An objective view on Dave Artell

Quoted from Balthazar Bullitt

I've also had a 90 minute drive home followed by another 45 minutes to go see a band in Leicester. Prior to being entertained and melodiously soothed by three very enthusiastic and happy Dutch people, I wanted him sacked and evicted from the Town boundaries immediately. One gig and a whisky later I can objectively say I just want him sacked. Tomorrow or Monday would be fine.

It doesn't matter how detailed your recruitment process is there is always the risk of selecting the wrong candidate. You can have multi level interviews, psychometric testing, role play observation and tarot card readings and you can still get it wrong.

Artell has proven to be the wrong candidate. Having been here for the best part of three months and 12 games there has been an objectively proven decline in performance with nothing indicating that this will change.
Subjectively, every time the ball comes in our box now I think we're likely to concede. We are defensively inept, organisationally chaotic and solution deficient.

I think our current owners are getting quite a lot of undeserved stick for this. Personally, I hope they do find a way to;
- Deal with the excrement that's being thrown their way;
- Continue to develop the infrastructure that might allow this club some degree of success and sustainability in the future;
- Own the mistake that's been made and rectify it at the earliest opportunity.

At this stage I'm wondering whether we start another fundraiser and offer some temporarily out of work Championship level manager £10,000 a game until the end of season on the proviso we stay up. £150,000 for 3 months work might be peanuts to them but I've had another whisky and am recognising the absolute desperation of our situation. Please, not again.

Quoted from AncientExiledMariner

One thing not factored in this is context. Only 4 games ago, we lost Conteh, our ball playing DM who had pretty solid stats. We had one game with Green that went badly, then Thompson came in, we did well. We played top of the league, out of the league budget Stockport and were undone by individual errors (Clifton/Gnahoua, Holahan, Maher/Cartwright), then we're without Thompson again, and it's bad.

Hunt has just come back into contention (returned to training after injury). He hasn't really had time with his squad to execute any form of plan.

Things are shite right now, but timing is also a key thing. Hurst for his last game had lost faith in Eastwood and brought in Cartwright, and the fruits of that were not realised under him. Vernam was unavailable under Hurst, which didn't help him also.

In 2 weeks, we'll likely have a match sharp Vernam, Hunt back, new signings settled, and I'm hoping Thompson fit. Doing nothing doesn't mean there is no change, it is the exact situation any new gaffer would have. DA has shown as recently as Accrington that there is green shoots. We also went toe to toe with Notts County and a solid performance against MK.

Numbers don't always give full context and with any sacking decision, you cannot go purely by stats, but on the question, in 2 weeks time with exactly the same squad, will we have more chance of picking up points with a new manager or this one.

I personally think we can still pick up those points. We aren't going to be winning games 1 - 0. We just do not have the squad for it. So we'll be losing more, and winning some, and we just got to get enough of those wins on the board to keep our distance. I'm in the minority, and obviously as an exile, I couldn't attend today, so didn't have the same bruises as many have had.

Quoted from MuddyWaters

The body language of the subs warming up yesterday was very telling. No intensity, laughing and joking, even Gav who is a top pro (albeit not the best player) didn’t look bothered.

Regarding Alex Hunt. He isn’t injured and was apparently told he could leave. That was a month after he was described as ‘pivotal’ to the way we play after he bossed Crewe. Purely by chance (!!), Conteh then had a fantastic game against Notts and put himself in the shop window and the consequence is that we end up with yesterday’s midfield who wouldn’t look out of place in Conference North.

Quoted from Poojah

I can’t lie, leaving BP today I was as angry as I have been in a long, long time about those in black and white shirts, Danny Rose 100% excepted and absolved of any association with today’s latest shít show. He deserves to be a part of this no more than the fans do.

But having had the benefit of a 90 minute drive home, I’ve been able to give the situation some thought and consideration with with most of the raw emotion taken out of the equation. So let me start by saying that I think Dave Artell is probably a lovely bloke; he’s had some incredibly tough, even tragic events to contend with in his short time at the club and he’s handled them with compassion and dignity. Good on him for that.

