2018 The story so far...
Change of ownership
Change of Manager
Change of backroom staff
Change of Training Facility, which was delayed until now
Changed most of the squad due to previous calamitous managers mistakes
Change of Main Sponsor
Lose 2 key midfielders - Ledson and Rothwell
Lose 4 key first team players - Carruthers, Eastwood, Hall & Holmes out injured within 2 games of new season starting.
Any of the KR doomsayers want to say which other manager in the EFL would have hit the ground running in the same circumstances?
Agree a couple of the new players performances e.g Garbutt and Mackie are particularly concerning. However Whyte, Norman, Browne & Baptiste look very promising, even in a struggling side.
It’s been 4 league games people. Get real.
Firstly I hope there is no implication in this post that anyone who has criticism of KR is being labelled a doomsayer. Because I think given what has happened this summer that a lot of criticism of KR is justified.
A lot of the changes you mentioned happened during last season (and some like the sponsor I doubt has any effect on the management of the team). We have had had the same manager and owner through the whole preseason and we have only bought in one new coach. KR has been generously backed (according to him) to fix the mistakes of the previous manager. Lets also remember he arrived last season so its hardly like he's hitiing the ground now. Personally I think a lot of managers would have done massively better under these circumstances.
It has only been four games but four games where we have massively struggled 3 of which we were awful. Four games with no points and 13 goals conceded, and lets face it its not like these are the first four games KR has helmed at this club.
To me the summer was an utter shambles. At a guess I reckon KR was totally unreal with his targets and few of them payed off leaving us scrabbling around at the last minute. But if you want a list of mistakes KR has made that a decent manger may not have lets start with these garnered for other posts:
- Making Hall a key team player when he was never going to last a season fit.
- Letting the squad have only one left back
- Not buying enough striking options (possibly due to his utter tactical inflexibility). thus relying on a player in Obika who many of us wanted let go.
- Not signing a holding midfielder till the last minute (worse when you consider he had a good one on trial early in preseason)
- Creating a decent defense (does Nelson even want to play for us, why is a man we would not commit to a contract made captain?)
- or effective strong midfield
- Signing then playing unfit players (Mackie why oh why, and Lambert can he play much at all?)
KR has made some huge mistakes preseason that has set the club back miles on the pitch at the start of this season. Some of these mistakes are going to be difficult to fix and may have to wait for us try and do so in Jan. Yes we have had some bad luck with injuries but there are so many problems in the squad that even with the injured players we would still have issues. We are currently where we are on merit not by luck. The question now is is KR good enough to fix this quickly because if he can not there is no doubt in the great interests of the club he will have to go. If it comes to that he had a good chance with us this season to make us a success and like Pep last he will have blown it by mostly his own mistakes.
