The comparison with Liam Manning is irrelevant. Manning had the end of last season and a full preseason to establish the way he wanted to play, and to get the players and coaches all working to that one plan. Our results showed that it was working, but it was fragile. A few key injuries and nothing to back up Mark Harris when he was struggling showed how thin or squad was, and how we needed multiple transfer windows to get things right.
Manning then leaves, and takes his assistant and analyst with him, as well as pissing off the goalkeeper coach and disrupting the whole coaching model. At the same time, we had more injuries and the lack of cover in the squad was becoming increasingly apparent.
Des arrives and is stuck between sticking with someone else's system that was having some success, but without the infrastructure to support it, or getting everyone to adapt to his ways of working in the few hours of coaching available between games. And then, even when he has had the time to put his mark on the team, he's barely been able to pick the same starting line up twice in a row because of players missing.
We were happy to give Manning three transfer windows, but some are barely giving Buckingham one before shooting him down. Some think that he has invented the "playing the ball across the back" style, but we did exactly the same under Manning. The difference was that then we had better options to then get the ball forward. Recently we've struggled to get any width to the pitch due to losing all wingers, and have equally lost all of the pace options that allowed us to stretch team. McGuane and Cam are having to come short more often to try to dictate play and that is hampering their game.
Of course we can always look to improve, and we need to do better in the bigger games if we're going to match those around us. But we have to give Des the time he needs to develop his own team and own style.