Some interesting threads currently running. Firstly, and I hope you don't mind me being critical here Rae, but I thought your thread was a little dis-ingenuous. I respect, and like reading the vast majority of your posts, but your op struck me as a 'drum banging' exercise. Of course, whilst many of us fancy ourselves as ground breaking managers, or course the simple answer is that if we could do it, we would be.
PT is without doubt one of the (if not THE) best and most able managers ever to grace the park. His time with us has been an almost constant upward curve. But a part of me thinks that if we were ever going to pull off the big one (championship) then last season was probably the time. I think we might have reached the plateau, and whilst the many and varied 'kick Tis' threads have previously been full of garbage, is it possible that for the first time people's dis-satisfaction is actually based on reasonable logic and sensible opinions?
Without doubt the budget constraints have not helped. The loss of the spine of the team would have taken a hell of a lot of coming back from for any manager, and I feel PT is currently scratching his head. I also don't accept Mr Moxey (senior's) point about loan players. To my mind they should be providing cover, and adding extra spark, it can't make much sense to try to build a team, or even an attacking force around them. I can only think of Yeovil doing this with any great success, and they squeaked through last year by the skin of their teeth.
The fact is, the current squad is borderline relegation quality in this league, and any resulting relegation would see the same basic squad mid table at best in L2. For instance, are we currently any better than the Gulls? In reality no. O'Kane is this years Harley, and on a strong and recent contract, if he goes, they will be able to build an entire team around the fee. I think we have one or two players at best that would currently command a fee. TAH, who is under so much pressure to hold the backline together this term, he is making a number of mistakes, and looking a little clumsy a little too often to achieve what his real value would be under normal development.
So, where does all of this leave PT? In a quandry I would say. People I talk to say that he has been offered a nice slice of the potential redevelopment. Now that it looks like progress has ground to a halt on that score, what more is left for our manager? Increase in budget so that we can increase the squad quality? Doesn't appear likely. Can he get any more out of what he has got? Maybe, and hopefully he can, but maybe he can't.
Maybe he is making the tactical mistakes he is being accused of, maybe he is running out of ideas......
My feeling is that he wouldn't be human if he wasn't having a few darker 'what if?' thoughts? Should he have gone to Swansea? Yes of course in retrospect he should. Soton? Yes the same. He still remains in the 'promising' section at the great manager table. A year ago, he would have stood a reasonable chance with about half of any championship jobs that came up. That figure will have reduced now, and would reduce for certain again if we went down, or came close to it. From a position where he could have chosen a good club, in good shape, any current move would now be somewhere with a job needing doing. Coventry for instance, could be the next.
The main problem though, is time moves on. The younger, louder voices on here, as crazy as it might seem to us older heads, won't even remember the dark days of Gresley and Grays. All they know is 2 seasons out of 3 with no width, little pace, a low goals for column, and frankly, as much average football as good. This means that the naysayers will only increase in number and volume. And while many of us on here know that in reality we are very much punching at the top of our weight, other's won't see it that way.
Enthusiam, team spirit, picking up quality cheap crocks, and generally being astute, aware and shrewd might not end up being enough.
For PT's career's sake, he is going to start thinking soon that there may be little more that can realistically be done, little more that can advance his CV here at the park, and it might well be time to take something bigger, while his options for a bigger club are still reasonable. My worry? If he doesn't want to do that, then I worry about his lack of ambition. With the state of the footballing world, (money, crowds, new academy rules) our manager cruising because he can't think of what else to do would be a disaster.
It might be coming to the time to be looking towards the next Appleton, Howe (Bashir, working wonders and developing players for fun at Hayes), Law at Tamworth et al.
Nothing (or very little) lasts forever.
This could be one of the very rare times where a 'mutual consent' decision might be the right one.
PT is without doubt one of the (if not THE) best and most able managers ever to grace the park. His time with us has been an almost constant upward curve. But a part of me thinks that if we were ever going to pull off the big one (championship) then last season was probably the time. I think we might have reached the plateau, and whilst the many and varied 'kick Tis' threads have previously been full of garbage, is it possible that for the first time people's dis-satisfaction is actually based on reasonable logic and sensible opinions?
Without doubt the budget constraints have not helped. The loss of the spine of the team would have taken a hell of a lot of coming back from for any manager, and I feel PT is currently scratching his head. I also don't accept Mr Moxey (senior's) point about loan players. To my mind they should be providing cover, and adding extra spark, it can't make much sense to try to build a team, or even an attacking force around them. I can only think of Yeovil doing this with any great success, and they squeaked through last year by the skin of their teeth.
The fact is, the current squad is borderline relegation quality in this league, and any resulting relegation would see the same basic squad mid table at best in L2. For instance, are we currently any better than the Gulls? In reality no. O'Kane is this years Harley, and on a strong and recent contract, if he goes, they will be able to build an entire team around the fee. I think we have one or two players at best that would currently command a fee. TAH, who is under so much pressure to hold the backline together this term, he is making a number of mistakes, and looking a little clumsy a little too often to achieve what his real value would be under normal development.
So, where does all of this leave PT? In a quandry I would say. People I talk to say that he has been offered a nice slice of the potential redevelopment. Now that it looks like progress has ground to a halt on that score, what more is left for our manager? Increase in budget so that we can increase the squad quality? Doesn't appear likely. Can he get any more out of what he has got? Maybe, and hopefully he can, but maybe he can't.
Maybe he is making the tactical mistakes he is being accused of, maybe he is running out of ideas......
My feeling is that he wouldn't be human if he wasn't having a few darker 'what if?' thoughts? Should he have gone to Swansea? Yes of course in retrospect he should. Soton? Yes the same. He still remains in the 'promising' section at the great manager table. A year ago, he would have stood a reasonable chance with about half of any championship jobs that came up. That figure will have reduced now, and would reduce for certain again if we went down, or came close to it. From a position where he could have chosen a good club, in good shape, any current move would now be somewhere with a job needing doing. Coventry for instance, could be the next.
The main problem though, is time moves on. The younger, louder voices on here, as crazy as it might seem to us older heads, won't even remember the dark days of Gresley and Grays. All they know is 2 seasons out of 3 with no width, little pace, a low goals for column, and frankly, as much average football as good. This means that the naysayers will only increase in number and volume. And while many of us on here know that in reality we are very much punching at the top of our weight, other's won't see it that way.
Enthusiam, team spirit, picking up quality cheap crocks, and generally being astute, aware and shrewd might not end up being enough.
For PT's career's sake, he is going to start thinking soon that there may be little more that can realistically be done, little more that can advance his CV here at the park, and it might well be time to take something bigger, while his options for a bigger club are still reasonable. My worry? If he doesn't want to do that, then I worry about his lack of ambition. With the state of the footballing world, (money, crowds, new academy rules) our manager cruising because he can't think of what else to do would be a disaster.
It might be coming to the time to be looking towards the next Appleton, Howe (Bashir, working wonders and developing players for fun at Hayes), Law at Tamworth et al.
Nothing (or very little) lasts forever.
This could be one of the very rare times where a 'mutual consent' decision might be the right one.
