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 arryarryarry |
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I'd say that I thought Hursts reappointment was sensible rather than exciting, but I have been really impressed by what he has been able to achieve. I've not seen anyone describe the situation as I see it, or shared many states to back things up, so I did a few mins digging to see if the stats match my feel for what happened... I thought that our run before and during the transfer window was what might relegate us. I recall specifically thinking the Cambridge game at the start of the window mattered a lot. Table after that game: https://www.twtd.co.uk/league-...../type:home-and-away/Looking back, had we won it, we would have been 20th, so with 4 teams below us and prospective signings would see a concern but not be too hung up about relegation. Instead we look somewhat nailed on for relegation given points and extra games played. Come mid and late transfer window there is no way in my mind the table doesn't limit Hursts ability to sign better players in the window. Mid: https://www.twtd.co.uk/league-...../type:home-and-away/End: https://www.twtd.co.uk/league-...../type:home-and-away/I understand Hurst is the manager but it's not his players, the players we had were questionably not good enough, and as I saw someone else point out (though it's not mentioned enough) he lost 2 of the best players (in terms of creativity and changing a game) in Edwards and Windsor at start of the window so was really playing with his hands behind his back. Injuries didn't help either. Jump forward a little and despite any impact of league position on who he could get in, our form is not relegation form. I'm allowing a month from window closed for Hurst to start getting his message across and team settled. (BTW I'm old school and am of the opinion a manager needs 1 or 2 seasons to build a team, an approach, and influence an entire club, not weeks, but that's a diff discussion). So given only a month, form from start of March to now: https://www.twtd.co.uk/league-...../type:home-and-away/I personally think that if we played these games again a few times, on average we would get more points than we did. I felt we we could easily have added 4+ points and possibly a fair bit more. Even without that, this form over a whole season would see us with 56ish points and around 16th ish. Don't get me wrong, 16th isn't good enough, but with the massive restriction on bringing players in, no preseason etc, I think thats positive and suggests he could do well with his own players and a preseason. Its also telling that every opposition commentary I listened to during this run of games said we didn't look like a relegation team, and that we can't have played like this for the whole season else we wouldn't be near the bottom. I for one am very hopefully for next season and beyond. New owners, new focus, new professionalism. Bring on 21/22.
The simple stats are that despite bringing in 11 new players and currently been in charge for 24 games (5 more than Holloway) he still hasn't even achieved the points per game total that Holloway had when he left. Plus he has only just managed the same amount of wins and his teams have scored less goals although conceded less. |
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| BobbyCummingsTackle |
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I think Hurst has done a decent job overall and in light of the circumstances. We became much better defensively (and in midfield) but failed to turn draws into wins because we couldn't score goals. Yes, we were relegated but I think he can build a decent team next season and he has an eye for a player.
There is another factor that I haven't seen discussed anywhere else - our improvement coincided with a very similar improvement from most of the teams around us. Southend's record over the last 5 games (maybe 10) has been almost identical to ours, Barrow's has been similar and when Colchester were deep in the sh*t they managed a couple of great results to drag themselves out of it. We were partly doomed by that and the fact that the clubs who nosedived (Scunny etc) had just enough points before the wheels came off. You can see this in the points total needed to survive this year - it's going to be 47 or 48 points when the season ends, which is around 6 points more than was needed in a fair few of the most recent seasons.
This is not an excuse, we didn't get enough points over the season and we deserved to relegated. Hurst has made an impact but it came too late to save us.
But, he took over a poisoned chalice and I remain optimistic that we will be a much better side next season.
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| Miss Scunthorpe. Not a beauty pageant, just sound advice. |
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| BobbyCummingsTackle |
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The simple stats are that despite bringing in 11 new players and currently been in charge for 24 games (5 more than Holloway) he still hasn't even achieved the points per game total that Holloway had when he left. Plus he has only just managed the same amount of wins and his teams have scored less goals although conceded less.
You are right but we had started 'well' (relatively) and were obviously faltering when Holloway left. We were going in the wrong direction, already on the edge of the relegation picture and getting sucked into it. Performances were already poor. |
| Miss Scunthorpe. Not a beauty pageant, just sound advice. |
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| grimsbybrown |
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People always felt we were too big for the conference and were upset that we were not walking the league. Along with the fact Hurst has opinions and called out fans on their entitlement made a lot of people upset, GTFC's fanbase tends to enjoy managers who suck up to them more for whatever reason. I think it was mostly that people expected us to just be able to walk the league though and saw Hurst as failing when we lost out on promotion a couple of times before we won the playoffs. There are still some people who just hate the guy in general because he felt the fans were wrong in their impatience and lashing out at players when things were not going our way.
I think a lot of the anger directed at Hurst was really anger at the situation the club had fallen to. He wasn't responsible for the collapse of the club into non-league, but hey was taking the brunt of the stored-up frustration that really should have been directed elsewhere. This only served to magnify any frustrations that were specific to him. |
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| diehardmariner |
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I'm very much in the camp that had the season run for 4 more games, we would stay up. Unfortunately the season is 46 games long and we're down. That's the ultimate stat.
The one thing the stats don't show is that Hurst inherited a squad in late December/January that not only was imbalanced but hadn't had a pre-season. There and through the remainder of the season we picked up knocks and niggles because of this. The lack of pre-season, above all else, screwed us over.
Hurst came in with a squad that was unfit. A couple of players playing catch-up midway through a season is do-able and common. A whole squad? Nah. It isn't going to happen.
