18/19 Race for Promotion

[praisedmambo]

14 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Ok, a season and a half to be generous?

Since you throw RMC guess you'll have to include Kodjia, Adomah, Chester, Jedinak etc?

Wtf does us being 21st when he took over have to do with failing for 2 seasons running (A season and 3/4) with no signs of long term progression?

He was ultimately bested by 6 oher managers at lesser clubs bar Newcastle. The delusion is baffling.

There are other arguments for keeping Bruce but your original post is nothing but another poor excuse which sounds like it could have been conjured up by the man himself.

I look forward to countless press conferences about how much money he's not had to spend. Lol

Glad you have assured me "he knows the squad and it has to be this season" though. As I thought he knew that before.

Anyway once again this is pointless.

I think you're talking to someone else for a lot of this?

In fairness, I'm fine with the idea that a Wagner or Howe for us would be absolutely ideal and would change the club. I also though think that it's easy to see those few examples where it's worked and to forget the multitude of times where it hasn't. 

One thing though...you mention that there are no signs of long term progress? We were 21st when he came, we finished that season about 13th and the next 4th. Under what criteria is that not progress? Only imaginary ones. 

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

10 minutes ago, praisedmambo said:

I think you're talking to someone else for a lot of this?

In fairness, I'm fine with the idea that a Wagner or Howe for us would be absolutely ideal and would change the club. I also though think that it's easy to see those few examples where it's worked and to forget the multitude of times where it hasn't. 

One thing though...you mention that there are no signs of long term progress? We were 21st when he came, we finished that season about 13th and the next 4th. Under what criteria is that not progress? Only imaginary ones. 

Sorry I just realised you were not the original poster.

With regards to improvement, I think we will all agree that the Team Spirit has been boosted, and we have become more solid, but he is still limited, that was/is not enough for where we want/wanted to be.

In my opinion, this has been displayed by not only alot of our performances, but even by our transfer business.

ZERO creativity.

We finished 13th/14th and yes 4th last season after purchasing Premier League players and some of if not THE best players by statistics.

People literally purposely try to make it seem as if he has done a brilliant job with an average championship squad.

He did an OK job at best, with a TOP Championship squad, let's be real here.

He is lucky we had those expensive upper levels of talent to bail him out of several inept tactical performances.

Edited June 16, 2018 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[praisedmambo]

Out of interest should Chris Hughton have been sacked when Brighton finished 3rd and didn't get promoted? Should he have taken the blame for finishing 20th the season before when he came in halfway through the season? 

Should Jokanovic be to blame for Fulham finishing 20th in his first season when he came in late? Should he have been sacked for making the playoffs and not being promoted the next season?

Should Wagner have been sacked for finishing 19th when he came late...no. 

And so on. 

There are now promoted teams who have been through exactly the kind of progress we've seen in the last two seasons. 

[praisedmambo]

1 minute ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Sorry I just realised you were not the original poster.

With regards to improvement, I think we will all agree that the Team Spirit has been boosted, and we have become more solid, but he is still limited, that was/is not enough for where we want/wanted to be.

In my opinion, this has been displayed by not only alot of our performances, but even by our transfer business.

ZERO creativity.

We finished 13th/14th and yes 4th last season after purchasing Premier League players and some of if not THE best players by statistics.

People literally purposely try to make it seem as if he has done a brilliant job with an average championship squad.

He did an OK job at best, with a TOP Championship squad, let's be real here.

Ah I'm no Bruce lover and would love someone to come in and revolutionise us into a youthful attacking team. I also think we should have been much more on the front foot. I guess I respect that Bruce has been effective in many ways and have to begrudgingly say he improved a dire team. It's a close call for me and I'm not convinced he can't get us up and I'm not convinced there's a magic perfect manager waiting to be our saviour. 

[praisedmambo]

More than anything I wonder what Jack would have been like in a truly attacking team...I think we hold him back. Get us a Howe or Wagner and I'm all for a change. I don't believe it is without risk however, and as I say, I think Bruce has been effective in his own way.

