It was possible to be both frustrated with Rosenior, whilst still wanting him to carry on. He’s a bit of a club legend, a definite fan favourite, and he was doing a great job of building a proper team and club to be proud of.
It was frustrating watching us constantly be so negative, leisurely passing back to the goalkeeper when chasing a goal in injury time, and just so rigidly sticking to his system of playing no matter what the circumstances.
As a new manager, he would have learned a lot from that season and will continue to develop his management style.
It was a ridiculous decision to sack him really, and I’m disappointed we will never get to find out how far we could have gone with him. Now we will just get to look forward to having a mercenary team managed by a mercenary manager all largely with no real connection to the club or area.
I think this is basically the crux of it. An unusually sensible post from you.
I think there's a lot of 'plug and play' belief amongst football fans the world over. So and so is a great player, we should sign him and he'll instantly replicate what he was doing in a new environment with new players, a new manager and a new surrounds. So and so is a good manager, we should be able to see him replicate his success elsewhere instantly.
The reality is that sometimes lightening in a bottle means that managers can come in and have instant success (arguably Mckenna at Ipswich), but the far more common reality is that time is needed to develop a squad, an ethos and a belief (look at Carrick at Boro). Stability and patience when it's earned is most commonly the way to go. Rosenior had a clear trajectory of improvement, and while that improvement didn't equate to promotion doesn't mean it wasn't improvement. While we would have still had squad turnover, there was a clear case to be made for our year on year step up and development. I think some of the players who left (Tufan, Seri in particular) would still be here if Rosenior was still here, while we would have made summer signings much earlier and a case could be made that someone like Conway would have been more open to a move here.
While people didn't love Rosenior's style, even the biggest Rosenior critics have to admit we played some brilliant stuff at times last season which was down to the system and set up. All our players bar Delap and arguably Greaves have gone on to struggle or have poorer seasons this year than last so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Rosenior had a good track record of getting the squad playing to their strengths. We scored our third most goals ever in a Championship season last year, and there's nothing to suggest we would have collapsed in a heap to the extent we have this year with him, and instead a case to be made that we would have made further strides forward as a club even if it did ultimately result in missing the play offs again. What I can't get my head around is Acun giving him a new
three year deal in December which seemed to indicate that Acun saw this too, that it was a project and would take time, and then
weeks later almost suffering a crisis of identity and flipping everything on its head and saying it was now or never.