Random thoughts (that may have been brought up at some point in the last 100-odd pages but I'm afraid I have missed):
- Let's not get spitefully revisionist - he did a pretty incredible job in turning us around in the time he was here. The avoiding of relegation was, to be fair, I think a lot tighter than it needed to be, but you can’t pretend the summer and this season so far haven’t been an impressive turnaround. He deserves credit for that (as well as does the Board and Waldron etc).
- He's not irreplaceable. For whoever comes in, the foundations are there for our club to continue to progress and push for promotion. Given how well we recruited last time, I think we can have some faith that the Board will get it right again.
- That said, let's not pretend he hasn't pretty massively fucked us over - this is incredibly likely to derail us. The fact that pretty much the entire coaching staff is changing overnight is enormously disruptive. It’s a weak league this year, but that means it’s all pretty bunched at the top. We can’t afford a bad couple of months while we look for a replacement and get them in. This will seriously jeopardise our promotion chances.
It's not even the fact in itself that he's moving on, it's the timing. It is just a dick move. It's one thing jumping ship in the summer or at a time when the club has the opportunity to contingency plan, select an appropriate replacement and give that individual the opportunity to implement their style and bring in players to suit that. It's quite another doing it mid season when the club has backed you in bringing in a load of players, at no small expense, that suit your style of play. You know as a manager that moving mid-season, if you're doing well, is in most cases going to f**k up that team’s season. It’s just the move of a s**t bloke.
- Also, with all due respect to Bristol City, who I do like, is it that plum a job that you’d drop such a strong set up and chance for promotion to move there? I think part of the collective anger in these sorts of cases is at least partly, much as we don’t like to admit it, that they remind us of our place in the footballing pyramid. But in this case, I do think it’s justified. Sure, they’re 4 points off the playoffs, but they’re frankly not going up in a league with Southampton, Leicester, Ipswich and Leeds in it this year, even if they do make the playoffs. What’s the plan? Get some patronising plaudits for scraping into the playoffs a couple of times, without ever actually achieving anything? Managers need tangible success on their CV. A promotion with us from League One would be worth so much more than, best case scenario, ‘doing quite well’ with Bristol. And taking the gamble on being the guy who can be dropped into a middling Championship side mid-year and be the magic sparkle that gets them promoted, after a decade of mid table finishes, seems so unlikely and like such a massive and unnecessary risk when you’ve already got such a tailor-made situation for you in your current employment. I just don’t get it.
- The major, major concern is that he takes a big steaming s**t where he used to eat in January and pilfers our best performers. We know he’s not averse to working with trusted personnel from previous jobs from the MacEachran signing, and Brannagan, MacGuane and Beadle are all players who have all been star performers under him and who we have dwindling, or indeed no, power to hang on to with each day that passes. Even Edwards’ loan could be terminated if Manning were to have a word with Ipswich. We absolutely must make sure that doesn’t happen, as much to try and retain some consistency across the season as anything.
It’s a pretty grim situation and I don’t really understand the people not angered with him about this. We had a superb chance to get promoted this season, and that has now been put in serious jeopardy by a manager jumping ship at the first opportunity to one of the most mediocre jobs in the Championship. It’s insulting and damaging to the club. I’m very pleased with the tone of our statement, it’s good to see the powers that be calling him out for being so duplicitous.
We need to really get behind the boys at Leyton now. A big boost is needed. The Pompey postponement is now looking like a real blessing - two full weeks to bring someone in and let them get settled. Let’s just hope the process doesn’t take as long as last time. We need to pick up where we left off asap.
