All talk was of the playoffs when or better when Slade was appointed. Maybe he, himself has changed the direction of the clubs future with his ridiculously poor record and 'style'. When you look at lower league managers who've succeeded they tend to be people who're fairly new to management and are showing their obvious potential. That's been the case as far back as Martin O Neil going from Wycombe to Leicester after a couple of promotions. Slade was a totally different proposition. 20 odd years knocking about in the bottom 2 leagues, never with an achievement worthy of recognition by a higher division club. Then wait....... Our board spots the diamond in the rough This undiscovered football genius who's been hiding in plain sight in the most watched 4 tier football system in the world. Here's the obvious conclusion. Every one else was right for 20 years, he's an average old fashioned manager capable of doing an average job on meagre resources. How the **** did our board decide those were the qualifications for a multi million pound squad benefitting from parachute payments? If it was Tan's decision that ridiculous the guy knows **** all about football. Dalman must be on very thin ice having overseen the appointment of Slade and OGS. If the rumours that Glen Roeder was advising are true the **** should be banned from the CCS for life as he obviously has a sick sense of humour.
This is the point. A club sacking a manager surely must have a better or ore suited manager lined up straight away. When I first heard Slade's name being mentioned , I just assumed it was journalist licence, trotting out a list of runners and riders with some unlikely candidates. It was expected that so early into the campaign, the club would bring in someone to fashion a decent looking squad on paper into a promotion challenging unit.
Someone with proven ability at this and even higher level like Pulis, not a punt on a lower league journeyman. Stevo - the talk from Slade about playoffs being a realistic target when he first joined was normal, he'd have been stupid to say anything else. If he'd come out and said he was going to turn the playing side of the club on its' head and go for the autos, he'd have mugged himself big time. By the same token, there was no way he would admit he'd been taken on to preside over a break up of the squad in favour of some lower league outfit. One thing Slade isn't it's daft - he's very plausible even though a poor manager. Tan wouldn't have known Slade him from Adam. In fact he'd probably never have heard of him until his name was put forward by "advisers" - it's those who should carry much of the blame. The problem seems to be that Solskjaer was Dalman's choice and Tan went along. Tan all but blamed Dalman for the OGS appointment by saying that he was not going to repeat that experience and the new manager would be his own choice - then Slade arrived. That was quickly proved to be a mistake despite the Tan's utterings of support, and such is the tangled web we weave that Tan seems unable to escape one of his own making. Unless of course this was Tan's plan all along because of the financial fallout of his (and our) shattered dreams. Unless he's decided to virtually write off his investment and put it down to experience, I really don't know how Tan is going to recover it with this clown at the helm. Building from the bottom means a manager is going to eventually take the club up - Slade has never done that in 20 years management in the lower two divisions let alone the Championship, and he isn't going to achieve it here..
