I'm neither deluded or blinded by hate, I'm glad we are moving on with fresh thoughts, a new leadership structure and visions, LJ had his chances, signed a huge volume of players, was financially backed by a vast amount of money, had a bigger staff, technical resources, modern stadia than any manager in our history and we progressed 5 places in 4 plus years, he failed his task and was sacked, SL stated it in his interview," The club needed a breath of fresh air". The club should be in a good, sound state and moving forward with all of the investments that have taken place, internally and externally, I hope LJ achieves his ambitions , I was not a Holden fan when he was appointed but we are where we are, I'll give him 10 games with full support and then take it from there.
According to you. MA refused to name who was interviewed but it is known by some that he was interviewed not once but twice. And no I’m not talking about the press talk.
The article states that Hughton and Cook were both interviewed. Aside from 'keeping it in the family' as Lansdown seems to always favour with managerial appointments, I still can't believe that Holden was the best qualified person for the job. But we are where we are as the saying goes, and Wiz is quite right that a check after 10-12 games should give us all some indication of whether it will be a good appointment or not.
Every source, be it journalists or even the more 'reliable' posters online seem to all agree that Hughton was interviewed, most likely twice.
The club are never going to say are they, sources are all well and good, I would be surprised if they weren’t interviewed but we’ll never know for sure. It doesn’t wring true with me after 5 weeks of interviews DH was the stand our candidate.
Or if Hughton doesn't fit in with the club's structure. I 100% believe he was interviewed, most likely twice, and he was deemed not to be the 'correct fit'. Probably because he wanted more control than the club would allow, and probably because the club had seen the football he played before and his record with playing youth. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that seems to me to be the most likely order of affairs.
Time will tell if the club have made the right decision, but I dare say there is an awful lot that will never be made public about the whole process and what the criteria were etc The result is that most fans were (and probably still are) severely underwhelmed by DH's appointment and those who made the decision will be in the firing line if it goes spectacularly wrong. But the guy has been appointed and therefore will get his chance to show what he can or can't do.
I agree, I felt the same when LJ came on board, I was just as underwhelmed then and didn't feel he had the right experience for the role, BUT, he did a very good job. He stabilised us and got us challenging for the play-offs, until this season when the next step was too much for him, and he was removed, which was the right decision. So who knows Dean Holden may do even better, as the club is on much firmer ground in this league now than 4 years ago, which is why I think most of us are more disappointed this time, as it was the chance to take the next step, and I feel we have missed it...
From the outside, I think you're right Rob. When you sign (contract) a player, there's normally an intrinsic value you can add to your balance sheet and usually the opportunity to recover your outlay through selling on. With a manager, unless you need to pay compensation to his current employers for his services (in your case not), there is little committment made by the club save for his contracted wages. Paying big bucks demanded by a proven manager with his own methodology, not to mention the player transfer budget they would probably demand is one way forward, but can be costly and deviate from an owner's chosen route. It appears from the outside that your owner is sticking to his business principles in the hope rather than the conviction that the appointment of Holden works out. The upside is that if it does, he is seen as being very astute - the downside is that the apparent lack of ambition with the appointment could mean treading water at best, or a battle at the wrong end of the table at worst. Personally as a "rival" supporter, I would hope that Holden proves his worth and has you challenging toward the top end of the table along with us under Harris if only for the competitive element it would bring. Despite the banter, there's no fun in seeing the fans of a club suffer (unless it's Swansea ) through poor decision making at owner/manager levels and no fault of their own.
Couldn't agree more. In these uncertain times, and with a Hughton or someone similar and with the necessary experience of how to get a team out of this division, we may well have gained an advantage over some of the other fancied teams in the Championship. The owner calls the shots as Oldsparkey rightly points out and, for me it still portrays someone who is quite satisfied with a mid table 2nd division team rather than the desire most of us have to see us really have a go at promotion. And should Holdens appointment not work out, will he and Ashton still insist on following what many of the fans and a good proportion of the local media see as a flawed and quite unambitious business model ?
I seem to have misread MA ' s article! ? where he states he [CH] wasn't..! [ along with a couple others who do not post on here ]