But we are now, as a club, in a real pickle, and 21 goals conceded in 5 home games is a simply ridiculous stat that suggests something is seriously amiss somewhere. I want to make an objective assessment of the state of things; no aggression, no insults, just facts and figures. Spoiler alert; it ain’t good.

Let’s be fair though, the reason we were looking for a manager back in November is because Hurst had struggled to get a tune out of the team. So Artell inherited something somewhat dysfunctional, I think we can agree on that. The last few weeks under Hurst were not good, and it’s important not to re-write history. Here’s Hurst’s high-level record this season when he was sacked, incidentally after we played Donny. GF = “goals for”, GA = “goals against”.

Win % - 18.8%
PPG - 0.88
GF / game - 1.25
GA / game - 1.63

That’s not a great record by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s not surprising that it cost Hurst his job. On average, we were losing games by 0.38 goals.

And so we looked to Dave Artell to improve our fortunes. Let’s have a look at his record to date:

Win % - 15.4%
PPG - 0.77
GF / game - 1.31
GA / game - 2.13

Credit where it is due, one of the metrics has improved. Under Artell, we’ve scored 0.06 goals per game than we did under Hurst this season. But that marginal improvement is absolutely dwarfed by what’s happened up the other end - under Artell we’re conceding 0.5 goals more per game than under the manager who was sacked. And that’s before you consider that over our last 6 games, we’ve conceded 3.5 goals per game on average, despite a clean sheet in one of those matches.

Ultimately, under Artell we’re winning a markedly fewer % of games, picking up less points on average than the man he replaced, and losing games by a much larger average margin (0.82 vs 0.38 ). Of course, comparing against Hurst is a small sample, but we’re in luck - one thing this club hasn’t lacked this century is struggling managers, so let’s have a look at Artell’s record versus every Town manager either sacked or whom resigned amidst poor performance (win ratio followed by points per game).

Dave Artell - 15.4% - 0.77
Lennie Lawrence - 28.5% - 1.32
Paul Groves - 23.3% - 1.00
Nicky Law - 25.0% - 0.92
Graham Rodger - 23.5% - 0.94
Alan Buckley iii - 34.0% - 1.44
Mike Newell - 24.5% - 0.94
Neil Woods - 25.4% - 1.18
Marcus Bignot - 33.3% - 1.26
Russell Slade ii - 25.6% - 1.05
Michael Jolley - 36.7% - 1.30
I*n H******y - 28.9% - 1.11
Paul Hurst ii - 37.7% - 1.37

It’s important to remember that not all of those managerial tenures were wholly awful. Hurst of course delivered tangible success before he got sacked, Jolley did ok with his hands behind his back, and Buckley’s third reign looks a lot better in statistical terms than it might live in our collective memories. But there are also some incredibly shambolic efforts in there too.

Nicky Law. Graham Rodger. Newell. Bignot. All of them had their own, uniquely shambolic qualities to what were throughly disastrous times in the Town dugout. And yet Artell’s record is meaningfully worse than all of them. That is quite profound.

Marcus Bignot, remembered quite correctly as a complete buffoon, had a win % well over 2x better than Artell’s. In fact, Artell would have to win the next 2 just to match Nicky Law’s win ratio. And that doesn’t even seem remotely likely. In figurative terms, Artell is the smallest of the dwarves, at a time when we need giants.

I’m not overly keen on calling for people to lose their job, but what we are witnessing in the here and now is outstandingly poor in the context of the club’s recent history; a recent history which has in itself been outstandingly poor.

This club, this town, cannot afford to lose its league status for a third time. To do so would be absolutely catastrophic. It has to be recognised that conceding 21 goals in 6 games, or 5 home games, is not normal. It can’t be acceptable.

We have some huge fixtures coming up, not least our next home game against Forest Green in two weeks. A change in first-team management needs to be made immediately in order for any successor, temporary or otherwise, to prepare accordingly.

I have nothing against Dave Artell personally, but the stats bear it out.

This can’t continue.