In defence of Hurst

Quoted from Vance Warner

Fair play for doing your research! Certainly seems a strange decision looking back. I still think the point about our location is an important one. Clubs down south have a lot of talent to chose from in their local area.

Standard of living down south is higher especially in and around that there London.  My lad flat shares because of his Uni and his share of the rent is £600 a month, not including bills. There are quite a few variables to take into account and this area does have quite a few good things that could make the difference in bringing someone up north.

Quoted from Marinerz93

Standard of living down south is higher especially in and around that there London.  My lad flat shares because of his Uni and his share of the rent is £600 a month, not including bills. There are quite a few variables to take into account and this area does have quite a few good things that could make the difference in bringing someone up north.

London? Hate the bloody place. Dirty, smelly, heaving, unfriendly, not to mention ridiculously expensive.

I don't mind going down for a weekend as a tourist once in a while as there are the cultural bits to visit, but the thought of living down there leaves me cold.

As for the commuter belt around London, I've visited a good number of the towns down there and most of them don't have much going for them. There is more money down there, but the hustle and bustle puts me right off.

That said, it's very easy to understand why somebody born and raised in the south isn't keen on moving 'oop north'. It may be cheaper to live up here, but people don't like to be away from family and friends and, given an option to live in or around a major city somewhere, or in a small town at the end of the line, the choice for most is pretty clear. Heck, we even have players living in Yorkshire who prefer to commute a few hours a day rather than moving over to N.E. Lincs!

I don't want him out but...

If Hurst has got half a brain-cell about him then he knows as soon as this club goes up he's on borrowed time before the first game in League 2. We could win every game until the end of the season but it'd still be a step beyond him in League 2, and with more money coming in the club will probably spend a bit to make sure we don't end up in realms of hell again, guessing this why most of the team are on 12 month contracts too.

Quoted from Maringer

London? Hate the bloody place. Dirty, smelly, heaving, unfriendly, not to mention ridiculously expensive.

I don't mind going down for a weekend as a tourist once in a while as there are the cultural bits to visit, but the thought of living down there leaves me cold.

As for the commuter belt around London, I've visited a good number of the towns down there and most of them don't have much going for them. There is more money down there, but the hustle and bustle puts me right off.

That said, it's very easy to understand why somebody born and raised in the south isn't keen on moving 'oop north'. It may be cheaper to live up here, but people don't like to be away from family and friends and, given an option to live in or around a major city somewhere, or in a small town at the end of the line, the choice for most is pretty clear. Heck, we even have players living in Yorkshire who prefer to commute a few hours a day rather than moving over to N.E. Lincs!

London? "It's all oligarchs now."

I cannot defend PH,  he is unable to react to what is happening on the pitch, losing at home and bringing players on with 4 mins to go is sheer desperation. Other managers out think him week in week out, he puts too much pressure on the players and because of this we then put further pressure  on them. I have said it before , that we have a pretty good squad that is been badly managed. I also believe the standard of football in the conference this season has been worse than previous seasons, which really shows that our position of fourth would actually have been about 10th in seasons past. Jack Mackreth, Patrick Mclaughlin, Scott Neilson have the ability to add needed pace to the game and get the fans on their feet, why havnt they been used regularly. IMO we also need a keeper , Mckeown needs to have to fight for his place. I love GTFC and travel 240 miles round trip to support them at home, and would like to see GTFC match the effort of not just me but all regular supporters of the team, recent perfomances sadly fall way below acceptability. PH selects the team and formation. UTM

Most people seem to want at least one good winger in the team.  Michael Coulson was mentioned above.  He had a good record with us for creating goals. At York he has added scoring vital goals.

The decision to let him leave (however you put it) was short-sighted.  How we could do with him now.  

Quoted from TownSNAFU5

Most people seem to want at least one good winger in the team.  Michael Coulson was mentioned above.  He had a good record with us for creating goals. At York he has added scoring vital goals.

The decision to let him leave (however you put it) was short-sighted.  How we could do with him now.  

Apparently the rumour at the time was that Coulson was ready for an operation and it was 50/50 whether he would totally recover. I take it we wouldn't take a gamble. Wish he was still with us though

Other posters have talked about having a sense of deja vu in recent days. I share that, only mine relates to the latest round of criticism aimed at Paul Hurst that is not remotely supported by a reasonable analysis of the facts.

What do I mean by that? Well, let's think back to early October, when Hurst's position was last under as much scrutiny as it is now. After the home draw with Altrincham on October 7, I feared that Hurst would be dismissed. But, since then and with Hurst still in place, we have taken 26 points out of the 39 available to us. Prior to last Sunday, we had only lost once in our previous 11 league games (won eight, drawn two). And if you care to look back to the last point at which we suffered successive league defeats in September, we had taken 35 points out of a possible 51 available before last Sunday. Forgive me for not wanting to join in the witch hunt, but I cannot see how that record warrants the level of criticism posted on this forum in the last few days.

I wasn't at the game yesterday, but I was at the Lincoln game and, as much as they played very well on the day, I don't think we were, as has been suggested, poor. Perhaps I'm alone in recalling the three or four excellent saves that Farman made in the second half or the fact that we really should have been 2-0 up before their magnificent equaliser. We made enough chances to win the game and, like at their place in September, deserved at least something from it. It wasn't to be, but we'd had an extraordinary record against them in recent seasons before this year. They were always going to have their moments and those moments, as frustrating as they are, are not enough to justify a change of manager on their own.

I said in October that I felt it was a bigger gamble to sack Hurst than to stick with him and nothing that has happened since then has changed my view. Unless it becomes clear before the end of the season that we will not go up, and we are nowhere that point at the moment, the time to judge him is not now, not in the heat of the moment after a game, but at the end of the season. I'm prepared to wait. I'm as frustrated as anybody when we don't perform to the ability that we all know our squad possesses. But I try to keep things in their proper perspective and, sadly, I think too many of my fellow supporters, and certainly too many posters here, are either unable or unwilling to do that. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear Paul Hurst may end up being another Russell Slade – someone with whom we only truly realised what we had after he'd long gone.

Quoted from GrimRob

We've got the fourth highest wage bill and we're currently fourth, so it's hardly been a disastrous season so far as we're more or less where we should be in the league. Not that there isn't plenty of room for improvement but you could probably say that for every team in the division with the exception of Barnet.

Where does this information come from? People talk about who the big spenders are, but where is the information to back this up?

You could work our bill (last season) from the accounts, and make an educated guess at this season's. But what about other clubs?

Quoted from FishOutOfWater

Chicken or egg though VW?

My reading of it was that we were not prepared to carry on paying him what we brought him in for

Maybe that was Hurst and Scott just being frugal with their finances and thinking he would show us some extra loyalty but Coulson certainly stated his new contract offer was effectively him being asked to take a pay cut (akin to Bradley Wood's situation too I believe?)

Coulson said: "Obviously, it's a tricky situation. I want to be at Grimsby Town and have enjoyed my time here.

"I don't want to go too deep into it, but I didn't want to take a pay cut at the end of the day – that's what it is.

"It's not much and not a big cut but it's out of principle – I don't want to take a pay cut.

"Because the club didn't take up the option of an extra year, that gave me the chance to leave for free. It's a horrible situation for me because I have had a great time here and enjoyed my football.

http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.....91-detail/story.html

Very honest and professional in my eyes. I was gutted when he went.