Caldwell out?

[Devon Red]

Do you not think our style of football was a means to an end, and was a necessary evil enacted by GC in order for us to stay up?

No, I think this is the way GC plays and will continue to play. That's fine, each to their own - the club have gone with him, some fans will love the football, some won't, that's football.

I don't think GC would have sat down with Perks/Nicholson at the start of the season and said 'right chaps, this season we need to just try and stay up, so to do this, we need to score as few goals at home as possible'.

 

[Devon Red]

Jon Beer.

The owner of Coolings...

 

[MJP_Exeter]

It's obvious where we have struggled. Not one of our players are even in the top 50 for goals this season and we do not have one player in the top 50 for assists this season. It's shambolic that we did not address the situation in January. We signed two strikers but continue to play Cox upfront on his own.

I'd like to see GC in charge for one more transfer window. If we don't sign a good striker who is capable of scoring 15 goals in a season then we need a manager who has the capability to sign impact players.

I would rather have 3 or 4 strikers capabale of 8-11 goals as season personally than one 15+. Although one of 8-11 would be an improvement

 

[elginCity]

Hopeful that once we’re properly safe, the team will cut loose and go all out to entertain. Season ticket sales could depend on it.

 

[BigBanker]

Isn’t that the same for every decision ever made though? In many situations you live and die by the outcome and in this case the board deserve credit. You say ‘it’s easy to be wise after the event’ but they told us throughout that they were backing him because they believed he could turn it round based on what they were seeing day to day and the support they would give him in January.

Everything they predicted has come true, how can you say ‘it’s easy to be wise after the event’ when everything happened as they said it would? Credit to the board on this one.

Be very careful; every single person who confuses correlation with causation ends up dying.

 

[Devon Red]

Hopeful that once we’re properly safe, the team will cut loose and go all out to entertain. Season ticket sales could depend on it.

Agree with this, the end of the season could be quite important in that regard, I'd imagine there are quite a few who are currently undecided on whether to renew.

Entertainment value has to improve. I've enjoyed the last few games, but I've noticed it tends to be because of factors other than just playing well. I enjoyed Saturday for example, however us going down to 10 men added an extra edge to the game and we just had to fight like beavers (quote Chris Kamara) to get over the line.

 

[tavyred]

No, I think this is the way GC plays and will continue to play. That's fine, each to their own - the club have gone with him, some fans will love the football, some won't, that's football.

I don't think GC would have sat down with Perks/Nicholson at the start of the season and said 'right chaps, this season we need to just try and stay up, so to do this, we need to score as few goals at home as possible'.

A bit disingenuous there DR, GC will have an idea on what is the most effective way for us to play, and within that plan he will have to factor in how good our players are and how good our opponents are. Despite what you say he will have a reasonable expectation that we will score more goals than the opposition or at a minimum prevent the them from scoring more than us. There is no hiding the horrendous run we had, but to demand ‘entertainment’ as if that was the all to obvious alternative that GC was stubbornly refusimg to give us out of spite is naive in my view.
GC (somehow!) found a way for us to be effective and we’ve stayed up as a result.

 

[arthur]

Since Caldwell is not going out for the forseeable, now might be the time to talk about some other Caldwells who have been in the news over the past couple of years - John Caldwell, the police officer shot in Omagh a year ago at the end of a youth football training session, and Emma Caldwell, murdered in Glasgow in 2005 whose killer has only recently been bought to justice.

It seems that Caldwells come from Derry (or Londonderry as Tavy would probably call it) and lots of them moved to Ayrshire, probably in the 19th century. One of them has even ventured as far south as Exeter, but has yet to settle here

 

[Devon Red]

A bit disingenuous there DR, GC will have an idea on what is the most effective way for us to play, and within that plan he will have to factor in how good our players are and how good our opponents are. Despite what you say he will have a reasonable expectation that we will score more goals than the opposition or at a minimum prevent the them from scoring more than us. There is no hiding the horrendous run we had, but to demand ‘entertainment’ as if that was the all to obvious alternative that GC was stubbornly refusimg to give us out of spite is naive in my view.
GC (somehow!) found a way for us to be effective and we’ve stayed up as a result.

I haven't suggested that GC has gone out of his way to bore us, however the matches (particularly at SJP) have on the most part been a dull watch, I don't think many on here would dispute that.

Perhaps GC will sign players that can implement his style more effectively in the summer and off the back of it the football will be a better watch.

I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt for now and see what next season brings but I am hoping it's better than this one, because if going to football isn't entertaining, what's the point of it all?

 

[LDNGrecian]

What is associated with GC is the paucity of chances we create for our strikers under his tactics.

Statistically this isn’t the case. We have an average xg of 1.25 which places us at 16th in the league. Not amazing but not far from where we would expect to be.