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louth_in_the_south |
February 13, 2024, 1:34pm |
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The one thing that needed doing when DA came in was to steady the ship , get a few draws and wins in the bag to build the team’s confidence. Make us hard to beat . This obsession with changing the style of play overnight was really naive and has proved to be even more damaging in terms of morale by the looks of it in terms of players body language and decision making. Too much too soon with the options available to him now . I’ll always hope a corner will be turned and things will click but I’m not overly confident . It’s some seriously good man management that’s needed now , not a fancy tactics .
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1mickylyons |
February 13, 2024, 1:40pm |
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All of this noise around our style of play at the moment seems very reminiscent of AB1. Were we not right near the bottom of the league by late October of his first season as the players took time to adapt? I’m sure we then went on a bit of a run leading to a decent finish with promotion the following season. (My memory may be a little muddled here) Point I’m making is if we do allow the process to work then the potential riches are there. It’s taking a huge leap of faith to stay with it though as everyone knows quite how shite the alternative outcome is.
Think we finished 9th? I remember losing 0-4 to Rotherham at home possibly 0-4 at HT and other than Spurs 0-3 and West Ham 1-5 the only time I recall the Town players getting a standing ovation for a pasting. We battered Rotherham from memory but couldn't score they had 4 chances and took them and went on to win the league. We had a decent cup run as well not sure if that was 1st or 2nd season losing to Wimbledon 3-1
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chaos33 |
February 13, 2024, 1:40pm |
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Maybe. It’s possible that what we’ve witnessed lately is merely the ugly chrysalis that has to go before our metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. But there’s also a little bit of Sir Alex’s law about this supposition - that because Ferguson struggled and was almost sacked before going onto achieve wonders at Man Yoo, that all other struggling managers will do the same, if given the time. It’s hard to know when you’ve got a Ferguson or Buckley on your hands, but they are incredibly rare entities.
I prefer the theory of Occam’s Razor - that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one. If it looks like it’s not working, then it’s probably because it’s not working.
What worries me, is that Artell started well. That performance at MK Dons, after just a single training session, was night and day compared to anything we had seen either this season or last, at least in terms of the playing style. That was followed by a good performance away at Oxford in the cup, and then another solid win against Crewe. But then, with the exception of a win against a very, very poor Salford and our forward play against Notts County, it’s not been great, and it’s not looked very good for the most part.
Artell’s preferred style of play can be very difficult to combat when you’re exceptional at it, but an absolute doddle to deal with when you’re not quite on it, as Stockport demonstrated with consummate ease at the weekend. My worry is that teams have worked us out, and that’s the main reason for this barren spell of 1 win in 9 games. And that’s a genuinely concerning record. We went down under Woods not because we lost a lot, but because we couldn’t win.
Artell doesn’t have the luxury of time. If he can’t find a way to counter what teams are doing to stop us playing out, or find another way to play entirely, then I don’t think this willl end well for him.
We’ll learn a little bit more in a few hours time.
All of which makes me think that you start on this and bed it in and evolve it once you’re safe. Full pre-season and maybe even a handful of games at the end of this season if we’ve got security, but I’d prefer a more refined, pragmatic and perhaps compromised style to grind out results, get us out of the sh1t, and outside of the relegation death threat. Clearly he won’t do that, he says, and he knows more about the game and his players than I do, so I’m probably wrong. The additional point for me though would be, that I would’ve thought you could only really confidently implement your model once you’re confident you have the players with the right and full range of attributes. Now, my eyesight ain’t that good, but everyone can see that we’ve got a lot of players who can’t do a lot of fairly rudimentary things with any consistent degree of competency. For me then, ploughing on regardless, when 3rd bottom and disregarding the judgement on players you can pick, is very, very high risk in this specific context.
