Made me laugh when Sky said after the game he’s only 10pts away from the Premier League. Poor sod. He’s never been further away.
Most PPG of Championship managers to join clubs mid-season. These are the highest performing managers to have overseen over 10 games after assuming the role mid-season from the last twenty years. Given trends in managerial tenure lengths I would imagine there are few, if any, who would have had this sort of effect before 2000. Most of the highest performers are from this season, although I’d expect Woodgate and Munoz end with lower PPGs given the difficulty of their clubs’ remaining fixtures. Ismael could well increase his PPG as Barnsley have pretty decent fixtures though. Munoz would need 10 points from our last five games to stay clear of Neil and just two points to stay clear of Jokanovic. Xisco Munoz - 2.29 (21 games) Alex Neil (14/15) - 2.23 (22 games) Jonathan Woodgate 2.07 (14 games) Slavisa Jokanovic (14/15) - 1.94 (35 games) Valerian Ismael - 1.94 (35 games) Stretching a little further back, only 8 teams have achieved more than 2.15 PPG in second tier history. Would equate to 99 points across the season. Reading’s 106 points in 2005/6 is the highest total which is 2.3 PPG. Munoz would need 12 points to exceed that. The job is not done yet, but so far Munoz has done remarkably well.
Yup. Seems likely. Don't know what to make of those stats - he has done seriously, perhaps unprecedently, well but none of those other coaches (Slav, Neil) translated that well to PL success following promotion anyway. Should he become available, he would be a quality appointment for the right Championship side while he gets his badges.
We haven't got a Premier League squad. That's why we'll need to buy a minimum of 6 new players to have a chance next season (if we go up).
Obviously it’s important to recognise that we have a squad that is significantly better than the squads of most other teams in the league. But we don’t have a Premier League squad, do we? We took a squad that came 19th and got relegated from the PL last season, got rid of 4 of our most important players (Doucoure, Capoue, Pereyra and Deulofeu), several others who played important roles (such as Welbeck, Dawson or Janmaat)and two of our best young prospects (Suarez and Estupinan) without really (if at all) replacing them. If by a PL squad, you mean a squad good enough to finish bottom of the PL, then yes.
Yup. We could plausibly go up with the best ever Championship defence and still need to replace four of the back 5 if we want to stay up.
This squad is much better than the one QSF kept us up effortlessly with. Yet munoz has us sat in second place, miles off top spot, having put in many poor performances. For example the last two matches. His management has also seen us hit poor form just as we enter the run in. In the last two matches we were dire.
Janmaat is somewhat of a stretch. I don’t think he played a game for about two years. Equally you can’t really count players like Suarez and Estupinan as they never actually played for us. Doucoure, Capoue and Gerri are our only real main misses in terms of contribution. I mean would you honestly swap last seasons Dawson for this seasons Sierralta? Would you swap last seasons Peyrera in for anyone this year? Are we missing the Capoue we had before January now? We’re definitely down on talent on paper, but let’s not pretend Munoz hasn’t got a very very good team at this level. Another way to look at it is Norwich. They finished 13 points below us last season, and now they sit on 90 points. Are the players we lost (and also allowing for what we’ve gained) the equivalent of 13 premier league points? (40% of our actual total) I’d say it wouldn’t be far of either way, hence we’ve still got a phenomenal championship squad.
In 14/15 we had poor performances and won from time to time, it happens. This season Norwich have been poor but like us a bit quality and luck can be enough. FWIW I didn't think we played poorly against Reading save for a 20 minute spell in the latter part of the first half, overall it was a decent performance.
Come on, the recent performances have been poor, given the talent available. It's the story of the season. There have been very few emphatic wins.
Tbf Doucoure and Capoue's partnership made that team. I don't think you can overstate their importance. Also Ake and Holebas were far better than Masina.
We also relied heavily on Ighalo being almost unstoppable. He, plus QSF's ultra-negative tactics saw us good in 15/16.
So? Nerves and tired legs always lead to scrappier performances and tight games towards the end of a promotion push, not sure why anyone is surprised by that.