[Danwichmann]

On 17/06/2018 at 01:19, praisedmambo said:

Out of interest should Chris Hughton have been sacked when Brighton finished 3rd and didn't get promoted? Should he have taken the blame for finishing 20th the season before when he came in halfway through the season? 

Should Jokanovic be to blame for Fulham finishing 20th in his first season when he came in late? Should he have been sacked for making the playoffs and not being promoted the next season?

Should Wagner have been sacked for finishing 19th when he came late...no. 

And so on. 

There are now promoted teams who have been through exactly the kind of progress we've seen in the last two seasons. 

For me, all of those managers got squads promoted that on paper probably didn't look good enough for promotion. They made teams more than the sum of their parts. Bruce has done the opposite, he's taken a squad that looks great on paper and a shoo-in for promotion but most games they look far less than the sum of parts.

Credit for sorting out morale and no question for me the single biggest issue that needed sorting out was the toxic atmosphere. He's done that and deserves enormous credit for it, but I struggle to see him taking us any further, especially with less resources.

[Silent_Bob]

3 hours ago, Danwichmann said:

For me, all of those managers got squads promoted that on paper probably didn't look good enough for promotion. They made teams more than the sum of their parts. Bruce has done the opposite, he's taken a squad that looks great on paper and a shoo-in for promotion but most games they look far less than the sum of parts.

Credit for sorting out morale and no question for me the single biggest issue that needed sorting out was the toxic atmosphere. He's done that and deserves enormous credit for it, but I struggle to see him taking us any further, especially with less resources.

If he is the right man or not depends on the task for next season and beyond that.

Should we still go for promotion with what's left of last years squad, plus some bargains we can pick up during the summer, I still think Bruce would be the best choice. Not necessarily best in the world, but best of what's available. He knows the squad and is good at getting the right players. His shortcomings is more on the tactics. With him in charge we won't be playing like Brazil, but might be able to grind out the results. And that's what matters in the end. Promotion is about consistency, and that's where we failed last year. After the Wolves game we only took 14 out of 30 points. 21 would have secured automatic promotion. So you don't win a promotion by beating mid table teams 1-0, but you can certainly loose a promotion by not winning that sort of games.

Should we take another step back and try to build a new team with promotion being more of a long term goal, he is probably not be the right choice.

Even with a somewhat reduced squad, I still think we should give promotion a real go next year. At the moment I still think we should be able to field a team which on paper is not so good as last year's team, but could still be good enough to get promoted. We only need to be better that the competition, and I don't necessarily think Stoke, WBA and Swansea will do as Newcastle and go straight up again. They might need some time, and last year proved that we were the best team that didn't get promoted.

Next season our team will, on paper, not be as good. But it might still be good enough, depending on who leaves and who comes in during the summer. I don't want to give up hope just yet. 

 

 

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

On 16/06/2018 at 19:19, praisedmambo said:

Out of interest should Chris Hughton have been sacked when Brighton finished 3rd and didn't get promoted? Should he have taken the blame for finishing 20th the season before when he came in halfway through the season? 

Should Jokanovic be to blame for Fulham finishing 20th in his first season when he came in late? Should he have been sacked for making the playoffs and not being promoted the next season?

Should Wagner have been sacked for finishing 19th when he came late...no. 

And so on. 

There are now promoted teams who have been through exactly the kind of progress we've seen in the last two seasons. 

Without reading the whole post and just going off of how it started.

Did Chris Hughton, Jokanavic or Wagner have the most expensive squad by transfers, wages, reputation and experience in the league when they took over?

I'm thinking no.

So in essence those managers molded lesser teams on a highly restricted budget into well oiled football playing machines with a clear path to progress and success.

The board and fans at those clubs could see the pathway to progress so stuck with them.

We on the other hand clogged about with talented star players who pulled off miracles in certain matches to paper over the cracks of poor systems and tactics.

This has been said a million times and is the bleedingly obvious but it seems some of you feel if you repeat the same argument enough it will drown out the common sense and reality of the respective situations until they somehow become valid arguments.

