Sack him!

[Gary Baldi]

We desperately need to invest in this transfer window, not sack the manager. We missed a player like Lundstram yesterday, and those aren't easy ones to find, but try we must. We're now playing near a 442 and arguably we've looked worse since going to it.

I do think we need something different in the fullback area, and with something new up top, the team would look markedly different.

 

[Scotchegg]

If there was a time to sack Pep it was at the beginning of Jan and give someone new the chance to get in who they want. Wholesale changes with a few days left in the transfer window will have little impact or see us spending a huge amount to pretty much stay where we are.

We are not going up, we are very very unlikely to go down. Now is the time to stabilise and build for next season. Any changes could increase uncertainty and could encourage Ledson and Eastwood to jump ship. Dickie and Brannagan look like being decent signings, and there will be better players available in the summer to replace what we have.

It may be negative but this season could well be over after Tuesday night but that just gives us 3 months longer to plan for next year.

 

[horseman]

As long as enough customers continue to buy in to what various owners tell them it will always be a "this season" scenario,
I'm probably in a minority but i want us setting out for automatic promotion as every season begins, all this talk of as long as we make the play off's is crazy imho as though getting to them is a given they you'll qualify.

Last season we were a country mile from auto promotion and the same this which for an ambitious club with aspirations of being a championship club has to go down as a very disappointing season.

as i said when we exited the f a cup what exactly is there left for the fans you should be attracting, in that regard it was clear we were not good enough for even the play offs so effectively the season was over.
Not to worry though it all starts again come July.

 

[eraser]

Get Phil Brown - he did well until the Southend board finally pulled the whole floor along with the rug from under him.

 

[Gary Baldi]

If fans don't like to shushed by Clotet, they will be in for quite a surprise if we were ever unfortunate enough to be managed by Phil Brown. Be careful what you wish for...

 

[eraser]

If fans don't like to shushed by Clotet, they will be in for quite a surprise if we were ever unfortunate enough to be managed by Phil Brown. Be careful what you wish for...

Thought he'd be an ideal quick fix as he managed to get 72 points last season on a shoestring budget, It's a results business not a personality contest. I'm not saying I like the bloke but he knows something of English lower league football..

 

[Deleted member 462]

If fans don't like to shushed by Clotet, they will be in for quite a surprise if we were ever unfortunate enough to be managed by Phil Brown. Be careful what you wish for...

Thought he'd be an ideal quick fix as he managed to get 72 points last season on a shoestring budget, It's a results business not a personality contest. I'm not saying I like the bloke but he knows something of English lower league football..

 

[eraser]

Ok Ok you win... How about Steve Bruce?

 

[werthersoriginal]

To sack Clotet youd presumably need to pay off the rest of his contract, is that 18 months? Then pay enough to attract a new guy. Very expensive business

 

[Lundinsponytail]

I want him to stay.

He needs to sort our defence out, they continually lose us points. They have been embarrassing for 6-8 weeks at certain points.

I like the style of play he's trying to implement, he needs better players but I can see what he's trying to do.

I personally thought the shushing was deserved yesterday for certain people. If you are going to stand there booing your team when we are passing the ball around don't have a hissy fit when someone puts their finger to their mouth.

Possibly best to wait on the shooshing until you've won, no?
Otherwise you run the risk of looking like an absolute cock an hour later when you've been beaten at home by - on form - the worst team in the country. Which, in turn, proved precisely correct the people you were shooshing who believe that you an embarrassing shower.

 

[eraser]

Simon greyson is the best I’ve seen so far. Gary rowatt would have been ideal, and is proving now what a good manager he is. To think Birmingham sacked him for zola.

Simon Grayson did well with Blackpool, PNE and Huddersfield at our level but don't think we'd meet his wage demands now.

 

[milburn]

Simon greyson is the best I’ve seen so far. Gary rowatt would have been ideal, and is proving now what a good manager he is. To think Birmingham sacked him for zola.

Zola came in at Watford for Dyche too!

 

[Deleted member 462]

Simon greyson is the best I’ve seen so far. Gary rowatt would have been ideal, and is proving now what a good manager he is. To think Birmingham sacked him for zola.

Zola came in at Watford for Dyche too!

Well that’s it then, we’d bloody end up with zola.


Interesting one if the takeover did happen, with money and the connections that group have had in the past I wonder who they would see as their man?

They appointed mark hughes at city [emoji85]

 

[Scotchegg]

Possibly best to wait on the shooshing until you've won, no?
Otherwise you run the risk of looking like an absolute cock an hour later when you've been beaten at home by - on form - the worst team in the country. Which, in turn, proved precisely correct the people you were shooshing who believe that you an embarrassing shower.

Best not celebrate a goal then, or cheer a penalty award, in fact, why live for the moment when so much can go wrong!!

 

[Colin B]

I will take my head out of the sand (which incidentally seems to be where all the facts are stored) when you take off your blinkers and agenda to get rid of the manager rather than apportion blame to everyone who is a part of the situation.

