Hurst Out

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

This is exactly what should have happened. It was obvious in December what was coming our way unless we were proactive and got some quality in. We didn't need 11, maybe 4 or 5 of better quality and we needed them right at the start of the window.

Some may say they were never going to come, but we had quite a decent story to tell them - the takeover had been agreed, we planned to go places next season, oh and by the way we are going to pay you over the odds if you help keep us up.

We did not do any of that, we waited till most of January had gone to get the dregs and of course we are now paying the ultimate price.

I never expected the above to happen of course; it never does. There is zero urgency or desire at GTFC to save anything, to create anything or to pay anything for anything decent.

Hurst overrated his abilities to save us and to my mind gave up on Holloway's players far too easily - players who earlier in the season were better than the has been he brought in.

One win so far and the performances getting worse. I would sack him and let a combination of Dave Moore and Ben Davies try to salvage something as a last throw of the dice.

So did we do that on purpose, or do you not think that right from the beginning of the Window, Hurst was trying to get his top targets in!  The way you put it sounds like you think he sat on his @rse for the first 3 weeks doing absolutely nothing.

Sacking the manager is a sure fire way to salvation. We keep doing it and look at us soar up the leagues.

The argument seems to be that sacking the manager is correct because we couldn't get any worse, yet we keep sacking managers and we keep getting worse, so there is clearly something else going on here. It's a black hole of a club with a losing mentality right through from top to bottom. Years and years of poor decisions, underfunding and a general malaise has seen us skimming along as bottom feeders, repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Unfortunately, the consortium looks to have come along just too late to save us from near certain demise from the football league and everyone is looking for a scapegoat. Paul Hurst is that scapegoat.

Every fan thinks he knows the answer. If only he would put player X in position Y, and if we played this formation over that formation, we would suddenly become a winning side. I can see it, why can't he? He must be useless at his job, so let's find some mythical manager from non league who will think the same as we do. It's a delusion.

I'm no fan of PH, I've made that clear many times, but it's not because he doesn't know how to organise a side to get results, because he does most of the time. He was the right appointment in my opinion and a natural fit. It hasn't worked so far, but there's no way of knowing if anyone else would have had any more success, given the hand they were dealt.

PH has managed six clubs, four of which he got to play off finals and three of which he got promoted. He also saved Shrewsbury from near certain relegation before he took them to the play offs. That is the record of a man who gets results more often than not and I can't think of anyone else we could have attracted with that level of competence.

I've switched off emotionally from GTFC and am of the opinion that what will be will be. We've waited desperately for new owners with new direction and it finally looks like we have our wish, but in true GTFC style, there  looks likely to be one last twist of the knife to the guts before we can start to look forward. I can feel the anger and frustration of the fans emanating from the pages of this forum, but I don't think changing the manager will stave of the dreaded drop.

We are not down yet, and until we are, I live in hope, but that hope isn't in the form of yet another manager, so for me, we go with what we've got and hope for the best.

Quoted from WOZOFGRIMSBY

Don’t mean to sound pedantic but, how can we get any worse? We’re bottom of the table with only a glimmer of chance of staying up and I think that’s most likely through the NL abandoning their season

We’re right royally fu(ked if you ask me. I don’t blame hurst for it, This season has been ruined by runaway and benign-man trying to make themselves some ££££ instead of concentrating on what they were supposed to be doing. We’re a fu(king laughing stock all the way down the a180 and a16

A couple of people have asked how it could be worse:

- we could be looking over our shoulder in the National League. Not that long since we were there!
- we could be 6 points adrift, we're not. We are 4 behind with 2 games in hand.
- we have 17 games left, over 50 points!!
- we have a manager who is not a bullsh*tting *rsehole. He's not perfect either
- we are not trying to find a manager (again!) when we should be focussing on the next game

I'm not some naive or hopeless optimist, things are awful. But I don't think sacking Hurst is the right thing to do at this moment. And replacing him with another Jolley, Newell, Bobby Roberts or whoever will not get us out of the sh*t.

Quoted from 123614

So did we do that on purpose, or do you not think that right from the beginning of the Window, Hurst was trying to get his top targets in!  The way you put it sounds like you think he sat on his @rse for the first 3 weeks doing absolutely nothing.

Of course he didn’t. He had a small budget and he spent the time trying to persuade his top targets to come to the end of the world to a club at the bottom of the EFL for not much money and not much of a contract. My bet he was waiting on a striker who eventually said no thanks on 31st Jan, leaving Hurst with few other options just as OH had in the summer.

Having said that we are where we are for a combination of reasons, not least his negativity under the disguise of realism when he sets up his tactics. If you invite the opposition to bang the ball in our box time after time, chances are one is going to bring a goal. If we only get the ball in their box 2 or 3 time the odds on a goal from out shot shy lot are infinitesimal.

