I believe Munky mentioned it yesterday, but when Hughton was in control, Superman was advocating 'patience' - with a capital 'P' at every opportunity. As in Rome wasn't built in a day. At the risk of a bit of devil's advocatism (?) why the negativity now when at least Adams is trying to get the team playing a more attacking / goalscoring brand of football rather than pure damage limitation? OK, he's making a pig's ear of getting it to work lately, but the change of ethos is there for all to see?
and there YOU go again, interpreting something one way rather than another because it doesn't match your opinion. i really can't see how me saying how someone who was a great player doesn't equate to him being a great manager is anything other than the general consensus on these matters, as is often stated by professionals, pundits and fans alike, yet you've decided i'm thrusting something upon you. ridiculous.
You are claiming that i think Pearce is a great manager because he was a great player , this is not the case i stated that writing him off as a bad nanager is your opinion and he clearly knows more about top level coaching than me and i would suspect you.
With all due respect Supers, you've skipped the actual point of my post (e.g. I brought up Lambert simply as an example that you can't judge someone's quality as a manager while they are still learning the ropes - whether Adams should have been allowed to be learning the ropes at our club at this crucial time is a different question and one I tend to agree with you on). And given there have been appointments to coaching positions, if you're saying Adams is doing all the coaching, just what the hell is Robson (or for that matter Holt) doing? I've already admitted I have no idea exactly how responsibility is divided (though I'm sure you're right about the administrative stuff being taken away), but your explanation about Adams doing everything bar being club secretary still doesn't explain why the board felt in the summer we needed the full house of Royle, Robson and Holt (amongst others). Incidentally, I still think Adams needs that. My point was simply that, it's quite clear that the board have identified a short-coming in Robson's work. The board are also keen to maintain a semblance of continuity in the case of the manager, which I think is far more sensible than chopping and changing from Meulensteen to Magath, etc., and risking the whole thing truly blowing up in our faces (and with the best hyperbole in the world, you are not going to convince me that right now we really are knee-deep in it - we have a problem, but it's eminently resolvable). At this stage, if Robson is not producing the goods, given the board's stated position, this seems an entirely sensible approach. I have no doubt that the moment McNally thinks Adams has completely lost control he will be out. Of course, as I said a moment ago, the other alternative I'm prepared to believe is that Adams was lined up as the fall guy who did just a little bit too well in the first couple of months. You may have a very good point on Adams lacking fear factor (whether that's a necessity for a good manager is a different question altogether) but that's not really the point at hand.
My predictions . 1st Norwich 2nd Derby Play offs Ipswich Watford Forest Bournemouth. I imagine most would not agree but that is the nature of this League.
i've explained this about three times now so here goes and then i'm off. its a totally different situation. for starters we aren't in the premier league, a league where we were, at best, clinging on to survival and would continue to do so for a number of years, no matter who was in charge. i called for patience because many fans wanted us to be aiming for europe when realistically, staying up should have been viewed as a good season. i accepted that hughton didn't feel we should be playing cavalier football in order to stay up initially, others didn't accept it. my call for patience was tempered towards realism, because what we were going through was a stage many clubs of our size go through in order to stabilise themselves in the top flight. stoke, for example, managed it, we unfortunately didn't. as soon as it became apparent hughton wasn't able to adjust, despite early signs he might, it was correct that he left. but it was always a marginal call - aesthetics against results (remember, he consistently kept us out of the bottom 3, albeit the west brom result in all likelihood would have changed that a few weeks later). we were always likely to get relegated at some point but the important thing was always going to be how we adapted to the drop and making the right calls in order to gain promotion back immediately and use relegation as a 'bounce', part of the plan if you like, so that we could get back up stronger than when we went down by keeping our squad together and using our financial muscle carefully but with ambition. now we come to today and this is far more clear cut. the club can't afford to waste this opportunity and that appears to me to be exactly what they are doing. this was our chance to stamp our authority on this tricky but weak division. instead, we've gambled on a novice and drifted not only into the pack (which isn't the end of the world), but with absolutely no style, philosophy or game plan. this is a very different situation to last season and requires immediate attention. whether the board feel dismissing robson is the immediate action required, well, we shall have to see who they bring in to replace him. but i don't think he was the problem. the problem lies with the direction the club took us in the summer.
As for me being patronising Supers, I can only apologise. I certainly don't mean to be patronising - I'm only too aware of how little I know about the internal running of the club and how McNally's and co.s' statements can be misleading. I'm just trying to do a bit of detective work to understand how what we are told they were going to do matches up to what it appears the board are doing/the reality and, with all due respect, what you are telling me with resounding assertion doesn't quite match up to the outward appearances or their statements and so it's difficult to reconcile.