Be it budget, be it our position, be it our reputation, Hurst had to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel to bring players in. Conference North players and lads who haven't played for 1-2 years. They're not going to come in all guns blazing and pick the pace up straight away. So the time on the training ground has to be spent on getting them (and the existing unfit players) up to speed and relatively fit. That comes at the expense of working on shape. It's no wonder it took so long for Hurst to get going.
I honestly don't think you can judge Hurst since he arrived here, it's just not a normal situation. The more and more that comes out of the club over what he inherited the more it looks like an impossible task. It's to his credit that he's managed to make us respectable in our performances and results before the season has ended.
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| arryarryarry |
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You are right but we had started 'well' (relatively) and were obviously faltering when Holloway left. We were going in the wrong direction, already on the edge of the relegation picture and getting sucked into it. Performances were already poor.
I fully accept that, I think Holloway was a complete knob, but according to the Board statement today Hurst was given the funds required to bring in the extra players he wanted. Trouble is he came in and just about slagged off the current squad then took too long to find his best team. |
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| GTFCH |
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Personally I believe the question is, if Hursty was with us from May 2020 then I think we can almost guarantee we wouldn't have gone down. That is almost factual in my eyes.
Unfortunately he arrived inheriting a squad which suffered from an incredible lack of quality, to the point that judging by his interviews he was pretty gobsmacked. Usually it's just a case of one manager not getting a tune out of a group of players so he is sacked. It's not often to the extent that the new manager comes in and thinks, 'there is literally nothing here for me to work with!'
On top of having a group of players below the required standard, they were also no way near fit enough. I know that Paul had to almost squeeze a mini pre season into all of them to get them some where near. There is no doubt that we are finishing with a team that is physically more robust and has the quality that were it September again, I've no doubt we'd be finishing well clear of the bottom two.
I really feel for Hurst that he finds himself in this position again and I respect him for not walking away. We will lose to dreadful teams next season but we must not lose our minds when we do but continue to support him and the players. The club deserves to go down again but I'm not sure it's what Paul deserves. In Paul Hurst I trust (especially with an ambitious boardroom behind him!).
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| MarinerMal |
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I've never been the biggest fan of Hurst. I don't hate him either though and think he is actually a decent manager, I've just never been overly excited about his style of play.
In the last couple of seasons in the Nation League he always seemed to start the season with quite good football but as the season wore on he would always become more attritional. Sometimes, I think to the detriment of getting the result.
Kris2 made a good point to of which I was probably guilty. When we went down last time I did think we would get promoted quicker. I did expect us to get promoted as Champions and a lot earlier than we did. For the last couple of seasons though and after 2 11th places in the first couple of years, reality had altered my expectations somewhat. However, I don't think we ever were in a proper battle for the title and at best were comfortable play-off contenders. I did still expect us to challenge for automatic promotion though and that is where I thought Hurst just fell short.
This time I think the National League is a different animal to 5 years ago and I think it will be even tougher this time around. Anything in the top 3 or 4 would be very good IMO.
Given the take over and the recent turmoil around the club through last season I actually think keeping Hurst on is a no brainer. We know what he offers. He is organised, he will organise those around him and the new owners will want an experienced steady hand in charge. He wants to rebuild the club internally and I think he is a pretty decent man to hand that responsibility too.
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| BobbyCummingsTackle |
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I fully accept that, I think Holloway was a complete knob, but according to the Board statement today Hurst was given the funds required to bring in the extra players he wanted. Trouble is he came in and just about slagged off the current squad then took too long to find his best team.
He's far from perfect and that was pretty short sighted of him. I'm not sure I believe much of that statement, I think it's an attempt to get ahead of the narrative when the truth begins to come out in the next few weeks. So, again, we have been relegated after Hurst has been in charge for half a season and that can't be ignored. But, it must have been very difficult to recruit decent players to a team in the bottom 2 (Southend brought Nile Ranger back!). He was very unlucky that some of the players he brought in got injured very quickly and either went back to their clubs or missed most of the time they were here. He lost 2 players at a critical time because they were fighting on the pitch (in a game we could have conceivably won with 11 players). And he had to get this new group going in the right direction at a club that was on it's knees and a complete shambles. Matete, Menayese and LJL (but not enough goals) have made big contributions to our improvement and Coke has lately shown that he's a good player but he probably needed too much time for us in our situation. He was massively let down by the 2 fighting. Lamy looks like he might be a very useful player in the NL if he joins us. My optimism about Hurst is that with a proper pre season and the chance for him to bring in 'his own' players we will be a much better team than we were when he took over. Will we play exciting, expansive football? No. |
| Miss Scunthorpe. Not a beauty pageant, just sound advice. |
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| RichMariner |
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I've never been the biggest fan of Hurst. I don't hate him either though and think he is actually a decent manager, I've just never been overly excited about his style of play.
In the last couple of seasons in the Nation League he always seemed to start the season with quite good football but as the season wore on he would always become more attritional. Sometimes, I think to the detriment of getting the result.
This is an interesting point. Years ago, when we were still non-league and Hurst was on his way to delivering promotion via the play-offs, I wrote an article about how our margins of victory were consistently better in the first half of the season compared to the second. Just off the top of my head, using our promotion season as an example, I can remember winning 4-1 three times (Barrow, Bromley, Aldershot I think) and 4-0 at Southport, 7-0 v Halifax, and a smattering of 3-1s (Barrow again, maybe Welling too?). After Christmas we had a run of games where we won by the odd goal (Forest Green, Southport at home, Wrexham... that 4-3 win at Aldershot). I distinctly remember it being the reason why I thought we wouldn't overturn the 1-0 lead Braintree had on us in the play-offs. Turned out I was right, but I didn't anticipate extra time  |
| "Don't shine that light in my face, mate - I've just lost a pint of blood." |
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