When Ole got the elbow, I'd have taken Rowett over Slade. Maybe that's tinged with a bit of hindsight after seeing what he did for Brum as soon as he went there, but they were rock bottom along with Bolton and Blackpool at the time.
He got stuck in and turned them around straight away. He drove them from an underperforming group of half decent players into a team that at least believed in themselves and went out there to do the business.
Slade was quite the opposite. Starting with more points a higher position in the table, and with arguably a far superior set of players, he was overwhelmed by the task. It's only now, if we can really believe the green shoots, that he's getting to grips with it.
OK, we've had a couple of good performances by our previous standards against two top teams, but if truth be told could could easily have lost both bar for the last ditch defending and questionable refereeing decisions. We certainly didn't get the points through being the better team on the pitch each time.
I realise it may be too much to ask to compete at the top Championship level straight away, but we should have been at this point much, much earlier in Slade's tenure. I still believe that Rowett or even Lennon (certainly Pulis) would have got us up and running earlier and have something to play for with 8 games to go. Instead we are safe in the knowledge that there are three very poor teams propping the division and our players are being told they've got to prove themselves in the run in as a viable mid table contenders.
We cannot compete in footballing terms with these top clubs and the real test of where we stand at the moment in this division will be in our next 4 games, Brum, Reading, Bolton and Leeds. If we have really improved at all and being told by Slade the "wins are just around the corner", we should win all four of them.
He got stuck in and turned them around straight away. He drove them from an underperforming group of half decent players into a team that at least believed in themselves and went out there to do the business.
Slade was quite the opposite. Starting with more points a higher position in the table, and with arguably a far superior set of players, he was overwhelmed by the task. It's only now, if we can really believe the green shoots, that he's getting to grips with it.
OK, we've had a couple of good performances by our previous standards against two top teams, but if truth be told could could easily have lost both bar for the last ditch defending and questionable refereeing decisions. We certainly didn't get the points through being the better team on the pitch each time.
I realise it may be too much to ask to compete at the top Championship level straight away, but we should have been at this point much, much earlier in Slade's tenure. I still believe that Rowett or even Lennon (certainly Pulis) would have got us up and running earlier and have something to play for with 8 games to go. Instead we are safe in the knowledge that there are three very poor teams propping the division and our players are being told they've got to prove themselves in the run in as a viable mid table contenders.
We cannot compete in footballing terms with these top clubs and the real test of where we stand at the moment in this division will be in our next 4 games, Brum, Reading, Bolton and Leeds. If we have really improved at all and being told by Slade the "wins are just around the corner", we should win all four of them.
From the highlights it looked like Revell had a good game, so feel the pair of them should start up front.

