How Long?

[AustrianAndyGull]

Don't know why i'm bothering posting this as the apathetic amongst you probably will have no inclination to respond, even if it's a 'this thread is sh*t you fanny!', hey it's a response and it's all good! I'm posting it because i'm interested in your views on the subject and because i want the forum to be one where people are encouraged to interact rather than be a passive member. The question is how long?

How long is long enough in your valued opinion, for a new manager who comes in to start getting results and his team beginning to display signs of progress in terms of playing style and mastering a system. For example Brendan Rogers at Liverpool, how long would YOU give him before grumblings set in to turn around Liverpools fortunes? He is always coming out and saying that he is trying to get the players to work to a system, to a certain way of playing but surely getting the message across to his players isn't that tricky for a capable manager? Especially one with the squad Liverpool have.

Take our own Sir Martin, he overachieved last season but had we finished say 15th, would he be under a bit of pressure now to make progress on a limited budget or would we again be happy with another 15th place?

Also, has Martin now established a 'way' of playing which we as Torquay fans now accept and understand and if so are we happy with it? Obviously we have lost key players in the summer and replaced them as best we can but how long would we give Martin to get these players to gel and work effectively into his system?

Just interested on what your thoughts are. In the case of Brendan Rogers, how long is acceptable for him to make excuses before he becomes culpable for their form and performances? How do Liverpool fans know that he is getting things moving forward?

In my opinion if a team begins in patchy form then they should begin to pick up more points in the second half of the managers first season in order to say he is making progress, common sense i suppose. If a team languishes, for example Aston Villa is it because the manager isn't doing things properly? Take Lambert at Villa, Villa have got a decent enough squad, better than WBA? Debatable but Lambert isn't showing ANY signs of improving Villa whilst Steve Clarke is getting the best out of WBA. Obviously Lambert isn't a bad manager because of what he did at Norwich but why then can he not improve Villa at the minute and if Villa are still really inconsistent and finish the season poorly then whose fault is it? Discuss.

[stevegull]

'How long?'

About 8 inches. Less if it's cold.

[Scott Brehaut]

It's my belief that the Liverpool board will have asked Brendan Rodgers to get Liverpool to play like he got Swansea playing - he will be given time to get that sorted.
Re Lambert - he is screwed because Villa aren't spending money and have, in my opinion, crap players!!

As you say, if a manager starts rocky but shows signs of improvement then I think the board will be happy (and ultimately the fans). With our own boss, I think had we finished 15th last season the majority of us would have been happy - although I'm sure a few would have used it to show how crap Martin was, given the backlash that occurred when he was appointed.

Regarding poster apathy - well, in my own circumstance I post if I feel I have something to say, as well as if I am "feeling in the mood". This week has been particularly shit for me as I was made redundant, however I don't believe in sitting on my arse and feeling sorry for myself and already have something lined up.
There are plenty of threads that I, and others, have started and not had a response - just don't take it to heart - some threads thrive, others don't.

I used to provide a weekly "commentary" on the league tables of the prediction league - it got no response so now I just post the tables up and leave it at that. Besides which, it takes long enough to do the things each week without then posting up a shed load of tosh nobody is bothered about too.

[Glostergull]

Nah. Give im 4ft 7 1/2 inches.

[cambgull]

Brendan Rogers is an example of a manager that needs time. He has a distinct style of football which will need time to impart to the players. He is not performing well enough though. The team they have should be equal to Spurs at least. There should always be a little leeway with expectations but I think Rogers is distinctly underperforming. I'd give him to the end of the season as that should be enough time for a team to gel. If they're still inconsistent and the players aren't playing his way, then he should have his position reviewed.

As for Ling, I would've been happy with a consolidation season, as long as there wasn't a relegation scrap. Buckle's first season in L2 wouldn't have been acceptable for me.

