's no getting used to the players either. If he was good enough, this was a golden opportunity for him to showcase his skills in the easiest way possible with a set up he was intimately familiar with, with players he knows very well. He's failed because he's not got the required abilities to be a manager/head coach. He's a number 2.
