Hurst out

I'll be sad if Hurst goes but it's time for fresh ideas. It's all become a bit safe and monotonous, a bit like staying with a partner because it's easy even though the flame has died.

The reality is, allowing Hurst a few more games won't change anything. At this point it's not just about the results, it's about those incremental improvements the owners have spoken about. Hurst is a safe pair of hands but not a particularly progressive one. His style of play is routed in teamwork and doing the basics, but that's never going to produce a strong team capable of being consistent enough to one day mount a promotion challenge. It's something he routinely struggled with at national League level, let alone league 2. I genuinely believe that we are one of the easiest teams for managers to do their homework on as we pose so few questions in an attacking sense (invariably, we only create multiple chances against teams who play an open style).

To his credit, I think he's tried to change his style of play this season to a more possession based style and has signed players suited to that style. The problem is it hasn't work, I think partly due to limitations of Hurst's managerial style, and now he's got players that aren't as suited to his more old-school style.

Either way, football is a momentum sport and we've seen these lulls set in before and know too well where they can end up. We need to find a way of reorienting the momentum before we fall back into our typical lower league 2/upper national League cycle.

Where's Aldi when Paul needs him?

Quoted from cannylad65

Where's Aldi when Paul needs him?

I think yesterday was a significant one for many town supporters as whilst a few wanted Hurst out the vast majority, like myself, were much more on the fence as although we had reservations about results and our style of play we believe(d) that we have better technical players and thus hoped/expected results and performances would improve. However, following on from the Barrow game another totally inept home performance was the decisive factor in knocking us off the fence and making our minds up.

Hopefully Aldi was away and didn’t have to witness yesterday’s failure to show up but it’s hard to be supportive to PH at the present time so he might be holding fire to see how the land lies in the next few days. I understand the premise that changing your manager is not going to guarantee improvement and our recent history perfectly supports that stance, however, I believe our home performances over the last fifteen months are sufficient evidence that we need to try someone new.

Quoted from MuddyWaters

Apart from Luke Waterfall, aren’t the whole squad Hurst signings? He’s told us they do research on players and their backgrounds so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Hurst gave Waterfall a new contract in summer 2022 so he's just as much a Hurst signing as every one else is.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

Hurst gave Waterfall a new contract in summer 2022 so he's just as much a Hurst signing as every one else is.

Fair comment. 😎

Why sign Hunt with a fee on a three year deal and then never play him.?

Quoted from Lincoln Mariner 56

I think yesterday was a significant one for many town supporters as whilst a few wanted Hurst out the vast majority, like myself, were much more on the fence as although we had reservations about results and our style of play we believe(d) that we have better technical players and thus hoped/expected results and performances would improve. However, following on from the Barrow game another totally inept home performance was the decisive factor in knocking us off the fence and making our minds up.

Hopefully Aldi was away and didn’t have to witness yesterday’s failure to show up but it’s hard to be supportive to PH at the present time so he might be holding fire to see how the land lies in the next few days. I understand the premise that changing your manager is not going to guarantee improvement and our recent history perfectly supports that stance, however, I believe our home performances over the last fifteen months are sufficient evidence that we need to try someone new.

The crowds have held up so so well , I was not expecting 6400 yesterday .

That's my main frustration personally - I want to see what our capability is as a fanbase - is there 2 or 3 thousand more fans there if we have a consistent run of good enjoyable performances & victories ?

We just don't know because in the league it's been 20 years of dross effectively barring the odd season

I just want to see what our potential is , but it seems like we will once again just  lose all momentum .

Quoted from Poojah

I spent the whole journey home trying to come up with a robust, logical and evidence-based counter-argument to sacking Hurst. Here’s what I came up with:

Nothing. I came up with nothing. Today was up there with the kind of gutless and lacklustre performances we’ve seen in the worst of Bignot, Slade and Holloway’s reigns.

If, on Monday, news breaks that Hurst has left the club, it will be both the right decision and a sad day.

FFS Poojah, you're not padding out a newspaper column.  I suggest the above edit would suffice for now.

Quoted from Yoda

Why sign Hunt with a fee on a three year deal and then never play him.?

I think we signed a few players on multi-year deals when we were in the conference. What may have seemed right then, may not seem right now.

When you sign a young player, you're not buying the finished article, you're buying potential. The question you ask down the line is, was that potential realised, and will that potential be realised? When you get to that point, you're left with the question, does that player give us enough on current ability to justify their place in the squad and on the wage budget. Sometimes you cannot buy new players in until that space in the budget has been freed up. You can only free that budget up mid-contract if a team is willing to take that player on full wages.

When we renewed Waterfall, or signed Glennon, we didn't see exactly where they'd be now, or what their form could become. No-one can read the future. You just got to deal with changing events when they happen.

Quoted from cannylad65

Where's Aldi when Paul needs him?

I was thinking the same thing!  Aldi's defence of the team and manager after a poor defeat always makes me chuckle.

I said three wins this month was my minimum requirement.  We could still achieve that against Colchester and Doncaster.

Next month we play Morecambe, FGR and Sutton.  What's the least the owners should accept?  Seven points?  Nine points?