Edited June 18, 2018 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[sne]

Perhaps time to rename this thread "The 46 game slog for mid table mediocrity"

[lexicon]

Bruce stopped the rot. That was an absolutely vital task and was something that had plagued us for years. The first season in retrospect should not count against Bruce as it wasn't just as simple as 'best players, should win' given the aforementioned factor. 

Last season is a lot more prudent to judge him on and whilst he failed, he ultimately did so by one goal in the final game. 

Given our current situation, I think we'd be stupid to bin him off and create even more chaos and uncertainty at the club. 

[omariqy]

14 minutes ago, sne said:

Perhaps time to rename this thread "The 46 game slog for mid table mediocrity"

I'd take that right now.

[omariqy]

3 minutes ago, lexicon said:

Bruce stopped the rot. That was an absolutely vital task and was something that had plagued us for years. The first season in retrospect should not count against Bruce as it wasn't just as simple as 'best players, should win' given the aforementioned factor. 

Last season is a lot more prudent to judge him on and whilst he failed, he ultimately did so by one goal in the final game. 

Given our current situation, I think we'd be stupid to bin him off and create even more chaos and uncertainty at the club. 

Ultimately he failed twice. If he is one of the best managers in the league and we had one of the best squads then we should not be talking about 1 goal in a final. We should have got autos. 

[lexicon]

1 hour ago, omariqy said:

Ultimately he failed twice. If he is one of the best managers in the league and we had one of the best squads then we should not be talking about 1 goal in a final. We should have got autos. 

That's your opinion and it's perfectly valid but I don't agree that he failed twice. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

2 hours ago, lexicon said:

That's your opinion and it's perfectly valid but I don't agree that he failed twice. 

By his own objectives, that he openly talked about, he has failed. He was supposed to push for play offs the season before last and get promoted last season, he failed on both accounts. 

[omariqy]

3 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

By his own objectives, that he openly talked about, he has failed. He was supposed to push for play offs the season before last and get promoted last season, he failed on both accounts. 

No excuses was the line given by Bruce and Wyness at the beginning of the season.

[praisedmambo]

3 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

By his own objectives, that he openly talked about, he has failed. He was supposed to push for play offs the season before last and get promoted last season, he failed on both accounts. 

Pretty sure Jurgen Klopp aimed to win the Champions League. He failed. 

I guess my point is, so what? It's not black and white. You'll certainly not see many Liverpool fans using his failure as a reason to sack him. 

Have we improved since Bruce has been here? This would be a better and more useful measurement. The answer is incredibly so. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

2 minutes ago, praisedmambo said:

Pretty sure Jurgen Klopp aimed to win the Champions League. He failed. 

I guess my point is, so what? It's not black and white. You'll certainly not see many Liverpool fans using his failure as a reason to sack him. 

Have we improved since Bruce has been here? This would be a better and more useful measurement. The answer is incredibly so. 

Regardless of the words being synonyms, this analogy simply makes no sense at all whatsoever. An 'aim' is totally different from an objective that has been set by the board.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Dr_Pangloss

[lexicon]

And regardless of that, Dr. P - I don't think Bruce failed badly enough to deserve the sack. 

[Dave J]

4 hours ago, praisedmambo said:

Pretty sure Jurgen Klopp aimed to win the Champions League. He failed. 

I guess my point is, so what? It's not black and white. You'll certainly not see many Liverpool fans using his failure as a reason to sack him. 

Have we improved since Bruce has been here? This would be a better and more useful measurement. The answer is incredibly so. 

I would very much doubt that winning the champions league was bona fide target for Klopp but promotion was unquestionably Bruce's target - in my view yes he has improved the club but unfortunately no where near enough and he failed in his objectives 

[Dave J]

51 minutes ago, lexicon said:

And regardless of that, Dr. P - I don't think Bruce failed badly enough to deserve the sack. 

For me he has failed enough to warrant a change at the helm and not just this season but last as well and I can't help but wonder what has he done to inspire us to believe he can make it 3rd time lucky ?