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Tisdale "The whole thing has been hurtful"

Hants_red

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Tisdale quoted in The Times about negotiations on his contract. Seems that he is expecting to leave in the summer, after this season finishes. It's quite a long article, and it's behind their paywall.

Anyone with access want to report on it in this thread?
 

Hants_red

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

One bit of the article

 

The Proper Chap

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

Looks like yet another sob story.

It would be any eye opener for Tisdale to manage another club, I doubt he would last long at a club with any real pressure and expectation.
 

supernova

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

He could have changed things up when we dire at home for so long. His fault
 

Antony Moxey

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

I don’t understand what he’s finding hurtful or unsettling. Football’s always been about fixed term contracts rather than permanent ones, I genuinely don’t understand why he seems shocked by this, even those who’ve been at their clubs for years like Wenger and Ferguson worked from short(ish) term fixed contracts that were renegotiated each time.

Seems to me he’s just formulating a ready made excuse for when he wants away, although should we go up and he be given a reasonable playing budget I suspect it’ll all fade into the background.
 

Grecian_Nick

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

I'm not a Tisdale hater - far from it - but even to me this doesn't sit well. 'I've put my career on hold for five or six years' Hmmmmmm
 

Grecian_Nick

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

When he puts it into context — results, the challenge, a swallowing of pain, the money he generated for a club which depends upon it — Paul Tisdale regards last season as “the best I’ve ever had”, which is quite a statement when you consider it also featured his own dismissal. Exeter City are specialists in nonconformity, a partial explanation for why their manager is still there, but 16 months later, the longest of goodbyes is approaching.

Exeter and Tisdale have featured in this space before; a supporter-owned club crammed with idiosyncrasy, a professional footballer who did not enjoy football, who “stumbled” into becoming the Football League’s longest-serving manager and who serves as an ambassador for Ted Baker, the designer clothing company. It is a well-told story of difference, diligence and rare intelligence, one which is now drifting towards a conclusion.

Part of the story concerns the meaning of success. In Tisdale’s second season at St James Park, Exeter won promotion from the National League. In his third, they reached Sky Bet League One. In the fifth, they climbed to eighth, equalling the club’s highest position. They were relegated in 2012 and “started a new cycle”, he says, “making sure we stayed in the league with a very small base budget”. Each victory is a triumph, but so is survival.

Perception, expectation, reality; those tectonic plates crunched together in November 2016. Exeter were 23rd in League Two and had not won at home for seven months. “There was a lot of negativity,” Tisdale says. “No matter what the model of the club is, at 4.55pm on a Saturday afternoon, nobody looks at the big picture. People tend to focus on the fact that you’re second bottom and you’ve lost again.”

Amid discontent from fans and a petition calling for Tisdale to go, the club’s supporters’ trust ordered its board to serve notice on his two-year rolling contract. The irony was that Tisdale could sense a turnaround. “We had an incredible flurry of injuries and kept losing games, but I knew we had a fighting chance of getting promoted,” he says. “It was the best group of players we’d had for years.

“We just had to be patient, but we didn’t win at home for God knows how long, we were in the bottom two or three and it didn’t match up with what I was saying. The place with the most confidence and patience was the dressing room. It was very harmonious in there, albeit we were in real trouble at the wrong end of the table.”

Tisdale was right. His team recovered, climbed to fifth and lost to Blackpool in the play-off final. In the summer, he sold Ollie Watkins to Brentford and David Wheeler to Queens Park Rangers, raising well in excess of £2 million, while teenager Ethan Ampadu moved to Chelsea, with the fee still to be determined by a tribunal. Tisdale rebuilt his team, once again. Exeter stand fifth. The decision to end Tisdale’s contract was messy. At another club, he might have been sacked outright and paid off, but Exeter are a “cash-flow business” — they cannot spend money they do not have — and the compromise was awkward. In the meantime, both sides have signalled a willingness to renegotiate, but circumstances have shifted and, as things stand, they are “far” from an agreement.

“My notice comes through in November but the bottom line is I’m not going to start next season to then leave,” Tisdale says. “So it really means this summer.” In turn, that really means eight more matches, potentially a few more if they finish in the top seven. “Time is running out,” he says. “It’s been at least a year since we started discussing these things and they’ve not come up with anything.”

Tisdale cannot deny it; he has been bruised by the episode. “You understand supporters,” he says. “You understand that’s how it is, but it wasn’t nice. It’s been difficult. The whole thing has been hurtful and unsettling but you learn to live with that in professional sport. I don’t regret being here. I love it at Exeter, I love the players and the coaches I work with and we’re very close, but it’s unfair on them.

“It’s unfair on my colleagues, for the people who have given up their time to come and work with me because they love the environment. I don’t want to say it’s neglectful, because I know it’s not wilful, but it has had a knock-on effect for a lot of people who realise there’s a point coming soon where it all may change. It’s been hanging over our heads for so long it’s almost as if everyone has forgotten about it.”