I feel like there are a few issues with PH’s appointment so far. Some sound like excuses but others are definite shortcomings:

1)     His tactics. Like a few people, I was encouraged upon his return because I assumed he’d go back to his trustworthy 4-4-2 (or the 4-3-3) that he used last time he was here. I expected us to become much more pragmatic and grind out some wins with some solid football. Instead we’ve seen tinkering with 4-2-3-1s and 5-3-2s, and we really have not seen the solidity that I’d expect from a Hurst team at all.
2)     His signings. Yes, practically the whole team are players which he has signed, however he stated on a couple of occasions during the window that players simply do not want to join a team at the bottom of the FL. Whilst these are “his” signings, I sincerely doubt many are his first choice, which has left him a little hamstrung (I imagine any manager that we hired would have been in a similar position).
3)     I was keen to give him January to find some of “his own” signings, because the shower that IH left were abysmal. If we take his second tenure as from the point when he’s actually had a team that we might reasonably call a “Hurst team” (i.e. from after Jan), we’ve only played three fixtures, won one and lost two 1-0. Yes, in those that we lost (and won!) we weren’t amazing, but at least we weren’t absolutely hammered either. It’s not like this new team has been able to play friendlies due to Covid. I just worry that we’ll be cut adrift before we see any semblance of this group of players coming together as a team.

Quoted from kafunanapar140909

won one and lost two 1-0.

Well, won one and lost three 1-0!

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

A couple of people have asked how it could be worse:

- we could be looking over our shoulder in the National League. Not that long since we were there!
- we could be 6 points adrift, we're not. We are 4 behind with 2 games in hand.
- we have 17 games left, over 50 points!!
- we have a manager who is not a bullsh*tting *rsehole. He's not perfect either
- we are not trying to find a manager (again!) when we should be focussing on the next game

I'm not some naive or hopeless optimist, things are awful. But I don't think sacking Hurst is the right thing to do at this moment. And replacing him with another Jolley, Newell, Bobby Roberts or whoever will not get us out of the sh*t.

And there was me thinking Jolley kept us up.

I must have dreamt that.

Quoted from ginnywings

Sacking the manager is a sure fire way to salvation. We keep doing it and look at us soar up the leagues.

The argument seems to be that sacking the manager is correct because we couldn't get any worse, yet we keep sacking managers and we keep getting worse, so there is clearly something else going on here. It's a black hole of a club with a losing mentality right through from top to bottom. Years and years of poor decisions, underfunding and a general malaise has seen us skimming along as bottom feeders, repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Unfortunately, the consortium looks to have come along just too late to save us from near certain demise from the football league and everyone is looking for a scapegoat. Paul Hurst is that scapegoat.

Every fan thinks he knows the answer. If only he would put player X in position Y, and if we played this formation over that formation, we would suddenly become a winning side. I can see it, why can't he? He must be useless at his job, so let's find some mythical manager from non league who will think the same as we do. It's a delusion.

I'm no fan of PH, I've made that clear many times, but it's not because he doesn't know how to organise a side to get results, because he does most of the time. He was the right appointment in my opinion and a natural fit. It hasn't worked so far, but there's no way of knowing if anyone else would have had any more success, given the hand they were dealt.

PH has managed six clubs, four of which he got to play off finals and three of which he got promoted. He also saved Shrewsbury from near certain relegation before he took them to the play offs. That is the record of a man who gets results more often than not and I can't think of anyone else we could have attracted with that level of competence.

I've switched off emotionally from GTFC and am of the opinion that what will be will be. We've waited desperately for new owners with new direction and it finally looks like we have our wish, but in true GTFC style, there  looks likely to be one last twist of the knife to the guts before we can start to look forward. I can feel the anger and frustration of the fans emanating from the pages of this forum, but I don't think changing the manager will stave of the dreaded drop.

We are not down yet, and until we are, I live in hope, but that hope isn't in the form of yet another manager, so for me, we go with what we've got and hope for the best.

Excellent post.

Great post Ginny.

I think the thing that's getting me the most, this is from a position of (like yourself) having become a bit emotionally detached, is the seeming lack of fight of late.

Under Holloway I almost accepted that it was such a shambles that I couldn't really expect anything other than complete confusion from anyone pulling a shirt on.  How can you go out there and fight for the cause when you don't really know what the cause is?

I wasn't really excited by Hurst's appointment as he left me cold for long periods of his first spell, but I felt he would bring the exact skills we needed.  He would install some spirit, some fight, some togetherness but also organise the players to within an inch of their lives to get us out of his situation.  I expected ground out performances, dogged 1-0's where we performed smash and grab displays away from home at promotion chasing teams, games where we defended a 1-0 lead for far too long and retreated so deep that we camped on our own goal line for 50 minutes.  

I've seen nothing of that so far.

It's always the hope that kills you but this time I think the hope has just done me in.  In my heart of hearts I've accepted over the last week that we're down.  You really can't polish a turd and a turd is what this club has become.  It's not just the players, it's everything.  The set-up, the infrastructure, the mood...it's toxic and terminal.    It's a complete mirror of 11 years ago, we circled the drain for long enough and never learned our lessons.  Pre-Hurst we were going down.  2 months after his arrival, we're still going down.  I just kinda wouldn't mind if we went down swinging rather than cowering.

Another excellent post DHM. If I hadn't already given Ginny my post of the day then you would have got it for that last paragraph alone.