To the Owners (merged)

Quoted from Northbank Mariner

Can I ask you one question PP, why on earth do you have to go in on the owners at every opportunity you get?

Are we low paying?..take it you've seen the players pay slips then?..
And JS & AP have stated they will keep filling in any voids 8n funds should they be needed.

At this moment in time I would hope we are low paying because if we are paying the going rate or above for Lge 2 players for some of our squad then I would be gutted.

Quoted from MarinerMal

Well this is my point really. Taking on any new manager is a risk.

I understand your point about an up and coming manager from the Leagues below. You could end up with an Alan Buckley or you may end up with a Marcus Bignot.

You are right, it really is a lottery. Which is why I feel some of the comments on here about attacking the owners for such a rubbish appointment are a bit harsh, even though understandable given the recent run of results.

The owners idea of establishing a club DNA, playing a certain brand of football makes sense to me. So there is less disruption when we do change manager.  

I can accept some of what you said, however, DA did not take over at the end of a season at GTFC when he had time to make a team up, train and get to know them, and plan season 1,2, 3 etc it was a third way inro a season and we were sinking. Job No 1 2 3 was to stop us from sinking. We needed someone who was just out of a job, still could smell the sweaty socks from the changing room he left, and hit the job full pelt running and, crucially, had some 3 or 4 jobs under his belt so could cope with changes. DA had been out of the game for some 18 months on another tack, and this was his second-only club. He is still learning on the job.
Now when it was questioned why the board was slow in appointing a PH replacement the reply was they were making sure it was the right person. This has been badly handled.

Quoted from MarinerMal

Well this is my point really. Taking on any new manager is a risk.

I understand your point about an up and coming manager from the Leagues below. You could end up with an Alan Buckley or you may end up with a Marcus Bignot.

You are right, it really is a lottery. Which is why I feel some of the comments on here about attacking the owners for such a rubbish appointment are a bit harsh, even though understandable given the recent run of results.

The owners idea of establishing a club DNA, playing a certain brand of football makes sense to me. So there is less disruption when we do change manager.  

If only Artell had a record like Bignot we wouldn't be in this predicament.

Looks like Karl Robinson should have been our replacement manager.

Quoted from Mappers

I think a reasonable argument would be the stats back up what most Crewe fans say -he  had a decent  3 or 4 years with a young squad within a youth system  that he was embedded in , in terms of coaching , their formation and method . He did well .

The squad got emptied out of the young talent ( a good few to Champ clubs ) which he had played a part in developing  .

He's then required to recruit from outside the summer pre their relegation , something their own chairman in his own words said  'went extremely poorly' .

After relegation and a 16 game run without a win Artell is removed.

He's only had 1 try of recruiting from outside and it went particularly badly -- we are not Crewe we don't have an  A* academy with millions poured in year in year out , no conveyor belt of talent .

I just wouldn't trust him over a summer window , even if he somehow managed to stay in situ and guide us to safety .

As I have pointed out before;- The system at the Alex was decades long before Artell became part of it.  He didnt play any part in setting it up and just filled a spot that was always there.  He was only there five minutes and the system functioned with him or without him.  None of the young players owe much to him as they were schooled by others.  When the new batch are not quite ready the Alex slide downwards and everyone involved accepts that.  He got the sack because when the youngsters werent ready his external recruitment was crap.  You lads know exactly what that's like.
I dont think he's any good at recruitment and from your comments on here I dont think you lads are prepared to wait six years to get a sophisticated youth system in place.  I understand that you may be back in NL by then so it would be preferable to set up a youth system from a higher position in the league. I would feel just like you do if it was the Alex. Ironically when Crewe started the youth system they were 20th and managed to cling on to League status until it bore fruit.
I still think you can stay up.  And I hope you do.  FGR and Sutton have to catch you and if you can scrap for a few points and survive who cares about the manner it is achieved?

