No, I don't mean to playing football. I refer to the way that he always speaks positively about his players in the press, Taylor aside. TWTD has stories where he bigs up Smith, Bru, Bajner, Clarke, Bishop, Henshall and pretty much everyone except the tea lady in one way or another. Whether he believes it or not only he knows, and who knows what is said on the training pitch but publicly he backs his players and that must be good for morale. Whilst the football itself may not the the best to watch (or listen to) I have a feeling of confidence going into every match that we will be competitive and that a result is always possible. Signings are made with minimum fuss and I'm sure Mick is giving Evans a lot of guidance on running the club at team level. What I'm trying to say is.... I'm happy to have my club back
It's the target for more than half of the teams in the league Spanish. We have no divine right to make the top six and it becomes harder every year that we don't get to the premiership. Stupid parachute payments are creating a less than equal playground so we do need to at least have a one year stay in the top flight as soon as possible. We would all love to be in that top two/six come May next year but progress for me would be a better finish, better football and a stronger squad than before. I'm hoping these young guns coming through will turn out to be good players for us. I'm happy that Marcus has decided to invest more into the academy and take us up to that Cat 1 level. It's an investment he can make without it affecting FFP, and it's pleasing to see that although he may not be able to spend as much in the transfer market due to us still getting our overall finances in line with FFP, at least he has found another way of continuing to support the club and put us in a good position going forward. Much better than his 'throw cash at the problem' tactic when he first arrived.
Yes San Diego but how is it that other clubs like Mddlesboro, Leeds, Rotherham etc can all bring in some decent players when we have to always resort to bargain basement players that no other fecker wants! The Evans era can be best summed up as Feast ending in Famine! The last player that we paid any decent fee for was Taylor over 2 years ago. Since then Mick has spent next to nothing on players and although it is good that he's being sensible with transfers, there are times when you must spend some money! Our squad is piss poor which it proved at Crawley! I'm getting frustrated I have to say with the lack of decent players that we have at our disposal and I worry that this will be the decisive factor in whether we can get a top 6 spot. Where has the Cresswell cash gone? I will tell you, it's gone into the invisible mans back pocket! We used to be a relatively big club and a real force at this level and now we are very much the poor relations to many clubs in this league!
You make some good points mate, and I have been critical of Evans in the past. We do need some real quality in the team, nobody will contest that. I think we are taking a different approach now and are trying to bring that quality through the youth system rather than spend big on transfer fees. It is a tactic that will take some time to bear fruit but you can't really blame ME for his cautious spending recently. The last player, as you pointed out, that we spent any real money on was Taylor and look how that ended up. Compare that to the result of bringing in freebies like Dids and Berra and you can understand why Marcus would rather invest in the academy as a long term solution than the fix it now approach of tempting under contract players from rival teams. Don't get me wrong, I would also love to see us bring another teams best player in, making us stronger and them weaker in the progress.
He does big up his players but only the ones who he likes. I don't think I've ever heard him criticise Nouble or Mings who at times have looked like complete donkeys yet players who have impressed in their performance like Taylor, Wordsworth and often JET and even Hewitt he has publicaly criticised. I think with Mick as long as a player does what he wants without the ball, i.e chases back and keep position he's happy even if they're **** on the ball but if they have a game where they're an absolute livewire and causing the opposition lots of problems if they don't do the stuff off the ball all the time he criticises them. I geuss he just knows what type of player he likes
I quite like the fact that Mick and Terry prefer to try to solve problems by coaching rather than with pound notes, I am fed up with the high turn over of players through football clubs these days. As I've said before I don't care how much a player costs as long as they strengthen the line up, also I am not that worried about too much depth as I believe that professional players should be fit enough to play every game.
