I'd honestly rather we had Nige and Walsh as assistants, with Shakespeare taking up a coaching role or leaving. Walsh and Nige are a good pair when it comes to signings, it's just the mentality and tactics that we're getting completely wrong.
Until relegation is almost inevitable. Which I really cannot see it being. Football management is the same as any theory of management, you have to do something long-term, whilst taking all internal and external environmental factors into account. Too much chopping and changing, and you are never going to have a stabilised pattern for future success.
I had a feeling these kind of threads would be appearing! Anyway, it was a very disappointing game yesterday against a poor side who we should have beaten, yet we persisted with negative football throughout. We need a response against Reading and Nigel needs to follow through with his promise of trying to be more attacking at home. Another poor result will take us into the international break with a lot of questions to be answered, and we'll also need to see who we bring in (Striker, midfield playmaker/general and centre back). Nigel needs to accept that the way we've set up at home isn't working adn isn't acceptable to see for the fans who pay their hard earned money. If he changes his tactics and results follow then opinion will start to change. However, more performances like today and we'll be down at th foot of the league. Calls for Nigel's head would only continue and it would be interesting to see what stance is taken by the Allam's over his position. I'm a positive person but yesterdays perfromance was the one that began to worry me slightly for the season ahead, i can only hope that we've had our low point in mid August. A lot can change and it's a long old season, too early to be talking about relegation (if we we were in Southamptons position, would we be saying we'd be definetly in a promotion battle) but if performances like yesterday aren't rectified appropriately then things will get tricky.
We do not have the players capable of attaining anything other than mid-table. We brought in what we could afford and the players we have brought in are not as good as we hoped. Boy, are we in need of another Fraizer Campbell just now.
This is the problem with buying what we can afford all over the pitch. We should at least be buying good players for our spine. We have Fryatt who is good but going through a bad patch. If we had kept Myhill things would have been a lot different. We need a goalkeeper, centre back and central midfielder but we won't pay the money needed. The plan seems to be: spend as little as possible and hope we don't get relegated.
The comments about the tactics are spot on, it's a shame that the manager has done OK bringing players in but in games like the two we just lost we should have been up and at the other teams, in their faces, instead of Fryatt up by himself. I don't think a manager change would make any difference to us this season though unless we are bottom three at the end of October or November then unfortunately I would be wanting a change, that's football after all.
can someone please enlighten me about our away form under a mr brown after his infamous half-ime team talk and how long mr duffen gave him before relieving him of his mnagrial duties. now it seems like it is the home form which is suffering - going back to Percy's giving him until the end of september, ok we get a new guy in who will not be able to go out and strenghten the squad due to the transfer window being closed (not sure how long loan signings can be made for) and surely when this new guy comes in we will have to give him time to assess what is in his opinion the best 1st team. and unless we can get the new guy in right way - who would be caretaker manager, as Walsh and Shakespeare would probably go off to nigel's new club -leaving say BARMBY (imagine that Percy - a manager you can hate more than nigel) in charge.
I have to admit that Pearson's comments yesterday, over a year after he took charge, that we "may have to look at our home form" were quite worrying.
accepted that comparing the form is difficult but it seems that we either have issues with one or the other. in the PL we can (no matter what one poster may claim otherwise) that our way form was truly awful after the team talk at man city. NOW it is our home form suffering - same players and manager for both home and away games - so what is the difference in doing badly at home. THERE IS A HIDDEN REASON FOR OUR AWFUL HOME FORM, and not just nigel and barmby before you post percy
Leicester fan in peace. In League One under Pearson, we had an unbeaten run of 23 games and only lost 1 home game all season, so I don't think there is anything about Pearson which means a team will be poor at home. People did used to complain that he had no plan B however. Once we were in the Championship again, Pearson came up with a plan B which was to play 4-3-3, which was very successful for a while. It only appeared he was one-dimensional in League One do to not having the personnel at the club to play any way other than a solid, defensive 4-4-2. Pearson's record is also pretty impressive. He kept Southampton up in his few games there before totally reversing the decline at Leicester and leading us back to the Championship at the first attempt and to within a whisker of back to back promotions. Steve Walsh also seemed pretty adept at finding players no-one had heard about who turned out to be stars. One of these stars was Jack Hobbs. He was phenomenal in League One and part of a tight defence in the Championship the season after. He is limited by his ability on the ball however, meaning he was of little use to either Paulo Sousa or Sven. He is still young though and probably needs an experienced head to show him the way. I did used to think Hobbs would go on to be an England defender. I'm not so sure about that now but I would like to think he can rediscover his confidence and form and pick up his career where he left it in 2009/1 Fryatt is a frustrating player because he shows what he is capable of in a few games, only to forget himself what he can do. 0.He is very much a confidence player and from the admittedly little evidence of the Football League Show, he seems to be on a downer at the moment. When he believes in himself he can score from anywhere in the box with ease but on Saturday seemed to just poke the ball at the goalkeeper, very like he used to do at Leicester. Nigel used to do my head in with his interviews. He obviously doesn't like talking to the press, and after Holloway whoring himself to the media, this seemed like a good thing at the time. After a time however, I found his evasiveness and lack of answers quite disrespectful of the fans. I take an interest in Pearson and these two players obviously because they were all at Leicester. I don't know if Hobbs and Fryatt will ever be top flight material but I do have a lot of faith in Pearson. He has his faults but he has a proven record of success against the odds and it would be a shame if he lost his job due to a poor start to the season. Good luck Nigel, you miserable b'stard!
i would give NP all this season and next season....i think it takes 3 seasons to build a decent team unless you have a billionaire owner....it was a good job man utd never sacked Fergie when there " fans " where all calling for his head to roll....having said that theres still every chance that this season can become a good one..... PS Good post Mr fox...
haha! I agree with your assessment. I've found NP to be slow at making substitutions. Often it would be 75/80mins into a game which we're losing and he'll throw on Barmby/McLean to have a butchers. Obviously your situation was different as Leicester were a winning side (i.e. He didn't need to make many changes as you were rarely behind in games). However did you find it frustrating that he didn't act quick enough to make changes?
However did you find it frustrating that he didn't act quick enough to make changes? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This isn't something I noticed to be honest. Maybe he had faith in his subs at Leicester more than at Hull? I don't know the ins and outs of your squad. The only substitution which comes to mind is our first game back in the Championship. We were 1-0 down to Swansea at half-time and had looked poor. He threw on Danny N'guessan, signed from League 2 Lincoln, and Martyn Waghorn, only 19 and on loan from Sunderland for what I believe was his league debut. They replaced Steve Howard and Matty Fryatt who had done so well the year before so this is a brave and early substitution. On another subject, someone mentioned buying Martyn Waghorn. He is available at the minute and in contrast to Fryatt, works his socks off for the team even when down on confidence. Also, Moreno has been told he can leave the club after not getting a look in last season. I wouldn't be surprised if Pearson was interested.
I've said it on a couple of other threads and I'll say it again, the players are there, the squad is good, we just need to get them playing together and scoring goals. Whether NP is going to do that is anyone's guess. But I'd be interested to see what we are served up in the next home game after he publicly announced that we needed to play more direct, basically telling us he is going to try something different. He is such a miserable bugger in interviews though. The thing that I noticed most from his post-match interview the other day was when Burnsy asked if Brady was ill as he had been during the Leeds game, and if this was why he was substituted, he made out like Burnsy was really silly and said something all stroppy like "No of course he wasn't ill." But Burnsy had only asked that because NP said to him a few days prior that Brady had been ill at Elland Road.
