romavillan

Well, it IS a start, but we've had quite a few goes at this since Lerner took over and it's never gone well. I have very little faith that we will make the sort of appointments we need to sort this out. Personally I'd involve Garde as he is the ONLY member of non playing staff to have been part of a well run football club operating at the top end of their league and doing well in europe. See if with his help we can assemble a team which is not incompetent, that would be enough to be a major improvement on the last 5 years.

So pre tekkers out and the rest in? All academic really now this idiot has overseen us get relegated in the worst year in history to get relegated.

I'd rather the club say "we will do what we can to keep him and back him in the summer to rebuild" rather than preparing to make it look like it was him who couldn't be arsed.

Just read a few pages, can't really believe that some are so anti Garde? He produced the ONLY decent spell of form over 5/6 games this group of players (cough) have managed all year. That fell apart when the squad realised that the manager wasn't getting backed by the board, which was a total piss take. If he resigns or gets sacked before the season is out then this poisonous dressing room has won AGAIN. Think about it, it really can't be the manager can it? How many managers do we need to sack before we realise it isn't the manager that is the problem here.

massive gang bumming in the face for us methinks.

Yeah it's never a one man band, even in the british game where managers are supposed to be the boss of everything it's never been that way. Taylor and Clough being a prime example, Clough never had success with anyone else. I bet it was more Pearson and the scouts working together, as it was with them and Ranieri last summer. You would hope the head coach/manager has last word on signings though, whether there's a soprting director or director of football or whatever or not.

Ranieiri is and always has been about doing the basics well, being compact and organised in defence and counter attack quickly when you can, otherwise keep hold of the ball when you can't and be patient. It's the Italian ABC of football, it's not flashy and continental it's just about knowing your job in the team, it being well defined, obeying orders, having enough of a decent technique to be able to do that. It's abotu discipline and hard work. These are not uniquely British characteristics.

I wouldn't be 100% sure Pearson built that team single handed, some of the people responsible for the player recruitment for pearson will be the same that found mahrez and kante etc. this summer. It's not 100% true to call it Pearson's team last year, just the same as it isn't 100% true to call it Ranieri's this year. What you can say is we missed a trick not trying to get Ranieri when we went for Sherwood, I would have been getting him on the phone as I probably said when McLeish left and when Lambert left. He's always been a class act. Back on the Garde thing, I really hope the reshuffle with Fox possibly going and some others will mean we get some support around Garde, it's pretty depressing seeing him struggle so badly, he has been treated very very badly, it's a shit situation all round.

Shame the press guy interrupted, although Garde had certainly dropped some pretty heavy hints beforehand that he found out a lot of "stuff" AFTER he got the job which he didn't know beforehand. So essentially you *could* read into that the board have led him up the garden path and then pulled his trousers down and laughed at his willy.

@dounavilla where'd you watch it?

For me it says more about the dressing room than Garde. we've had too much of this shit for too long, lambert tried to sort it and still some of the bomb squad are around drawing a wage. the time to sort it was backing lambert with more cash at the end of the first season and the following Jan. that way we would have had genuine options instead of these dicks and they would have been more motivated to **** off.

CEO no way! Director of Football yes please, well maybe yes please when he got better after the end of that first season. We wouldn't be in the shit we are now. Possibly a bit old now.

I think Garde deserves a chance to actually have a go at some point, he's not had a chance so far has he? Squad is not his and is dire. I'd love to see him backed properly in the summer, if he leaves I think it will be one we regret when we see him do well somewhere else under better working conditions than here. The ball is squarely in the board's court, looks like Fox is a goner, So will Lerner/Hollis have the balls to back him or not? My guess is not and we start looking for a new manager in June.

This is good news really, but it depends totally now on who they are replaced with. If we want to keep Garde then we need to hire a director of football and a chief scout to support and help him build a team. If we don't want to keep Garde then we should be perhaps looking for a trio that have had success elsewhere (not necessarily in england) and bring the whole unit, director of football, chief scout and head coach/manager. Hollis is essentially Fox's replacement in that scenario. It's ANOTHER massive opportunity to turn this around next year. However, Lerner has totally **** up all the better opportunities that came in better circumstances, so I'm not about to get excited.

wtf is hutton doing for that goal? Ignores his man and then gets in the way of richards.

I'm sure he has loads of positive intentions still for us, it's just that he has no capacity to turn them into reality. I have lots of positive intentions to put parts of my anatomy in some serious hot italian women, but the reality of the situation is I'm old and ugly and have no money.

Of course they will, just look at how they delivered on their promises to back him in Jan when they hired him. He will be tasked with winning the Championship using mostly buttons and string found around bodymoor heath. Making sure to not turn any of the fancy machines on or any lights or anything whilst he's there.

Yeah exactly, he will want us to win the championship and come roaring back straight away, he also wanted us to be comfortably mid table while we got the wages under control to be in a position to invest again and get up the league. I have zero faith in his ability to actually realise what he wants to happen.

Wouldn't be so sure about him making sure we come back up to get the tv money, he has massively **** up us not going down to insure the tv money, which was the far easier thing to do IMO. He just had to invest more money year on year when Lambert arrived. Lambert with 4 or 5 more decent quality players would have avoided relegation comfortably.

If the board engineer this man's exit through incompetence I will find out the postal addresses of those responsible and post my bowel movements to them daily till the day I die That presser, in this situation, what more can he say? He says that the current hideous situation is years in the making, he recognises there is reason to protest. He publicly states that some senior players are not giving 100%, and that it only takes one or two to not give 100% for us to lose on any given Saturday. Why on earth would they not back this man? They fuggen hired him in the first place, and from his own comments (replete with wry smile) he says he didn't realise quite how bad things were, to sort this out.

Which if you ignore the 4 years or so before he got the job would be a condemning statistic. On the other hand if you look at the systematic self destruction through moronic high level management that preceded Garde and created the god awful working conditions he has to operate in, then it means very little.

As it stands after he has basically said that he doesn't want anything to do with certain players who can't be arsed in training but has to pick them anyway because there is no alternative, then either there is radical change in the summer or he is not expecting to be here next year. By saying what he has said, he is right too IMO, he is saying that the board didn't give him what he asked for in Jan and as a result there are players who he doesn't want near the matchday squad who are in it because of there being no-one else to pick. That's both a condemnation of the board and some of the playing staff if you ask me, and as such makes his position here look pretty shaky unless someone on the board has told him he will be backed 100% in the summer to sort this shower of shite out. I have grave doubts as to whether anyone on the board has this level of intelligence.

Indeed, had someone with half a brain been in charge they would have said to Garde to go and sign his captain, the first piece in the new puzzle, someone to build a team around and backed him with whatever cash was necessary to get that player, whatever his position was. Anything to start the process of building HIS team, anything to show him we're serious about wanting to turn this around. In the end the board essentially didn't back him enough to get the 2 or 3 players he wanted (work permit or no work permit) and that just sends totally the wrong signals, if you believe the rumours he isn't happy about it either. We really need someone with a vision of how to play in the modern era, and for them to be allowed to collect the playing staff needed to get that out on the pitch. If that's not Garde then WTF were we doing giving him the job in the first place?

---------------------- Bunn ------------------ ------ Richards -- Okore -- Clark --------- Hutton --- Veretout --- Gana -- Cissokho -------------- Gil ---------- Grealish -------- ----------------- Robinson ------------------ Gil and Grealish between the lines and Robinson on shoulder of last man. Compact and counter. Desperately need to turn up for this one.

That bench doesn't warm itself!