[ferrarilover]

I was at Liverpool v Swansea on Wednesday and, while it was a Mickey Mouse Cup game, it was clear that Liverpool have absolutely no Plan B. Anything beyond their very best starting XI is miles short of being competitive against Premier League opposition.
The first half, Liverpool had a fair chunk of the ball, but they looked lost as soon as they were put under pressure and desperately short of ideas up front. A number of times, their right side winger had the Swans LB in his pocket and every time he failed to produce a cross of any note. They were happy passing it around, of course, but there was frighteningly little incision in their play, absolutely no cutting edge with which to threaten the Swansea reserve 'keeper. Swansea, on the other hand, were happy to let Liverpool have the ball in the midfield and wait for the chance to break, which they did repeatedly and with devastating efficiency. Two or three passes and they were away. It was only the Reds goalie who kept the match competitive. Only once Sterling, Gerrard and Suarez came on did they look like getting close to the visitors. It was absolutely telling that the free kick which resulted in Liverpool's goal was won by Sterling, taken by Gerrard and nodded in by Suarez. The rest of the team didn't look anywhere near good enough to do the same. Liverpool will point to a post struck in the 50th minute, but again, this was a Gerrard effort. A number of times Suarez looked like wriggling free of his man on the edge of the box, but didn't quite manage it, and the only player with whom he was able to exchange intricate interpasses was that man Stevie G.
Liverpool have had two ownership changes and three managerial changes since they won the Champions League in 2004. Houllier and Benitez between them had a 54% win average, Hodgson, Dalglish and Rodgers have a win average of 44%, this despite spending £180,000,000 on players since 2010. Something is systemically wrong if, for an investment of an amount greater than the GDP of the six lowest ranked nations (by GDP, 2010) in the world, you cannot even come close to winning one measly trophy.
It's an old hat comparison, but it's relevant here, Sir Alex won feck all in his first 5 years, and was perilously close to the chop at one stage, look at him now (love him or hate him, you can't argue with his record).
ML has done wonders with the club, but that's because it is run properly. We are well within our means, we don't blow wads on overhyped, overpaid Charlies, so we don't get depressed when we find that we aren't winning every week. This is half the reason that Bodin is getting as much stick as he is. Really, he's not a great deal less good than any other player going through a spell of lost form, but because we paid what to us is a King's bloody ransom for him, we feel as though he should be giving us 10/10 performances every week, which simply isn't the case.
Have a look at the Rovers forum (if you can bear the bitchy infighting, childish retorts and general rubbish about being a "big" club), they're forever whinging on about getting beaten and expectation and sacking the manager, and this is because they are doing averagely while paying, by some estimations, as much as £200,000pa to their top earners (that's four grand a week, for those unwilling or unable to do the maths). This is madness, what in God's name are they doing in a division with us (although I believe we are among the better of the middling payers in the division, with our top boys looking at the thick end of £70,000pa*) and the likes of Accrington, who surely can't offer more than a bag of magic beans per man per week? The answer, of course, is not that they are a Championship club stuck in the wrong division, but that they are a L2 club run by a bunch of mugs who think that the more they pay, the faster they will get back to L1, where, apparently, the grass is considerably greener (although what is quite so attractive about Crawley Town away on a damp Tuesday in February is anyone's guess).
Sacking the manager is, as near as makes no difference, never the answer. For a side to be under-performing to the extent where heads must roll, there must be a systemic problem which is certainly not of the making of the man who merely picks the team on a Saturday morning. Full process review is required, right from the decisions made by the Chairman regarding transfer budget and policy, down the brand of tea bags served to the youth team boot boys after training.
In real terms, for a business (for that is what LFC is) to have spent £180,000,000 and seen virtually zero return on their investment is akin to the Barings Bank scandal of 1995. When you consider that we are spending, perhaps, £20,000 on the big screen (all in), and we will certainly be sacking someone if we don't see a positive return on that inside 12 months, it gives you some idea of just what failure on a epic scale Liverpool FC represent in financial terms.