Having read all 3 pages of this now, I'd say that Supers is over-reacting like a lot of others on these boards. Comparisons with Lambert have been made, but the fact is that City have exactly the same number of points they had under Lambert after 15 games in the Championship. The next 3 games were all draws. Lambert also made mistakes, like 3 at the back against Doncaster when we ended up being trounced 3-1 by a poor team. The problem for Adams is that he had an excellent start (Wolves aside) and then has hit a sticky patch, rather than results being spread out more evenly. The assumption that many are making is that the start was a 'fluke' and that the sticky patch will go on forever. It wasn't and it won't. Football isn't that predictable. Both Supers and Rob make some good points. Supers also makes a lot of assumptions about what is going wrong when in truth, none of us know. McNally is no fool. If he and the Board felt that Adams is the problem, Adams would be gone. He isn't. So going on crying for his head is irrelevant for the immediate future. We all have concerns about the situation, but we have a very good CEO and Board and we should have a bit more faith and wait to see what actions they now take to give Adams the support he needs.
Reading through this, what i would say and i think supers said the same thing, you have to be very careful because the wrong appointment and not acting when it is clearly wrong could set you back years, we know that through Keane/clegg debarcle. Now im not saying that would happen to you, but it could.
My issue is with the phrase "set you back". What does that even mean? It only takes one strong season to get promoted so even if we were relegated under Adams from here, the worst that he could "set you back" is one season (admittedly I'm assuming he would get the sack). Financially, you might have an argument, but given the rewards of the Premier League, it *only* takes promotion there once to near enough sort this out, and Adams can hardly be wholly or even mostly blamed for our relegation. Keane might have been a disaster financially, but he didn't relegate Ipswich. Without Keane, can they really say they definitely would have been promoted at that time? If not, what have they lost out on? They remain a competitive club in the Championship.
i would say keane set ipswich back four years at least (or more to the point, marcus evans did with his decision making). when he took over they were a play off chasing side, full of young players who played good football. magilton had a poor season where they drifted but they still had a good nucleus. keane came in and turned their club upside down, spent all the cash they had on poor players and alienated just about everyone connected to the suffolk side. when he left, jewell came in and compounded his errors by making more mistakes and frankly, how they've avoided being relegated to league one during that time i will never know. how long has mccarthy been there now? two years maybe? he's begun to claw the club back towards the top of the table, somewhere they already were when keane came in. so i would agree that keane (who orchestrated the slide) put their club back at least four years as although they did better last season, this is the first time they've seriously challenged for promotion or been anywhere near where they were before that. they remind me of us when worthington came in and had to try and sort out the mess bryan hamilton left. just back to us, as stated yesterday, i don't think we are in a 'keane' scenario, but if this season goes badly i think we will only have one further shot at getting it right or we will likely spend a long time in the doldrums and what a waste of a great opportunity that would be. and so very norwich! i'll repeat a question i asked yesterday: would any other club, other than norwich, both in the football league or even non league (lets say down as low as the 6th tier of the pyramid) have appointed neil adams?
I cant argue with your analysis Supers its pretty much spot on. It just proves how lucky we are to have appointed Mick McCarthy when he was available because without him I would seriously have feared the worst!
I would think it took us back a good 5 to 8 years, he got overrated, overpaid players in, on long contracts and that restricted us as a club for years. he destroyed the backroom of the club and nearly took the soul away. do get me wrong, he wasn't the only one, Magilton has to take some blame, Cleggy a huge lot, and ME needs to stand there and take some. Thankfully though we are getting back but we are lucky to have the best manager in the championship.
you would definitely have been relegated without him. i think he was the only appointment you could have made at the time who could get you out of that mess.
nail on head there supers. tbh I would question your board more than hanging adams out to dry, lets face it your board has made quite few errors over the past few years, letting lambert go, appointing then hanging on to hughton was a huge one, appointing adams. if i were in your shoes, I would be casting my anger towards the board rather than adams.
How does that work? He got sacked three and a half years ago and you're now as high in the league as you've been for ten years. I'm confused?
For the record it wasn't Superman Wears who made the comment about Adams appointment would set us back 8-10 years, it was of course Carrabuh and his infinite wisdom. I'm totally with 1950, Rick, Rob, Chippy and 23 on this and I just do not understand this total meltdown and writing off Adams' chances of being a success as a manager in one fell swoop, I really don't get it. Yes, we're on a sticky patch at the moment, though it's not as if we're playing terribly, creating no chances and getting turned over every week. We've lost one game this season by more than one goal, though reading some of the over-reaction on here would suggest we're getting 3 or 4 put past us every week, simply not true. We are still dominating teams without putting them to bed early enough, and we are still making sloppy mistakes at the back which I struggle to find blame in the manager for. Turner has been everyone's player of the season so far and has been lavished with praise, but what exactly was he doing for their second goal on saturday? He made a pig's ear out of clearing the ball from the danger area and then ended up getting caught woefully out of position when they scored - not sure bringing Redmond or Murphy on rather than Lafferty would have made a huge amount of difference to that would it? This sounds to me like it's turning into a witch-hunt, much like the one we had last year with Hootun but this time with different posters involved.
Its obviously purely hypothetical but Keane destroyed the very fabric of the football club and made so many bizarre decisions! Selling Jordan Rhodes being one of them!