Norwich strengthened in the summer more than we did, I’d say. They lost Godfrey and Lewis, but actually replaced them with Gibson and (in Jan) Giannoulis. They then added Skipp who has been by far their best midfielder, Hugill who has been a decent backup to Pukki and Dowell who I don’t think is great but does start regularly for the league leaders. Either way, even if you think this squad is good enough to finish 19th rather than 20th, that’s no really dealing with the substance of my point which is that a squad that would get comfortably relegated can not really be considered “a Premier League squad.” If/when Sheff Utd lose two players this summer (say, Berge and O’Connell) will they have a “Premier League squad?” We have a good squad at this level, but it’s not better (in fact it is probably worse) than Norwich’s or Bournemouth’s or even Brentford’s. There are more teams in this division with a better squad (2 or 3) than there are teams in the PL with a worse squad (0 or 1 - Sheff Utd)
Outside of any of the rest of your point (which I'm not weighing in on one way or the other) there is no way we have a worse squad than Brentford.
They have better players in key areas (Toney would walk in our team, Marcus Forss would probably get in too), but we do have more depth, they aren't able to bring an 88 cap Colombia international off the bench
We have a squad with quality more consistently spread throughout the team. They have three of the best players in the league in their respective positions: Henry, Dasilva and Toney. I am not sure we can say the same. They have fairly decent squad depth too - Forss is a good example. I think our squad is roughly on par with theirs.
I'm not saying that we're insanely head and shoulders above them, but if Toney (of course), Da Silva and Henry are three of the best players in their respective positions, how are Sarr, Hughes and Sierralta not? That's not even including by that metric Femenia, for one. On top of that, as you said, we have it far more consistently spread - there are few crazy drop offs, the like of which their recent terrible patch was often at least part-attributed to by posters on their forums.
Only 4 sides in world football are able to. Ourselves, Napoli, Galatasaray and Juventus. And that's the real quiz.
Hughes and Sarr are, yes (the latter provided that Buendia is played at LW or as a number 10). Sierralta and Femenia are both very good but I don’t think they are clearly better than other players who play in their positions, in part because the Championship is blessed with several quality CBs and RBs. Aarons is probably as good as Femenia, while Conor Roberts and Callum Brittain have had superb seasons. At CB, as good as Sierralta is, I’m not sure he’s better than Gibson, Guehi, Pinnock or even Souttar at Stoke and Cooper at Millwall. He’s absolutely excellent in the air but pretty conservative on the ball. I don’t think their drop off from Henry or Dasilva is bigger than our drop off from Masina or Hughes - as we saw in the first part of the season. Most of the complaints I’ve seen from Brentford fans has revolved around Frank’s tactical inflexibility. I seem to recall many posters comparing our squad unfavourably to others following the last day of the January transfer window. To return to the fundamental point I raised: Xisco’s PPG is currently the highest of any manager in Championship history (though likely to fall slightly over the coming games I suppose). Even if we did have the best squad in the league, a PL squad or whatever (we don’t) that is a very impressive achievement - and should we part ways with him, almost every Championship side would be happy/lucky to have him.
Sorry but you did say 'three of the best players in their respective positions', not 'the undisputed best in their position in the division', and obviously that would mostly be a difficult and controversial subjective measure at best, likely outside Toney. Personally, I've seen as many complaints about their squad and the drop off when it comes to players like Mbeumo (this season), Fosu and Ghoddos as the tactical inflexibility in my time over there. I've also seen a decent amount of complains about Toney being so dominant/their only attacking threat, that all play runs through him to their detriment and it has negatively affected the way the team as a whole operates compared to last season. To look at the effect Sierralta has had on the defence since he came in and the stats he has recorded, I'm personally really quite surprised that you can list at least five other centre backs who you believe are better than him. Similarly, to list any right back above Femenia seems pretty difficult to me - the debate is surely about, if anything, who has a higher ceiling or is more likely to be able to do it better in a division above given their respective experience and age. As I said, I'm not saying it's head and shoulders, and I'm not entirely defending our squad-building - it was very confused at times, and we have ridden our luck with injuries as much as anything with key players mostly staying fit or doing just enough to have the requisite stopgap. That being said, I just think it's hugely generous and doesn't entirely reflect reality to say that Brentford have a better squad than us.
