I think he should have been sacked after the Cov game. After the Luton disaster, wished he was. Then that unbelievable Norwich performance and beating Millwall changed my thoughts on him. I would love the guy to be successful next season but I’d be amazed if the owners think he is the best man for the PL. Munoz was brought in to get us back up, job done. IMO Gino must be losing sleep now on whether to risk hiring him for next season...or not.
The more I think about it, the more I think we should keep Xisco. The club needs continuity. It's highly unlikely that they are going to spend huge amounts in the summer, so the team needs to be greater than the sum of it's parts. Xisco has clearly done wonders for team spirit. Don't think it's worth throwing that away by changing head coach again.
If we don’t strengthen at all then Munoz won’t last 5 games, so the continuity won’t last more than 5 minutes. Do you think Gino has suddenly become Delia overnight?
Sure you aren’t but sounds a bit like the sort of reaction from fickle fans who just give their reaction on a week by week basis. We need a bit more long term stability and thinking rather than just thinking let’s sack a manager based on one or two bad results/performances.
How tiring. God forbid I wanted a manager who had a good record at this level and a history of winning things at the vast majority of his clubs, who has a lot of public praise from players and pundits alike - over a guy who had no pedigree, no badges and seemed like a massive risk. I accept I was wrong in hindsight - but my reasoning was sound. Good managers have failed at badly run clubs before. Poor managers have had a period of success at good clubs. Poorly run clubs have won things and well run clubs have been relegated. It happens. You and @WatfordTalk often talk like you’ve never got anything wrong but love to point out things others have said instead. Just the other week WT started a whole thread about a friendly bet we made and decided it was down to him to put me on a deadline to pay, without once privately enquiring about my financial situation or when I wanted to make the payment to charity. All to make him look superior. If I was tiresome enough, I’d trawl the forum to find the posts where you stated on a number of occasions that Cleverley was past it and we should have got rid. I remember you saying it a number of times. Yet he’s just captained us back to the PL...hindsight is a wonderful thing. I could find those posts but frankly it’s childish and I’m aware times and situations change.
I don't know, but if I were to Google to find out who won the North Macedonian 3rd division, then it could be their manager. That's how we operate.
Yes I must admit this year has tested my 49 years as a supporter. I can’t think of a more depressing year. Even in the 70s and 90s with corrupt owners, hopeless managers and poor players there was a different attitude. I guess when you expect too much you are disappointed. In those days we didn’t expect anything so maybe I was happy to spend all day travelling up to some god forsaken northern **** hole to watch absolute crap. These last two seasons for me have been as painful to watch as I can remember. Thankfully we’re back up but unfortunately I am expecting good things next season..oh dear.
I think the defence and midfield might be ok. The lack of goals will be an issue. We hardly looked that threatening at times this season in a lot of games has to be said unless Sarr was on form.
And on the Paul Cook thing... There were a number of our own fans who chastised Watford for sacking Pearson. Yet he’s done dreadfully at Bristol City. Things change and hindsight again, a wonderful thing.
It must have been for you if it took you more than a whole week to manage a reply! I didn't need to do any "trawling", I happened to remember off the top of my head what you'd said and where. The whole thing took about 1 minute, probably much less time to type than it would have taken you to type your post here. I must say I'm impressed you managed to remember what I said a whole year ago though; are you sure you've not actually been spending the last 8 days secretly doing your own trawling of everything I've said on the forum trying to find something to get back at me with?!
Or, get this...I miss things on this forum? You mentioned me and I missed it. Simple as that. I saw @Smudger mention my name (but not tag me) in a reply to you so I thought I’d read further back and see what it was about.
If people believe other fans wanted Gino to sell up solely because of the Xisco appointment, then it doesn’t say much for their ability to pay attention to this forum over the past couple of years.
Thought you took the bet thread in the good nature it was intended. Didn't realise you were so sensitive, apologies. If you don't have the funds then don't take up the wager whilst on your high horse next time.
My concerns were there well before relegation and so won't be quelled by a 12 game run of decent form seeing us promoted out of the worst championship in a generation.
There’s nothing to be sensitive about. But you’ve been on these pages yourself over the past few months preaching about being kind etc. Yet you only action that behaviour when you deem fit. As for ‘not having the funds’, that’s not the point. A friendly bet was made months ago - it wasn’t for you to decide when a payment should be made and you should have been decent enough to reach out to me privately before launching into a thread and trying to back me into a corner. Not having the ‘funds’ is irrelevant as the bet was made months ago and only you put an arbitrary date on when it should be paid and how it should be proved. A person can lose their job or all manner of things in those intervening months - so maybe they can’t afford it and you going public and trying to play the big man would be incredibly stressful to them. Thankfully I’m not in that situation - but for someone who was vocal about asking people to be careful about what they say, you should heed your own words. I have no issue with being wrong about the matter. I can accept being wrong. But your actions were distasteful, even if they weren’t done purposely.
Interestingly if Pozzo is conservative this season and we go down I’ll probably shift in his favour. I do give him credit for this season for sure. My worry is he will just ramp up his player trading now we are back and use us (and more debt) to fund it. We shall see.
Again, apologies if you've taken it the wrong way. Seemed like you were fine at the time... What changed? Having a bad day? Try to take a step back before lashing out, as you're embarrassing yourself again. The tldr of your post is you've got the funds, you admit you were wrong, so what's the issue? As for pressuring you with an arbitrary date, the bet was how many appearances 3 players would make in a season, and I posted the thread when it was mathematically impossible for the threshold to be reached, what did you expect? What pressure is in the quote below? What arbitrary date? I don't know what's triggered you but it seems you're overreacting, over 2 weeks after reacting reasonably. Take a breath, and calm down.
Yeah I've got no idea how he'll play this upcoming transfer window. Already seemingly taken a big risk in sticking with Xisco, will he double up and go balls out with some big purchases, too? What do you think the hold up is with publishing the accounts, aren't they usually out by now?
I think there was a premier league requirement to release them earlier than the official deadline so perhaps we have just taken advantage of that this season. Very difficult to even project where we are now - relegation season, then player sales coming in, Covid hitting us and now promotion again! At any rate we are hopefully saved from a financial pickle at the current time.
If you base your view on what happened in the last match, your head is going to hurt a lot while you're following football.
Pearson has just been given a new 3-year contract at Bristol City, which suggests that it may not be him who's been responsible for their dreadful performances.
If nothing else, being a PL club again presumably gives us more guaranteed income to secure any necessary refinancing against?
Both seem to be getting a free pass really as their fans blame the squad built by previous managers and the owners more than them. Ipswich another club whose set of fans have learnt the hard way that getting rid of a manager just because he doesn’t play the fancy football you demand won’t automatically mean you’ll get better. Big Mick McCarthy had them as a solid Championship side - now they are unable to score in almost 10 hours of League one football! And when they did it was a penalty v relegated Swindon Town. And Cook has been slagging players off each week letting them know he isn’t keen on them.
He deserves the chance to start the season and after a full preseason working with the squad will have no excuses if fired in October. By Christmas he will need to have won seven games and kept us looking competitive or he will have the chance to take the kids to school after the third round of the FA Cup. That’s not him that’s the the situation with our head coach model. We form the first team squad and we find someone who can get them to hit the points total set out in the plan
For this reason football club financial statements are completely bizarre compared to most other companies. On the surface they will not reflect the current reality at all, while simultaneously the information contained is still true (in theory at least). It's very odd.
