And yet other than Bardsley..he continued to play these players..in fact, he made quite a big deal of saying how important JOS was to his plans...But I do agree with you in the main Smug, things have to change or this club will go the direction of Sheff Utd, Wolves, Coventry....as for a manager Somewhere between PDC and say someone like Bruce would be an ideal mix...just hope Gus can be that guy
Yes I believe the players are soft and some lack passion. I can,t believe that de Fanti keeps getting forgot about he brought in players no better than what we had, Where are the sess or mig type signings. Unfortunately none of the new players knew how demanding the premier league is, We now have a manager who does not have premier league exp, a DOF who does not know a premier league player and an owner who just seems to think sacking everyone in sight is the way forward. I just hope he knows how to build for the future starting with getting rid of o,Shea,brown,Larson,dong Wong,and gets some players in who can play with passion
My concern is more about the owner. If we go down, he may be the next one at the club to throw his toys out the pram, and walk. Yes, he'll take a hit in both pride and pocket, but I think that could well happen.
Di Canio came into the club to do the impossible, got 2 fantastic results with those players and kept us up. Surely those players deserved the opportunity to stake a claim in the side, such as the likes of Vaughan & Johnson who both scored in the derby. I'm sure the new signings were being prepared and trained to gradually come into the reckoning. I suspect some people would've been just as 'outraged' if he dropped all the players who kept us up just as they appear to be that he didn't.
Why do all the PDC supporters always mention the Everton and Skunk results as I'd they were the norm and ignore the other 11 games where we were awful most if the time, culminating in one of our biggest and most humiliating defeats in many a year. No one on this forum can say with any assurity that O'Neill would not have crawled over the line as PDC only managed and if he had, he would have been 10 times better than the **** PDC has left us in. I don't remember a Martin O'Neill managed team losing 6 games on the trot, conceding almost 3 goals a game on average. It took ferguson 4 years to get it right at man Utd and he had a far better base to work from. MoN, one of the most respected and experienced managers we've ever had was ousted in 13 months. Far from the missed opportunity in dismissing the mad Italian, our biggest mistake was in wanting MoN out before he even had the chance to rebuild the mess left from Bruce and Keane. That ladies and gents ( IMO before his majesty lord Smug leaps in) is our biggest missed opportunity in the last 50 years. It's one that will probably cost us our EPL status by May and out short/medium term future. Relegation will be a massive disaster for this club.
I think where PDC is concerned Smug, you and I will just have to agree to disagree. I didn't rate the guy from the 1st minute, I didn't understand Short's thinking, but it happened, it turned sour and we are where we are now. All I am interested in now is supporting (as I did when PDC was in charge btw) the team...if ever a club needed everyone to pull together it is now..I reckon we are about 3 to 4 weeks to being properly cut adrift..absolute shameful state of affairs for a club of our size.
I'm afraid it's very easy to blame the manager but for the mess we are in right now you have to look higher up the ladder. We seem to have avoided relegation but yet relegation seems inescapable. We have seemed destined to go down for years. Manager after manager has been brought in to attempt to deal with the mess left by Keane and then Bruce. It has been summer after summer of 8 plus players with the exception of 1. Bruce lumbered us with O'shea and Brown on hefty long term contracts. Relegation plodders like Vaughan, larrson and Gardner. No full backs and no strikers. How did we get from beating Chelsea 3-0 to this. Who was ever going to buy Vaughan, larrson, Gardner, O'shea etc? Who could afford their wages? They will move on next summer regardless of what happens to our club looking forward to signing on fees and a "new challenge" we will get nothing back on investments made only recouping on the wage bill. Has one player come out and said "this is not good enough"? Now we have a DOF who knows nothing about the premier league and this summers shopping whilst starting promisingly ended in farce. .Di canio has stated the types of players needed yet none of the qualities stated emerged. The club is now in free fall and we have fallen well behind other teams that came to the premier league after us.
Last season we were the 4th worst team in the league , then in the summer when we should have strengthened our squad , we didn't. In fact we sold our best two players. IMO the fault lies solely with the DoF . He should have gone with Paolo. As for the future , we need a bloody good clear out. IF we go down , and I fear we will , we need to keep Catts and Fletch but not many of the others.
I got slated, last night, for making similar comments to Cest. I just don't know how it cannot be recognized that PDC has made a bad situation a whole lot worse. As I mentioned, things were bad beforehand but PDC just didn't make the right decisions in terms of how to deal with the players and bringing in a whole host of mediocre players, which, ultimately meant he had to rely on the old guard, who were clearly not good enough.
