Russell Slade - What went wrong?

Russell Slade - What went wrong?
Fenty re employed the clown 🤡

Quoted from Mighty_Mariner

One thing that's been bugging me for a few weeks and just can't get my head around is what on earth actually happened to Russell Slade? How did he turn into such an incompetent manager? You could argue that he's had a successful managerial career, albeit not actually winning any silverware.

you have answered your own question there...he has never won anything as a League manager end of therefore, ultimately he hasnt been successful. You could argue success can only be gauged against achieving any targets he was given....well he failed miserably with the targets he was set here...play offs, smaller but better quality squad .....errr ..no and no .....and i cant imagine that he left any of his other appointments as a result of achieving his targets either.
Maybe he came close at Yeovil ,as he got them to a relatively good position before losing out, the fact he got them that close could have been seen as relative success but no one really sees losing in the play offs as being successful do they ?  

The game has moved on from the times he was seen as a good managerial prospect...i personally think he relies too much on a single star player to do the business, back at Scarborough he had Sestanovich who was undoubtedly a quality player, certainly for that level...with us he had Reddy who was again a quality player who quite literally could get a goal from virtually nothing...nowadays having a single player with quality is easy to nullify with a park the bus formation...i think Slade expected Dembele to be completely unplayable and surrounded him with mediocre players.

He was employed with a brief - to hold the fort and steady the budget. Once again Fenty fell between two stools, ambition and safety first. Hence so many loanees and young “maybes”.

Some fans could not see that and blamed Slade for not being another sparkly young thrusting up and coming go getting coach who would get results on no money with donkeys playing like Buckleys.

On the field the one failure that would haunt Slade would be the lack of goals, his failure to sign a proper out and out striker. If the side had been winning consistently even by 1-0 he would have had no problem, play-offs would have been a cert and fans would have been happy with the situation even if they were not seeing pretty football.

But he didn’t ............. and the 1-0 became 0-0 then 0-1 etc. and that was never going to be forgiven.

I am more puzzled about what went wrong after the Mansfield game? OK we had not been playing great but we were picking up points and were in a handy place in the league. What went on between Christmas and the New Year? We will probably never know.

Quality of signings for me. The ability of players is far more important than systems IMHO. PH has a great eye for a player, and probably more importantly he could persuade them to come here. Most of Slade's signings might have been good once but they are at the wrong end of their careers. He probably approached better players who turned us down, the only people he could bring in were those who probably didn't have a lot of other offers.

For me, he lost the respect of too many people (players included I suspect) following the Matt Dean forum debacle. Here's a stat for you.

Points per game pre-forum: 1.45
Points per game post-forum: 0.31

Over the course of a season, that's the difference between finishing on 67 points versus 14.

I was relatively pro-Slade prior to that evening, we were unspectacular but were beginning to at least look fairly organised and solid. He showed though, in the heat of his rant, that he was no longer a man in control.

And we've seen time and time again at the top-level that once you've lost the dressing room you're as good as finished. My only hope is now, with fresh blood and fresh thinking at the helm, that the players quickly rediscover their steady, mid-table form.

Mediocre will keep us up for now.

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

He was employed with a brief - to hold the fort and steady the budget. Once again Fenty fell between two stools, ambition and safety first. Hence so many loanees and young “maybes”.

Some fans could not see that and blamed Slade for not being another sparkly young thrusting up and coming go getting coach who would get results on no money with donkeys playing like Buckleys.

On the field the one failure that would haunt Slade would be the lack of goals, his failure to sign a proper out and out striker. If the side had been winning consistently even by 1-0 he would have had no problem, play-offs would have been a cert and fans would have been happy with the situation even if they were not seeing pretty football.

But he didn’t ............. and the 1-0 became 0-0 then 0-1 etc. and that was never going to be forgiven.

He was employed with a very clear aim of play off/ promotion this season and also to reduce the squad down to 22 senior pro's ...we ended up with not even achieving his minimum aim of 50 points , 34/35 pro's and so many loanee's we cant even include them all in the matchday squad.

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

He was employed with a brief - to hold the fort and steady the budget. Once again Fenty fell between two stools, ambition and safety first. Hence so many loanees and young “maybes”.

Some fans could not see that and blamed Slade for not being another sparkly young thrusting up and coming go getting coach who would get results on no money with donkeys playing like Buckleys.

On the field the one failure that would haunt Slade would be the lack of goals, his failure to sign a proper out and out striker. If the side had been winning consistently even by 1-0 he would have had no problem, play-offs would have been a cert and fans would have been happy with the situation even if they were not seeing pretty football.

But he didn’t ............. and the 1-0 became 0-0 then 0-1 etc. and that was never going to be forgiven.

I would agree in part, in my opinion his main problem was he signed a shed load of pretty crap players, Hooper, Kelly, Dixon, Woolford, Rose, Matt, Clarke, Osborne.

Quoted from Poojah

For me, he lost the respect of too many people (players included I suspect) following the Matt Dean forum debacle. Here's a stat for you.

Points per game pre-forum: 1.45
Points per game post-forum: 0.31

Over the course of a season, that's the difference between finishing on 67 points versus 14.

I was relatively pro-Slade prior to that evening, we were unspectacular but were beginning to at least look fairly organised and solid. He showed though, in the heat of his rant, that he was no longer a man in control.

And we've seen time and time again at the top-level that once you've lost the dressing room you're as good as finished. My only hope is now, with fresh blood and fresh thinking at the helm, that the players quickly rediscover their steady, mid-table form.

Mediocre will keep us up for now.

I agree with that. Untold damage was done with that forum; we had found a bit of form and it seemed to give Slade and Fenty an excuse to settle some scores. They should have known a lot better and I said at the time it would come back to haunt them and so it has proved.

I also agree with Robs post above - I don't know for sure but I would imagine all of his first choices (apart from Clarke) said no, and he probably chased them too long leaving us with also rans. He should have been backed better by the board to get the players he wanted.

I am not being funny but I think his age caught up with him,

Some managers can still do a good job into their 70's,

In Slades case he lost the plot at a much earlier age,

He could not remember how many loan players he had brought in,

When he did sign players after looking at them on trial for weeks he did not play them much but they had 2 year contracts,

He knew of only one way to play and always reverted back to his long ball on the occassions he did try and play in on the ground.

I hope he enjoys his retirment because I do not think he will find another job in football,

In one way I am hoping he gets one more chance soon,

Then he can take Clarke and a couple of others off our hands.