An under strength Wycombe Wanderers who couldn't fill their subs bench were there for Argyle to resurrect their season by finishing this abysmal year with a win. Why did they then lose 1-0 to a team who only had one decent chance all match of scoring. Argyle certainly dominated the stats.......but only had five attempt on target from twenty odd attempts on goal. Was it the poor quality of the players, especially the strikers that cost us dear ? Was it the poor quality of the coaching staff, that meant we came away with a great big ziltch ? Was it the poor quality of our Manager, who couldn't recognize a plan A or B or C if they fell out of a Christmas cracker into his lap ? Was it the poor quality of support from the fans and poor drumming and flag waving to see the team over the winning line ? Maybe a combination of all four that let yet another three points go sailing down Plymouth Sound and into oblivion. The sacking of Sean O'Driscoll from Nottingham Forest on Boxing day after beating Leeds 4-2 can surely not be defended.....having them in the play-off mix surely said he was doing a good job in his first year in charge. On the other hand how long do you keep a failing manager....six months....twelve months.....eighteen months......I expect your league position is the most important element to consider (unless you are Forest of course) to be taken into account. There is a lot to be commended about being faithful to your Manager and his coaching staff. The thing that worries me most is that our manager seems to have a copper bottomed.......or cast-iron.... rolling contract for life. The mistakes and errors that seem to not improve with time,just go on and on.....and week after week we drop three points here two points there and one point disappears at the last moment so often. I am sure that James Brent has not been a successful businessman by chance......he surely brings in the expertise that is necessary as his business empire expands. PAFC is now part of his business empire and he has been the first to admit that his knowledge of the game and the running of a professional football club is limited. So why run it with an inexperienced Manager and coaching staff.....ok Deehan was brought in for awhile to help....but not retained at the end of the season. This season has seen Directors in place that where thread bare on the ways of running a football club.....Mr Sexstone has helped to alleviate that problem in recent times.........and then we come to our own little saga of taking on a Director of Football which makes me cringe and wonder how unearth we survive at all.....before we know it the transfer window will be gone and that surely would be one thing a D of F would be involved with. Although Fletcher this weekend gives you the thought that we will not be dealing in that until we off-load players to make funds available anyway. So Darren Purse is coming to the end of his career.....but can we improve are defence without his know-all, I doubt it. Those of us on this website can only ponder and guess at what PAFC are thinking........although recently it has become obvious to some of us that....guests or observers keep tabs of what is going-on on this sight as well as other Argyle sites....maybe some of them can educate us.... who are on the periphery of PAFC life.
You've identified some factors Plymborn, although the budgetary restrictions on recruitment ought to be Factor No 5 not an afterthought. It's unlikely for example that a 25 goal a season striker is going to be arriving any time soon as they are the most expensive of all players to recruit. You'll no doubt remember the excellent Moneyball article I drew your attention to a while back. The 3 categories of players that warned against buying were Dutchmen, Brazilians and strikers as they're all over priced compared to what they deliver. I also think you are wrong in pointing the finger only at the strikers. That may have been the main factor yesterday given so many chances were made but the big picture is that we now have only 3 clean sheets in 25 league games this season by my calculation. In a team environment, the situation must be a combination of all of these 5 factors but I'd dispute your description of Fletcher as failing. Whilst the jury's out, the budgetary restrictions are an exonerating factor as are the performance of the players which in turn depends partly on the support and loyalty of the fans, sadly lacking in my opinion, as you know. If he'd failedcompletely, we'd be in the Blue Square now.
Distant, he has not achieved anything either? We are well on our way o the Blue Square carrying on like we did Yesterday. I can't see how you can say its the loyalty of the fans. Why do you think that. The support for the last 2 home games has ben there again, so it does prove they will come back if they are served up entertainment. Ok its not all Fletcher's fault. Most want change as he is not going forward with the club. Happy New Year to You
Avoiding relegation from where he took over from Reid was an achievement in itself. You'll remember we took just one point in our opening 9 games. The fans [or more accurately the city and region] are letting the club down in 2 ways. Firstly, not enough attend games to pay for the level of achievement that the hardcore fans want. Secondly, those that do attend games are booing their own team. I happened again yesterday. That can't help player confidence when things are already not going a well as they should. I don't care about entertainment per se [although we'd all like it]: if you're a real fan you go to support through thick & thin. If you just want entertainment, go to the cinema. The gates for the last two games have been better but then, 10k for Torquay at home on Boxing Day with a full away end comprising what, 20% of the total, is hardly repeatable and yesterday's 6,700 comes in the holiday season too. We'll be back down to 6k once everyone is back at work. Most want change without thinking it through. It's spending money on sacking a manager when it could be spent on player wages. Who would we bring in? Someone who's just been sacked by someone else? What sort of a recommendation is that?
