Championship Appleton new Blackpool boss

I can already visualise the thread on here in 8 years time discussing the pros and cons of rehiring KR.
2031…. I can just see the national press interview now…

‘Enigmatic Oxford United manager Karl Robinson leans back in his chair in his office in the Karl Robinson Suite nestled under the Karl Robinson stand in the new state of the art stadium that is just crying out for Championship football. He glances out the window at the 25 ft statue in his image that the club proudly unveiled when it moved into its new home. Intriguingly it depicts him, bare chested, wrestling with a lion… “Tim Williams came up with that design”, he says with a smile. “It’s a constant reminder to me that I must remain humble, like that marble effigy, I must keep my feet firmly on the ground”

“This is a long term project” he says as he enters his thirteenth season, a thirteenth attempt at reaching the elusive promised land of the Championship. “Each transfer window is a gradual building block. Step by step we look to improve. Thirteen seasons of mid table is a fantastic achievement by me at a club of this size. We’re constantly up against clubs with huge budgets. Players I’m targeting are going to Morecambe for at least £10 million! But with the support I’m getting from the board, particularly Tim and Grant, I’m very confident that this will be the year”
 
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I was getting grief for backing MApp in the early days when he had almost as many outers as Robbo has now! He's a good manager, and arguably his best season was the playoff finish with Lincoln who had one of the smallest league one budgets at the time (our league two promotion season was with the biggest budget). But he's good, not great and I think that we should be setting our sights much higher for an established manager, or go for a young, up and coming manager with new and innovative coaching ideas.

MApp deserved the pelters he got from August to December 2014. Trying to watch Hunt, Newey and Raynes play tika-taka was playing into the hands of our opponents. He made a host of crap/average signings that he himself binned (Junior Brown, Brian Howard, George Long, Joe Riley) and only in January did we really turn things around. Remember that things were touch and go into early 2015 for a while. We were just six points above the drop zone in late and a late Kyle Vassell goal against Carlisle, a team one place below us at the time, saw us go on and secure our status.

I maintain that without (Jellied) Eales and MAsh, MApp would have really struggled with us. He was allowed to pay off contracts for Wilder’s functional League 2 fodder and his own duds whilst bringing in players who must’ve been on pretty good wages – Roofe, Baldock, Skarz etc. The main man who saved us that season wasn’t even one of his signings either since Danny Hylton was Waddock’s one and only addition before he was sacked. Whilst the season that followed is in the top two seasons for me in watching us, I do think how lucky he was that he had the financial support to truly take a sledgehammer to the squad to rid himself of players who weren’t up to it including how own mistakes.

It's why I said Blackpool needed to be patient. MApp is an empire builder, not a quick fixer and that hasn’t happened there. It’s a League where no one is patient. They want to get up out in terms of the of it or to stay up it and will panic at the first opportunity that either of those looks like it won’t happen. It’s why 14 of the 24 teams in the second tier have changed their manager. Madness …

As for having him back here, it’s all about what’s above him as to whether I’d have him back. Working to a buy-develop-sell model with a DoF above him doing the contract work and I’d be keen. Working to the format that KR has with OUFC as his personal fiefdom where he runs around with his phone to his ear. No way. MApp is in many ways very similar to KR – plays easy-on-the-eye football and has good runs in the cups but are both tactically rigid and have approaches that can be divisive (KR overbearing and MApp cold and distant). I’m not sure on a return myself.
 
MApp deserved the pelters he got from August to December 2014. Trying to watch Hunt, Newey and Raynes play tika-taka was playing into the hands of our opponents. He made a host of crap/average signings that he himself binned (Junior Brown, Brian Howard, George Long, Joe Riley) and only in January did we really turn things around. Remember that things were touch and go into early 2015 for a while. We were just six points above the drop zone in late and a late Kyle Vassell goal against Carlisle, a team one place below us at the time, saw us go on and secure our status.

I maintain that without (Jellied) Eales and MAsh, MApp would have really struggled with us. He was allowed to pay off contracts for Wilder’s functional League 2 fodder and his own duds whilst bringing in players who must’ve been on pretty good wages – Roofe, Baldock, Skarz etc. The main man who saved us that season wasn’t even one of his signings either since Danny Hylton was Waddock’s one and only addition before he was sacked. Whilst the season that followed is in the top two seasons for me in watching us, I do think how lucky he was that he had the financial support to truly take a sledgehammer to the squad to rid himself of players who weren’t up to it including how own mistakes.

It's why I said Blackpool needed to be patient. MApp is an empire builder, not a quick fixer and that hasn’t happened there. It’s a League where no one is patient. They want to get up out in terms of the of it or to stay up it and will panic at the first opportunity that either of those looks like it won’t happen. It’s why 14 of the 24 teams in the second tier have changed their manager. Madness …

As for having him back here, it’s all about what’s above him as to whether I’d have him back. Working to a buy-develop-sell model with a DoF above him doing the contract work and I’d be keen. Working to the format that KR has with OUFC as his personal fiefdom where he runs around with his phone to his ear. No way. MApp is in many ways very similar to KR – plays easy-on-the-eye football and has good runs in the cups but are both tactically rigid and have approaches that can be divisive (KR overbearing and MApp cold and distant). I’m not sure on a return myself.
Great post.