It is, I believe, the case that managers get the boot because they are the easy targets. You can't sack players because, well, you can't sack players, they're too damned expensive and if you do, no other players will want to play for you and you won't have a team. You can't sack the back room staff, because then the manager will leave and the public will become disenchanted because sacking the back room staff isn't really going to affect the team. You can't sack the board, because that really is cutting off nose to spite face, and you can't sack the supporters because that's not really a thing. The only person left, apart from Doris the Tea Girl, or Miss Moneypenny, the Chairman's secretary, is the manager. Perfect target; close enough to the team to make a positive difference (or at least close enough to be blamed for the failings of the aforementioned overhyped, overpaid Charlies), but not so expensive or rare that they can't be replaced. Ideal then, for being scapegoated, enlambed, if you will, and lead, very easily, to the proverbial slaughterhouse.
I'm afraid that the original preposition has no genuine answer, since, unless it is patently obvious that you've got your hands on a pup, sacking the manager is never the solution, it only ever creates more problems.
Some managers, of course, do need sacking. AVB at Chelsea last year is a classic case in point. Hopeless, hopeless manager, couldn't manage a kindergarten, but did Chelsea win the Champions League because of Di Matteo, no, certainly not. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you're up against teams who are, technically, vastly superior to yourselves, you play to your strengths, and that's exactly what Chelsea (perfectly legitimately) did. Stick 11 men behind the ball, bang it long to your tank of a front man and hope for pennos. Do you need Di Matteo to tell you that? No, of course not, but AVB was so bloody stupid, he couldn't even work that out for himself.
Other managers appear great simply by getting all the best jobs. Again, we turn to Chelsea and Jose Mourinho. I was at the Champions League Final in Gelsenkirchen in 2004 when his Porto side thrashed Monaco 4-0 in the most one sided game I've ever seen (except every time we play Barnet). Doubtless, Mourinho had done wonders with a relatively limited team and had risen to the top of his game, but to then proclaim himself The Special One, simply because he took a Chelsea side who spent more in the summer of his arrival than had ever been spent in the Premier League, ever, in total, by everyone and managed two League titles and two FA Cups (and a couple of other Mickey Mouse cups) but no Champions League. He moved on once the money had dried up (in relative terms) to Inter Milan, a side who were already three time domestic and one time European champions, hardly pushing himself, is he... History says he won two league titles and the Champions League with Inter, but then, they were the best team in Europe at the time, so that was really a disappointment, since they didn't win it twice. He then went on to Real Madrid, which is second only to 'manager of FC Barcelona' as the easiest job in all of world football. Turn up, sign a couple of players for £80,000,000 and go home again, safe in the knowledge that if you win, people will hail you a hero, and if you don't they'll still hail you a hero, because you finished second only to the mighty Barcelona, and who could possibly expect to beat them?
The Special One? No way, Jose.
Of course, for every terrible, or simply self aggrandising manager, there are some genuinely impressive ones. Sir Alex we've mentioned, Sir Matt must also be in there, but in the modern era, startlingly few names jump out at us. Perhaps my favourite is Roy Hodgson, current England front man. To do what he did with Fulham a couple of years ago was nothing short of miraculous. That game against Juventus (surely Europe's biggest bottlers) was one of the finest moments in football history and to get beaten by THAT Athletico Madrid team is really no shame at all, especially for a team with no tunnel and portakabin changing rooms. His time at Liverpool (funny how the same clubs seems to keep cropping up) was a disaster, but then, after what he did with FFC, the Liverpool fans had inflated their ideals based on his previous good record as well as the value of the signings the club had made. Unfortunately, LFC had taken it upon themselves to sign, for the princely sum of £36,000,000, a "striker" with precisely ZERO Premier League goals to his name. I remind you, ladies and gentlemen (ladies, ha, who am I trying to kid?) that Alan Shearer was signed for Newcastle United for £15,000,000 (then a world record) having scored 112 goals in 138 appearances for Blackburn Rovers. Once this had occurred, Hodgson was doomed to failure, because Carroll was never, ever, going to be worth that kind of money. He'd have needed a goal scoring ratio to rival Messi and Ronaldo to have been worth anywhere near that sort of money and the plain fact is that he simply isn't and was never going to be capable of such a feat. He might, if he's in a team that's built around him and everything else in his life is on song (which is rare, given his proclivity towards the Magistrate's Court), manage 25 goals a season with 10 assists, but that really is it. Wayne Rooney wasn't much more money than Carroll, and he gets better than those numbers while spending his early mornings on rotation between changing nappies and sticking his todger in someone's Nan.
The failings at LFC lie with the senior management and whoever it is that decides Carroll is a better bet than Torres. At one stage, I was tempted to blame my goldfish, Polly, but then I realised that even she knows enough about football to see that this simply isn't the case.