Quoted from trickeymickey

As I have pointed out before;- The system at the Alex was decades long before Artell became part of it.  He didnt play any part in setting it up and just filled a spot that was always there.  He was only there five minutes and the system functioned with him or without him.  None of the young players owe much to him as they were schooled by others.  When the new batch are not quite ready the Alex slide downwards and everyone involved accepts that.  He got the sack because when the youngsters werent ready his external recruitment was crap.  You lads know exactly what that's like.
I dont think he's any good at recruitment and from your comments on here I dont think you lads are prepared to wait six years to get a sophisticated youth system in place.  I understand that you may be back in NL by then so it would be preferable to set up a youth system from a higher position in the league. I would feel just like you do if it was the Alex. Ironically when Crewe started the youth system they were 20th and managed to cling on to League status until it bore fruit.
I still think you can stay up.  And I hope you do.  FGR and Sutton have to catch you and if you can scrap for a few points and survive who cares about the manner it is achieved?

Interesting post, and something which should have been clear to the owners at the point of due diligence.

The more I hear about DA and what his backstory was at Crewe makes me wonder what the owners were looking for.. doesn't really fit the criteria I would have thought we wanted and the squad we have in place..

Quoted from pen penfras

That reminds me of the point I missed out. The mitigating circumstances as you put it will be that the players were sold and he didn't have sufficient funds to replace them. That's the exact thing that's going to happen to him here.

This appointment was a dog and there was plenty of evidence that he wasn't what we needed. But even if he was, to try and play the way we are with the players we have is criminal. They were never going to be up to it and if that's what the board wanted, they needed to chuck a lot of money in alongside this manager to try it so soon.

Perhaps 1878 misguidedly thought DA would do enough with the current squad with modest strenghtening this Jan, then with some of the youth coming through next season - Braithwaite, Khouri, Cam, the ex Scunny lad, freeing up budget for better signings next summer. Both JS and AP will have become fans at a time when we had a ridiculously good amount of local talent, add instant quality like Joe Waters and you have a championship winning side going straight on, with the addition of Whymark, to fringes of pomotion of the the top tier. 1878's strategy can only have been exellence starting with youth, plus a stream of young imports like McAtee and Conteh paying off. We'll never attract even top level League 2 level talent in their prime to Gy, unless we pay over the odds, that's been case for most of the last 50 years We've seen players preferring Rochdale, Barrow and Crewe to playing in front of crowds double the size in NEL in the last couple of years.

Quoted from davmariner

Interesting post, and something which should have been clear to the owners at the point of due diligence.

Exactly.

If the worst happens and we do get relegated then the board as one should fully explain how they came to the conclusion to give DA the position as Head Coach and did they go into the finer details of why he achieved success by getting Crewe promoted and then relegated in one of their worst ever seasons.

Were they blindsided by his desire to play this out from the back football and completely missed his mishandling of their relegation season?

Quoted from Limerick Mariner

Perhaps 1878 misguidedly thought DA would do enough with the current squad with modest strenghtening this Jan, then with some of the youth coming through next season - Braithwaite, Khouri, Cam, the ex Scunny lad, freeing up budget for better signings next summer. Both JS and AP will have become fans at a time when we had a ridiculously good amount of local talent, add instant quality like Joe Waters and you have a championship winning side going straight on, with the addition of Whymark, to fringes of pomotion of the the top tier. 1878's strategy can only have been exellence starting with youth, plus a stream of young imports like McAtee and Conteh paying off. We'll never attract even top level League 2 level talent in their prime to Gy, unless we pay over the odds, that's been case for most of the last 50 years We've seen players preferring Rochdale, Barrow and Crewe to playing in front of crowds double the size in NEL in the last couple of years.

Likely scenario  

Were hoping the caretakers would have pulled better results. Such a cushion lost traction and wasn’t popular with the fans at all. So 6 weeks on a dash for DA ensued after other potentially better options were lost elsewhere.

lottery appointing a manager!!! Simple as, and how we got here is no surprise or did it involve complex thought.

Looks a Sh1T show right now but it’s only a team away from we’re back on track which might be a window away.

Players make managers, not managers make players.

Recruitment is everything. Can stats play a part, they always have and always will. Nothing new there.

Suspect we will buy time with a couple of quick wins and the ride goes on with L2 safety round the corner.

UTMM