Apart from the third paragraph that you must have sub-contracted out to Bazzer 😁
 
MApp deserved the pelters he got from August to December 2014. Trying to watch Hunt, Newey and Raynes play tika-taka was playing into the hands of our opponents. He made a host of crap/average signings that he himself binned (Junior Brown, Brian Howard, George Long, Joe Riley) and only in January did we really turn things around. Remember that things were touch and go into early 2015 for a while. We were just six points above the drop zone in late and a late Kyle Vassell goal against Carlisle, a team one place below us at the time, saw us go on and secure our status.

I maintain that without (Jellied) Eales and MAsh, MApp would have really struggled with us. He was allowed to pay off contracts for Wilder’s functional League 2 fodder and his own duds whilst bringing in players who must’ve been on pretty good wages – Roofe, Baldock, Skarz etc. The main man who saved us that season wasn’t even one of his signings either since Danny Hylton was Waddock’s one and only addition before he was sacked. Whilst the season that followed is in the top two seasons for me in watching us, I do think how lucky he was that he had the financial support to truly take a sledgehammer to the squad to rid himself of players who weren’t up to it including how own mistakes.

It's why I said Blackpool needed to be patient. MApp is an empire builder, not a quick fixer and that hasn’t happened there. It’s a League where no one is patient. They want to get up out in terms of the of it or to stay up it and will panic at the first opportunity that either of those looks like it won’t happen. It’s why 14 of the 24 teams in the second tier have changed their manager. Madness …

As for having him back here, it’s all about what’s above him as to whether I’d have him back. Working to a buy-develop-sell model with a DoF above him doing the contract work and I’d be keen. Working to the format that KR has with OUFC as his personal fiefdom where he runs around with his phone to his ear. No way. MApp is in many ways very similar to KR – plays easy-on-the-eye football and has good runs in the cups but are both tactically rigid and have approaches that can be divisive (KR overbearing and MApp cold and distant). I’m not sure on a return myself.
Very good post
I have spoken to a Lincoln fan who said similar. When things went wrong, MAPP was unemotional and cold and blamed everybody but himself.
I wouldn't mind him back in the right set up and if he is given time ( and money) to build it his way.
I do worry however of his many failures and relatively few successes as a manager
 
Some of the big win-wins under Appleton / Ashton was that we were able to get decent players to drop down to L2 on loan, then sign for us, the players get consistent game time, we get a decent player, the player moves on and we get a fee.

Now we seem to be getting the players dropping down on loan, so we won't get the benefit of a transfer fee.
 
MApp deserved the pelters he got from August to December 2014. Trying to watch Hunt, Newey and Raynes play tika-taka was playing into the hands of our opponents. He made a host of crap/average signings that he himself binned (Junior Brown, Brian Howard, George Long, Joe Riley) and only in January did we really turn things around. Remember that things were touch and go into early 2015 for a while. We were just six points above the drop zone in late and a late Kyle Vassell goal against Carlisle, a team one place below us at the time, saw us go on and secure our status.

I maintain that without (Jellied) Eales and MAsh, MApp would have really struggled with us. He was allowed to pay off contracts for Wilder’s functional League 2 fodder and his own duds whilst bringing in players who must’ve been on pretty good wages – Roofe, Baldock, Skarz etc. The main man who saved us that season wasn’t even one of his signings either since Danny Hylton was Waddock’s one and only addition before he was sacked. Whilst the season that followed is in the top two seasons for me in watching us, I do think how lucky he was that he had the financial support to truly take a sledgehammer to the squad to rid himself of players who weren’t up to it including how own mistakes.

It's why I said Blackpool needed to be patient. MApp is an empire builder, not a quick fixer and that hasn’t happened there. It’s a League where no one is patient. They want to get up out in terms of the of it or to stay up it and will panic at the first opportunity that either of those looks like it won’t happen. It’s why 14 of the 24 teams in the second tier have changed their manager. Madness …

As for having him back here, it’s all about what’s above him as to whether I’d have him back. Working to a buy-develop-sell model with a DoF above him doing the contract work and I’d be keen. Working to the format that KR has with OUFC as his personal fiefdom where he runs around with his phone to his ear. No way. MApp is in many ways very similar to KR – plays easy-on-the-eye football and has good runs in the cups but are both tactically rigid and have approaches that can be divisive (KR overbearing and MApp cold and distant). I’m not sure on a return myself.
Yes after seven months here lots wanted him out, 'tippy tappy football' and all that.

He does come over as an unemotional tough guy, but I have no idea what he's really like.
 
Yes after seven months here lots wanted him out, 'tippy tappy football' and all that.

He does come over as an unemotional tough guy, but I have no idea what he's really like.
The vast majority wanted him out. I would bet that included Kip!!
People were criticising him for showing no passion on the touchline, being clueless tactically and not able to pick a player
Some were suggesting that we would be back down to the NL if he stayed.

I think that generally he needs time to build a team. At Limcoln he built the play off team pretty quickly after joining them half way through the previous season (?)
 
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