After all this time, it has caused Tisdale to reevaluate. “Let’s be honest, I’ve put my career on hold for five or six years,” he says. “I’ve done the right thing by the club at every turn, selling my best players, never putting the club at risk financially, developing our facilities at the same time. You do feel particularly hurt when, in a period of bad results, they turn around and serve notice, but you have to be very focused and strong-minded.

“I actually feel it’s pre-empted a crossroads for the club. Without this we might just have trundled on in the same way. I love the club, I’ve committed 12 years of my life to it, but we’ve been standing still. On the one hand, standing still means that you’re safe and it’s a very considered environment, but the trouble is that everyone else is moving forward and the only way we’ve kept in business is by selling player after player.

“I don’t think I can stomach another five years of doing the same thing, hanging on. The crossroads is coming and I’m saying, ‘OK, I’d consider staying, but only if there’s a shift towards progression.’ Even just competing with our peers would be a start. This is a moment for the club to decide. The supporters’ trust was formed 17 years ago and has done a magnificent job, but we haven’t moved forward.”

As Tisdale says, it has given him a chance “to think about what I want to do”. In the past, he has been approached by Swansea City, Southampton and others but opted to stay, which should not be interpreted as settling for comfort. “It touches a raw nerve because I’ve heard the ambition question so many times,” he says. “I can take a lot, but not that, because to try and get a club like Exeter into the Championship is as ambitious as you’ll ever get.

“To create and develop a club from top to bottom culturally, to create credibility, to have a constant environment, takes dedication and management and focus. To say that’s not ambitious . . . it’s just an ambition that people don’t understand. Exeter has been my club and I’ve devoted myself to them. My ambition has been 100 per cent, it’s just not conventional. People think you should jump ship and look to better yourself straight away.”

He has huge experience, but in managerial terms Tisdale is still young. Nobody is more innovative or less cynical (he rails against “game management” and time-wasting), nobody more committed to being “proper”, a favoured word. He spends two days a month at the Ted Baker offices, “getting a different perspective and developing myself”, and it is natural to wonder how he would fare with more freedom, more money, less pressure on enduring.

“You ask if it takes a toll but you learn to live with the constant responsibility,” he says. “It becomes a lifestyle. You have to pace yourself, exercise, eat well, see your family and everything else. The only way you can do it is if you have control and a sense of balance. But I also see it as great training for the next step. I’m 45, I’ve had more than 600 games as Exeter manager and I’ve been running a business.

“To manage in the Premier League would be very different, but it will never be as difficult as this. I’ll be responsible for results, but I wouldn’t be accountable for every penny, like I am here. This might be a new beginning for me, which I’d look forward to. It would be nice to step into a role which was technically challenging in a coaching capacity. I see myself as having an affinity with some of the foreign coaches in this country.”

One of those is Arsène Wenger, the only serving manager in the English game to be in situ longer than Tisdale and, like Exeter, Arsenal have been wrestling with the definition of success, with who they are. As always, Tisdale will continue to give all that he is. Could he really leave? Really, truly? “Yeah, absolutely,” he says. “But I’m open-minded. The ball is in the club’s court.” Everything has its own context and everything ends. Even this.
 

PeteUSA

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

I dont understand what Tisdale has been "bruised by", or what "episode" he's refering to? Its been confirmed that he's turned down a new contract offer, which in my opinion was offered far too early. Back at the time when we were riding somewhat high and playing well in the league and cup, Tagg said in the media that he was working on getting Tisdales contract concluded/settled/finalised, or words to that effect. I'd assumed that the trust would make the club hold back on a new contract offer until much later in the season. It seems they didnt try very hard, since Tisdale got a new contract offer which it appears he subsequently rejected. I dont know what all that guff above is, about his contract issue being unsettling for the players, and the various coaches? I wouldnt have thought they'd give a monkeys, and I dont see how Tisdale can let his situation affect them.

Its not difficult to work out that Tisdale is blaming the supporters fair and square for the predicament he claims to be in, which is grossly unfair. During Tisdales tenure, while we've had a promotion two or three times (and relegations) there have been huge gaps between the success periods that he achieved which have been utter dross, and totally unacceptable. Had we not had that two year roller millstone around our necks, he would have been gone many seasons ago. IMHO the rejected contract should be withdrawn and the whole thing reconsidered nearer the end of the season. I would hope thats whats happened.
 

The Proper Chap

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

Tisdale seems to have a very selective memory.

He led us into a transfer embargo.

Regardless of where we finish this season I hope this is his last season, I'd rather have someone managing the club who didn't continually make out he was doing everyone a favour.

Also don't we have a very competitive budget this season.

Tisdale talks in riddles, I'm not sure he is aware of what he is saying a lot of the time.
 
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Alistair20000

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Re: "The whole thing has been hurtful"

What a crock of sh*te.
 
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