Shortlist / Suggestions for new manager then

They've been miles off the pace in La Liga, spent a lot of the time in 4th and eventually finished 3rd.

Been speculation all season about him leaving and understandably Zidane now feels he can walk away on his terms having won 3 consecutive European Titles (probably something that no manager will achieve again in our lifetime)

 

Just give Hurst a few years Scowey

 

Apparently some of the big players have fallen out with Zidane (Bale and Ronaldo gave pretty strange interviews after the Champions League win effectively putting themselves in the shop window), so that must have grated. Zidane also remarked how tiring it was managing Real Madrid only a few months ago. And as Scowey mentioned, their league form this season has been disappointing, but I don't think this was a case of jumping before being pushed. The club president, Florentino Perez, looked and seems genuinely upset Zidane has decided to resign. No idea who will replace him. Pochettino recently signed a new contract at Spurs and seems motivated to push on there. Maybe Conte, when he inevitably gets booted out of Chelsea?

 

Mick said he fancied a job in the Premier League, maybe he'd be willing to compromise.

 

Ramos seems like one of Mick's "real blokes".

 

(Following heavy defeat) "I thought we played well today" - as long as I don't have to hear that on Match Of The Day every week.

 

Ramos is a dirty feck who had the most impact on Real beating Liverpool.
He knew what he was doing as he trapped Salah's arm and made sure to land on it

 

He's one of those where if he's on your team you appreciate the battling and gamesmanship, if he's not he's a dirty cheat.

 

Maybe he could walk on with the Dart players....

 

I'm not sure Ramos deliberately got him injured in that one, but like / hate Ramos he certainly wasn't going to allow Salah to run rings around Madrid all evening.

Sounds harsh this - but some of the games where he's weed all over players - as an opposition player no idea why they don't do an early ' reducer ' and take a yellow!? I mean he's scored 2/ 3 / 4 in many games and been fantastic ...... which is great to see but naive from opposition players.

 

Here, do you want to watch it again...

Still convinced he did enough as he made sure to roll his shoulder and fall on Salah with the arm trapped

 

Can't watch this in the UK, it's blocked.

There is another angle that shows Salah linking arms first. No-one knows if it was malicious, no-one will ever know.

 

Didn't quite get that one right ;-)

 

I don't think anyone was against the Hurst appointment, in principle, Stretchy. On paper, he looked like exactly the type of manager we wanted and arguably needed. I believe we all wanted an upcoming, forward-thinking manager who would use sports science and refresh the team. After two seasons of often turgid football, I think that was a completely understandable viewpoint. What most of us did not anticipate was Hurst's struggle to adapt to the standards of the Championship and his over-reliance on lower league players after we suffered the exodus of experienced Championship players and our top five goalscorers in 2017/18.

There are plenty of negatives against Hurst's name so far. Namely, his willingness to play players out of position, the constant chopping and changing of personnel, the way he drops big name players (and arguably our best player in Bart) yet keeps them out of the first team, and then the concerning rumours about trouble behind the scenes. He comes across quite limited and one-dimensional in his tactics, particularly his loyalty to a 4-2-3-1 formation that is not working and has not been working for the best part of two months. He does make good substitutions at times and you could make the argument he was probably presuming our squad had the quality to play the type of football he wanted as we were in the division above. Put simply, we don't have many good footballers in the squad and that's not all Hurst's fault. However, he is ultimately responsible for the performances of the players.

Where I do have a degree of sympathy for him is the number of outgoings and the quality of those players. A Championship side of our standing and quality would miss the outgoings of Waghorn, Webster, Carter-Vickers, Celina, McGoldrick, Garner, and Connolly. Loan players or not, they were all first team players who played key roles in our mid-table position and they needed replacing. Evans knew Hurst would target lower-league players. What the team required was a major rebuilding and investment drive to remain competitive, what we got was a half-job investment (would we look better if we had paid an extra £400k to get Curtis Tilt in, for instance?) and ultimately several under-performing new signings from the new manager. A Director of Football or some joined-up approach and strategy from the owner may have mitigated the splurge of lower-league players and brought in Championship-ready players, but we don't have that.

 

No unfortunately not.

I was very excited and happy to have him. He has done a great job elsewhere, of that there is no dispute.

The only thing I wish I had done with Hurst is a little research. I'd never seen one of his press conferences. They are absolutely awful!

I'm not happy with how it's going and sorry but cannot see him turning it!

 

Do you think if we had a full strength squad, things would've panned out differently?
In fairness, we've had some awful luck with injuries and suspensions. Huws and Adeyami not seeing the light of day, Dozzell only just coming back, Walters and Harrison only playing a couple of games before being ruled out for 6 months/season, 3 sending offs etcetara etcetara.

My personal opinion, is that on paper, we haven't got a bad squad. Ok, its not great, but one that should be higher up the table.
I was relatively happy with Hursts appointment, even if i didn't know anything about him or his style of play, but he ticked all the right boxes that i knew about.

I still think that if we stay up this season, we could progress a lot more under Hurst - but, and it's a big but, he really needs to go back to basics like Mick did, and make us hard to win. Get the defence sorted first, and then work on the attack.

 

We have had poor luck with injuries, but we had it worse the season before and got unfortunate the season before that too. The sports science should help reverse this, in the long term, because I was shocked to hear we hadn't been using it under Mick. I know he might scoff at it, but it's proven to prevent injuries and if we got it in place sooner, we may have avoided this injury-blighted seasons. Unfortunately, it's part and parcel of the game, but I think an aspect of it is the standard of players we're bringing in. We're in the market for mostly cast-offs and squad players, and players like Huws came here with a bad injury record.

With a massive benefit of hindsight, I think we had a decent squad before the outgoings that needed a couple of wise additions. If we could have retained Webster and Waghorn, sold off Garner and the other outgoings, we would have had a much better line up. We've got enough credit in the bank to avoid FFP legislation, Evans is one of the richest men in the country, that line up could have been accommodated by slight wage increases / add-ons. This might be pie in the sky thinking, but imagine the below line-up:

Bart
Donacien / Webster / Tilt / Knudsen
Dozzell / Chalobah / Huws
Edwards / Waghorn / Celina

 

I'm of the opinion if we'd managed to get a win v Blackburn or Rotherham any method possible, or Exeter, things may have been a lot different. It's fine margins, a win would have been on the board and different things may have happened.

Hurst has been unlucky with Huws / Bishop / Adeyemi for sure. They'd have helped. 0 league minutes. However, we had the same story for a lot of last season so my heart bleeds.

I would have sympathy / different opinion if Hurst hadn't been an absolute idiot after the Exeter cup loss and had yet another breakdown / hadn't changed the side a billion times and played the most players to date in the league - 27 - and other factors.

I cannot feel sorry for this absolute idiot. Hurst OUT.

 

Might be a bit presumptuous, but in the spirit of this thread, if Hurst was to get axed any time soon, who would people want as a replacement? I've seen and heard a few names bandied about, and I guess a realistic, short-term shortlist would look something like:

• Mark Warburton
• Alex Bruce
• George Burley / Terry Butcher
• John McGreal
• One of the youth coaches

I'd take Warburton or Bruce in a heartbeat right now.

 

This was about Shrews last season. Sound familiar anyone?