I'll stay consistent. He is not the best, he is not the worst, he is an average manager who has an up and down record since arriving. Some of this is down to his own deficiencies, clearly a large part is down to how we are run as a club. Any manager working in this period is very difficult to assess as they don't get a clear run of things.
However using my patented "how good a manager is he" predictor, Alan comes out as average.
The season we came 5th he clearly overachieved. The year we flirted with relegation he clearly underachieved. Last season he over achieved for half the season, then underachieved in the other half. This half season we are over achieving again. There is no consistency and you could easily point to the reasons behind the downturn in fortunes. Last year he has the Cabaye rug pull, the year before you had the Demba rug pull and a weak squad to deal with the extra games. However you also have to be critical about the challenges he faces and how he has dealt with them.
Obviously what would be very interesting is if he was given the resource to have a go like say a Sir Bobby or KK was. What could he achieve. I think we play quite technical football now with pace and I'm much happier watching us this season. If I look at the first half of last season we were good to watch too. Slightly different of course because we had a sitting playmaker in Cabaye rather than a roaming one like Moussa. The season we came 5th we were good to watch. The other periods we were terrible. This is what gives people ammunition to say "he doesn't have defined style". I now consider this to be utter ****e to be honest. He does have a defined style. It is fast counter attacking football played on the deck. Unfortunately when you take key components out of any managers squad, their defined style suffers. That's why they sign those types of players! I think he has done quite well to adapt his counter attack this season to negate the loss of Cabaye. I like it, and we actually have more possession strangely. When you add in the mass squad overhaul and how quickly he has negotiated that challenge, and the young players he has nurtured, then its been quite an impressive start, particularly under extreme scrutiny.
I suppose his big problem is many people don't like the man. This forever colours their opinions of his achievements and positives in my personal opinion. Don't get me wrong we've had god awful runs as ACS noted, but I tend to cut managers slack working under this regime. The periods in question are against a background of problems elsewhere in the club - i.e. transfer strategy. I just think it is always overlooked that the single most important commodity in any football is still the players. So your trading of them and timing of it is absolute crucial to your results.
A noteworthy attempt