But there in lies the rub. I will give him some credit for the escape that happened last season. Now having done that what is the minimum that we could expect from a team that scraped their way out of the mire? To move on at least a small amount is what I'd calculate. The expectation should be that given we had a budget that was at least competetive in league 2 terms it would be the least expected not to struggle this term and finish somewhere in the middle of the table. The last thing you would expect is to struggle with relegation once again. Where are we? Exactly there struggling to string 2 results together and still losing matches we ought to have won comfortably. That is absolutely 100% not progress and it shows that Fletcher is incapable of progress. His signings in the closed season were poor. His motivation skills are even less. He is a man who has led, either on the field or off, to generally losing struggles over several seasons. He is not a winning manager. He shows no signs of becoming a winning manager. The support considering what has been on offer for quite a while now has held up remarkably well and at most other clubs would have collapsed by now. However, it will not last if something isn't done to arrest the decline. The cost of relegation would be considerably more than the cost of replacing him. In fact, the cost may well be so great that the club falls into extinction completely because Brent will not cover the losses that ensue. Several years in the Conference would not be ok for this club despite some people thinking it would. Season ticket sales next year would be halved at least in my opinion or worse. Pay on the day would almost disappear and 2500/3000 might be as good as it gets and that's without a local derby to boost the numbers. We may not even get that many if the currently disallusioned decide it is enough. Once they go then it will be hard to get them back. We need a new manager in preference to new players although both might be nice.
What is the point of spending what money we have on wages for players when the manager is no good, he has no idea how to motivate them let alone train let. If we are to survive in any shape or form we need to stay up and that is a hard task at present. I still can't see how the fans are to blame, ok booing, but its not all down to that. I do not boo our players. I shout at them a bit, but who does not? Fletcher needs to go sooner rather than later. Brent must be in a different world if he thinks it will be ok and Fletcher is the man.. I suppose he will be the new God if we stay up? God help us!!
The point is that players win games, not managers. In real life, not football fantasy land for dreamers, where you can only spend your income, spending money on sacking a manager reduces what you have to spend on players. Fletcher has twice said he can't get the players he wants for the money he has. He said it at the start of the season when Brent "corrected" him and he said it again last week. Sad, but a inevitable result of the number coming through the gates. If anyone saw the recent series of fly-on-the-wall documentaries on Liverpool FC, they'll have heard Brendon Rodgers coming out with the same old platitudes to his players week after week. If that has any effect, I'm, a Dutchman.
If players win the games what do we need Fletcher? he puts the team out or tries to do that He has to go NOW, or its blue square and less fans will turn up. What does Brent expect 10 k each week when he has done nothing. Put your hand in your pocket Brent.
And Brendon Rogers is another unsuccessful manager. How does Harry Rednapp do it? By inspiring the same way that Ferguson does it and Clough did it and so on. Fletcher could not inspire a pig to wallow in S***.
I haven't had the pleasure of seeing Redknapp up close. He did a damn good job at Spurs with a squad including Bale, Lennon, Defoe, Modric and a number of other excellent players. I think I could have kept that lot winning games. I don't see him pulling up trees at QPR, as yet anyway. Rodgers got Swansea promotion to the Premier League and kept them there, which is a major achievement for such a club. He has Liverpool in 9th even though he has only two stand-out players, Gerrard & Suarez. I'm in danger of arguing against myself here but I can't see that record marks him out as "unsuccessful". What I'm saying is that, having seen him as close up as any ordinary fan is likely to do, albeit through the filter of a TV documentary series, I can't for the life of me see what he contributed to it, other than to see what was perfectly obvious to all of us, namely that Liverpool under Benitez had collected a mishmash of very ordinary players with limited commitment to the club and that he'd be a damn sight better with youngsters with something to prove like Shelvey and Sterling. What defines success or failure is largely the quality of players you sign or bring through development. If you have Gareth Bale, Aaron Lennon and Luka Modric, you're unlikely to go far wrong. Increasingly, that isn't down to the manager, it's down to the Director of Football or the Chief Executive or somebody, certainly at Liverpool it's clear that Rodgers has nothing to do with buying & selling players, Ian Ayre the MD does that. OK, none of this is strictly applicable to PAFC: I don't think we know who drives transfer dealings at the moment do we although it is clear it's firmly restricted by available funds. What is clear to me is that who you have on the pitch is more important than who's in the dugout....
Who gives a toss about Liverpool? Fletcher is not up to the job at Pafc and should be sacked after todays game.. Brent needs to make funds ready for new players
The art of jelling individual players into a team is done by astute buying/loaning/or freebies of potential at a club like PAFC.....Premier clubs with their financial clout generally buy the finished article.......and then it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome always.....that is where the manager works his magic.........Fletcher hasn't yet had the magicians kit bestowed on him......and we cannot wait 10 years for that to happen.........because at present we are looking up the Conference travelling arrangements for 2013/4......very dodgy having that thirteen in this years number.
