Kristjaan Speakman

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The Keane and Defoe things seemed to go so much against the "model" that I suspect they were not Speakman's ideas. They seemed more like the ideas of some sort of pr/marketing man rather than a football man.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Are you thinking of a salmon pants wearing PR man?? I've got a mate who's adamant that both of those deals have his fingerprints all over them.
 
Never had a word to say against the players he has brought in, though the strategy of hoping Stewart would stay fit and Broadhead get fit was a massive gamble.

But that area of the club has improved immensely. There may also be other improvements that we don't see . Bur the less you hear from him the better , and it is to be hoped that the manager is the most important man around the team and has a definite say in most incoming transfers.

Whoever was responsible for the shocking farce around the time of AN coming needs to learn from it.
 
I don't like him particularly but I think he's done a good job. It's hard to know who to apportion credit and blame to but the squad is looking very healthy, we've got a top manager and that's all happened under his watch.

Was he responsible for appointing Neil instead of Keane or was that someone else like Dave Jones? Who pushed for Defoe? I thought it might have been a good move but I wasn't watching him training and taking his medical. Who wanted to get rid of Gooch? Who identified and pushed for Clarke and Roberts? We don't know.

Maybe Speakman deserves to take almost all the credit, maybe not. The bottom line is that under his guidance we were promoted and the future looks very promising. He has my backing.
I've said before the recruitment of player for league 1 was fantastic, I do think he got lucky with Neil, we only got him because Keane turned us down.
However we will never know if he wanted Keane of if it was others pushing for it.
Neil may have been his first choice we just don't know.
So because of that I'm not going to criticise him, the whole chaos of appointing the manager could have cost us promotion but as I said we don't know what his preferred option on that was
 
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