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Mappers |
February 13, 2024, 1:53pm |
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All of which makes me think that you start on this and bed it in and evolve it once you’re safe. Full pre-season and maybe even a handful of games at the end of this season if we’ve got security, but I’d prefer a more refined, pragmatic and perhaps compromised style to grind out results, get us out of the sh1t, and outside of the relegation death threat. Clearly he won’t do that, he says, and he knows more about the game and his players than I do, so I’m probably wrong. The additional point for me though would be, that I would’ve thought you could only really confidently implement your model once you’re confident you have the players with the right and full range of attributes. Now, my eyesight ain’t that good, but everyone can see that we’ve got a lot of players who can’t do a lot of fairly rudimentary things with any consistent degree of competency. For me then, ploughing on regardless, when 3rd bottom and disregarding the judgement on players you can pick, is very, very high risk in this specific context.
He won't change I'm certain of that It's his way or bust Glory or his last job in football league management Brave or foolish ? Time will tell
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DB |
February 13, 2024, 1:59pm |
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It will all work out in the end
I think you've been dreaming.
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| You can please some of the forumites some of the time but not all the forumites all of the time |
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1mickylyons |
February 13, 2024, 2:11pm |
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I think you've been dreaming.
Black-and-white white bear dressed as a traffic cone ?
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thevera |
February 13, 2024, 2:34pm |
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He won't change I'm certain of that
It's his way or bust
Glory or his last job in football league management
Brave or foolish ?
Time will tell
In most of his interviews i think it is obvious he is going to stick to his way of playing and I suspect he got the job because the board also want to see the style of play he has promised. As painful as it is now I agree with him and believe we are too good to go down mainly due to the fact there are at least two teams far worse than us He has also said on many occassions this will take time and has warned us it might be tough at times. He also said in one of his recent interviews it will take 3 transfer windows to get the personnel in to play the way he wants. That will take us to the start of the 25/26 season. If indeed we do survive this season I can see all the season ticket holders who give in after 30 mins will also not renew next year so i expect the ST sales to be well down on the last two relatively good seasons on the field. DA will not be going anywhere until at least the Autumn of 2025. So particularly next season when hopefully we are starting to see improvements we need to stick with the team for the full 90 minutes. Its certainly hard being a Town fan at the moment but the board have invested in him and so will I as long as i can get up the steps to my seat. Let's hope tonight is the first win in back to back wins for 40+ games
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Theimperialcoroner |
February 13, 2024, 2:40pm |
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Think we finished 9th? I remember losing 0-4 to Rotherham at home possibly 0-4 at HT and other than Spurs 0-3 and West Ham 1-5 the only time I recall the Town players getting a standing ovation for a pasting. We battered Rotherham from memory but couldn't score they had 4 chances and took them and went on to win the league. We had a decent cup run as well not sure if that was 1st or 2nd season losing to Wimbledon 3-1
That does sound about right. It kinda all merges into one at times. If, and it is of course a massive if, DA does get this thing pulled together then I’ll be delighted if he even gets close to AB1. All he needs to do is sign an aging defender from Halifax and a European Cup winner and we’ll urine it.
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Gaffer58 |
February 13, 2024, 3:20pm |
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I’ve said it before, AB1 was quite unique in his style at that time, the British way was to lump it forward to a big centre forward and hope to win the knock downs, even the national team played that way, but AB saw a new way so once in his second season the players had learnt what was expected opposing teams could be played off the pitch, but today the majority of teams try to play possession football so to be successful you need to be better at it then the opposition, that’s probably where we have a problem.Maybe, and I am a supporter of possession football, a team that plays the long ball with big physical players could succeed at our level because it’s different to what everyone else is playing, but it’s obvious the higher up the football pyramid you go possession style will be more successful.
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louth_in_the_south |
February 13, 2024, 7:17pm |
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I’d be interested to see how a team like the late 80s -early 90s Wimbledon would fare in the PL now. Ultra physical and fit with a direct style would probably devastate some teams now . Finishing with 11 men on the pitch would be unlikely however, which would mean it was less successful.
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