Best team of the Fishy era: No. 22

Quoted from diehardmariner

Don't disagree with that.  His record since, whilst a very small record, isn't exactly glowing.  

But he was still a victim of a dressing room that let him down.  He also did a fantastic job in keeping us up in 2001/02, so that approach of giving him the job because he's a good/popular player worked on that occasion.

If he wasn't a popular player would you still place all the blame on players if a manger lost the dressing room? When stuff like that happens there is usually a reason for it. It's down to the manager to gain the respect of players and inspire them to play for the team and for him. From what he said in the interview he'd given up so there was no real backbone from him or passion that inspires people to work harder.

Just because you do well as a player or even as a coach it doesn't mean you will be a good manager. Seen that time and time again.

Quoted from Hagrid

here about 10 years ago les, he is on the crossbar challenge video on youtube

Did Luke Foulkes fluke it then?

Quoted from Les Brechin

Ah right. Can't say I've seen that. Did he ever make a first team appearance?

Nope. Poor lad was released a month into the season!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/g/grimsby_town/6991644.stm

Didn’t he become a DJ in Cleethorpes or something or was that someone else?

Quoted from Abdul19

Nope. Poor lad was released a month into the season!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/g/grimsby_town/6991644.stm

That explains why I have absolutely no knowledge of the name.  

Quoted from Kris2

If he wasn't a popular player would you still place all the blame on players if a manger lost the dressing room? When stuff like that happens there is usually a reason for it. It's down to the manager to gain the respect of players and inspire them to play for the team and for him. From what he said in the interview he'd given up so there was no real backbone from him or passion that inspires people to work harder.

Just because you do well as a player or even as a coach it doesn't mean you will be a good manager. Seen that time and time again.

I'm not placing all the blame on the players at all.  I did say it was the players he brought in, which can be attributed to his bad judge of character/naivety in thinking he can turn bad eggs into a good unit, I dunno.  Groves had his faults. Tactically I thought he came up short on numerous occasions.  Playing Marcel Cas at right-back with Jason Crowe in front of him on the wing is just one example.  I'll never forget him playing Macca at left-back away at Wycombe, Cas at right back whilst Greg Young sat on the bench.  He was absolutely obsessed with bringing in a big target man for Boulding to play off, obsessed to the point he couldn't see past it and ended up bringing in a big guy who was 4 years past his sell by date but still persisted in playing him week-in-week-out.  He seemed reluctant during our relegation from the second-tier to play Terry Cooke, despite the fact he was (for large parts of the season) our only remotely creative player.  

But I still blame the players more than him.  Maybe he wasn't inspiring them, maybe he didn't have their respect.  But the performances they put in were a disgrace.  The final game away at Oldham was the most abject display I've ever seen from players in a Town shirt.  As bad as we've been, the players have more often than not tried.   That day they simply weren't bothered.  It was only when Iain Anderson came on at half-time that someone actually looked like they didn't want to lose.

To answer your question, am I blinkered by Groves' standing as a player. Probably, in fact I would say I definitely am.  I've no shame in saying that.  But I'm not arguing that he was a great manager, nor without faults.  Just that some of the players in that team were a disgrace.  Groves could never be accused of not caring, sadly the same couldn't have been said for a large proportion of that team.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd have probably just managed to stay up if Groves had remained in charge. No doubt we were doing poorly, but I think we might have had enough in the squad just to sneak through. Especially if he'd been given the lolly to spend on players for the last dozen or so games that Nicky Fricking Law (11 points from 12 games) was allowed.

Not to claim that Groves was a good manager at all, just noting that he was probably as much sinned against as sinning.

Quoted from Maringer

I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd have probably just managed to stay up if Groves had remained in charge. No doubt we were doing poorly, but I think we might have had enough in the squad just to sneak through. Especially if he'd been given the lolly to spend on players for the last dozen or so games that Nicky Fricking Law (11 points from 12 games) was allowed.

Not to claim that Groves was a good manager at all, just noting that he was probably as much sinned against as sinning.

We'd have also stayed up that year if Rodger would have got the job till the end of the season. He'd won 3 lost 3 of his 6 games in temporary charge, including the 6-1 drubbing of Barnsley.

Selling Boulding also a turning point. Can't imagine we sold him for much, but he'd already got to about 12/13 goals by January i think and his goals could have kept us up under any of the 3 managers we had that season.

Boulding going coincided a bit with a change of talisman towards Jevons who hadn't long come back into the side.  I thought Boulding's overall game was quite poor in his second spell, his strike rate in the first third of the season was very good though.  Would have been interesting to see how Jevons and Boulding paired.  Or how Boulding would have played with Lee Thorpe, who was the big target man we had lacked for the first part of the season.  

Not sure we would have stayed up under Groves.  We were on a slide, playing some awful stuff and getting hammered.  I think Groves had also completely lost the dressing room at that point too.   Prior to the Oldham hammering we lost 3-1 to Wrexham at home and 5-1 away at Port Vale.  We had picked up 4 points from Groves' last 9 games.  

I definitely think we would have stayed up under Rodger.  3 wins from 6 is very comfortable mid-table form.  More importantly we won all of our home games.  We were still leaking goals but Rodger had got a bit of a system going that seemed to work.  Law came in and brought in players who were worse than what we already had and ended up picking up 11 points from the last 12 games.   We only scored 11 goals during that spell too, 4 of which came in one games against Chesterfield.   Whilst looking further at the numbers, Jevons scored 9 in the first 9 games after Boulding left.  Under Law he scored once in 12 games.