Overall then, we see that managers are so very infrequently to blame, and that they are sacked because they are there to be sacked with relatively little come back. Once again, we see also that the true fault, far from lying with the fall guy, in fact lies with the obscene sums of money so grotesquely bandied about by the Premier League big boys. It is this money which creates the false sense of entitlement and expectation among the fans which leads to increasing pressure upon the inevitable failure to secure the Premier League title by mid-January which in turn leads to the dreaded "vote of confidence" in the manager from the board which is always followed, a week later, by a press announcement stating that so-and-so has left the club by mutual consent (is there a bigger pile of bullsh*t in the world than that phrase?). If the sums involved were to remain at the relatively sensible levels that they were some 20 years ago, before Sky TV decided that what the world really needed was a group of men who earned more in three days than the Prime Minister earns in a year, ostensibly, for hacking a pigs bladder around a muddy field once a week for an hour and a half, then this expectation would not be brought to bear upon clubs, and they in turn would not feel the need to give their helmsman the boot every 10 minutes.

How's that for interest in your thread, Andy?

Matt.

*This is based on anecdotal evidence from brief conversations I’ve had with Manse and others, I don’t actually know what our boys earn.

[AustrianAndyGull]

WOAH!!!!! MATT!! That's a big 'un AND a long 'un both!

Good read

[Glostergull]

WOAH!!!!! MATT!! That's a big 'un AND a long 'un both!

Good read

Nah. That's Matt complaining that he wasn't considered for the job of managing Liverpool

[AustrianAndyGull]

It's my belief that the Liverpool board will have asked Brendan Rodgers to get Liverpool to play like he got Swansea playing - he will be given time to get that sorted.
Re Lambert - he is screwed because Villa aren't spending money and have, in my opinion, crap players!!

As you say, if a manager starts rocky but shows signs of improvement then I think the board will be happy (and ultimately the fans). With our own boss, I think had we finished 15th last season the majority of us would have been happy - although I'm sure a few would have used it to show how crap Martin was, given the backlash that occurred when he was appointed.

Regarding poster apathy - well, in my own circumstance I post if I feel I have something to say, as well as if I am "feeling in the mood". This week has been particularly sh*t for me as I was made redundant, however I don't believe in sitting on my arse and feeling sorry for myself and already have something lined up.
There are plenty of threads that I, and others, have started and not had a response - just don't take it to heart - some threads thrive, others don't.

I used to provide a weekly "commentary" on the league tables of the prediction league - it got no response so now I just post the tables up and leave it at that. Besides which, it takes long enough to do the things each week without then posting up a shed load of tosh nobody is bothered about too.

Sorry to hear about your redundancy Scott, i think many of us have been there including myself and like you say if you wallow then you don't get anywhere but it's not easy so i admire your determination. In terms of the lack of interest in posts generally, i just post things to keep things going, to keep things interesting and sometimes a bit of fun because we all like to give answers and opinions and so i thought they would be popular. Agree some are a bit random but i suppose it's like me i guess. It's a shame because if nobody posted then the sire would become boring, i suppose it's a fine line between not posting because you have nothing important to say or overposting just for the hell of it.

Anyway, chin up mate.