To me this includes:

1. the manager as he picks the team, however he can only do so out of the players he has got available to him, of course some signings were a risk and havent worked out but equally he has been unfortunate to see Lundstram and Johnson leave aswell as Hall and Nelson pick up long term injuries, all four of these players would strengthen the current eleven

2. the chairman, ultimately he is responsible for the type of sid ethe club can have as he sets the budget, but... if the right players arent available at the right price should he "break the bank" to get them? not for me.

3. the players - yes they are given a way to play but they have the responsibility to adapt during a game and to make the right decisions that will get them the result, the loss yesterday wasnt down to the system we played, it was due to individuals inability to see the game out, just as it was at Walsall albeit due to the players making individual errors that arent acceptable at any level

and finally 4. The fans - booing your own players when they have lost 7-0 at home is one thing, but to do so when they are at 0-0 and relatively comfortable, during the middle of a move is also unacceptable to me.

Why edit out the middle part of my post in your reply? Could it be that you're trying to make me out to be more radical than my full post (which explained my viewpoint) actually was?

Also why accuse me of having an agenda? I have no agenda other than wanting a successful Oxford United, and if that means expressing my opinion regarding the manager, after about 30 games to support that view, then that's what I'll do and what I have done.

Stop making out that anyone who disagrees with you has an agenda.

 

[bazzer9461]

To sack Clotet youd presumably need to pay off the rest of his contract, is that 18 months? Then pay enough to attract a new guy. Very expensive business

Yes it is, but also with a possibility of relegation on the form we are seeing at the moment in the backs of people’s minds, that to would be very expensive with the loss of revenue, and yes we could lose 1500 plus in attendance figures if we were relegated.

 

[Peterdev]

Our attendances are certainly in decline, and relegation is starting to look a possibility. How we are tenth is unbelievable

 

[Thehorse777]

The "Give im' time brigade," are as big a worry for our club as the manager himself. Oxford have, for the most part, always been a club to give managers time. clotet has been here since mid summer, and has therefore assembled players he wanted, pick his team. Now Bury may sack 2 in as many months, but that is because they are already in the mire, and they need to find the right combination to save their lives. We, on the other hand, are on the slide and after yesterdays embarrassment, maybe the lowest point at the club for some years, we can be ahead of the game, and do something to try to prevent it.

I really cringe when I see a quote like above. By the end of the season we may well be in Bury's position, but by acting now we can try to prevent it. Is there evidence to sack him? Of course there is, not just after yesterdays capitulation, but game after game. Those home games we won, it was by luck. Blackpool should have buried us. The odd goal after playing terribly.

Each week brings the same, home or away, rubbish, and the "Give im' time brigade," are prolonging this by saying what eales wants to hear amongst fans. The longer eales believes fans are accepting of the rubbish he speaks, and delivers on the pitch, the further we may slip towards the bottom. With things so tight in mid/lower table at least they can no longer shout how can you sack a manager when we are tenth.

Please think what you wish for. Too many of these fans almost kept Mr. "Nice bunch of lads" in a job for too long.
Lets not make the same mistake again. After all of the misleading statements the fans have been fed by eales over the last 18 months; "feesgate", increased budget from increased season ticket prices, top 6 budget, the last thing that man needs to hear from fans, is that we're prepared to give him more time.

Ok, firstly if you would be so kind as to point out which parts of my post are “pure fantasy”, I can then respond with a list of the factual parts to it.

I’m confident who’s list will be longer. (Clue: it’s not your list)

Secondly, the last paragraph of your post I’ve quoted states all the things that you believe Eales has done, whether I agree with that or not is another discussion, but let’s assume for the purposes of this point, they are all true.

What do you expect any new manager to be able to do if he’s working under the same constraints and false promises as Clotet is?

I’d argue, assuming what you say is true, that no one would be doing particularly well.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, part of the reason for our relegation from the league was a mid season managerial change when the current form would have likely seen us through.

The fact is, and I appreciate you don’t deal with facts but I will continue anyway, our current ppg is better than Appleton’s first season, it is also enough to keep us up comfortably.

It would require us to go on a run akin to the worst in the clubs history, this team, both players and management are not that bad.

To answer your point about changing manager and citing Bury as an example of this, you are aware the previous manager didn’t have a positive impact aren’t you?

You also want to blame the manager for defeats but not credit him for victories, so what is it? Is he responsible for performances or not?

You can’t only have him responsible for negatives and credit the players for positives.

 

[Juan Pablo Showpony]

I still honestly don't know whether we are right to sack him or not. Based on whats happened this season so far, then probably yes he should go, but I really dislike the current climate in football where a manager gets sacked before an attempt has been made to see if he can rectify whats going wrong.

There are however a couple of things that I take umbrage with: -

1) The idea that him being positive about how we are playing is better then him berating the players. How about he's just honest in his assesment. When we've played badly and lost, come out and say "we were not good enough, we will work to identify where it went wrong and make the necessary changes" He doesn't have to rip players to shreds in interviews, as some of his defenders seem to be implying people want to hear. He does need to be honest though. Being overly positive is just as detrimental as slagging the players off. He sounds almost certifiable when we get battered and he talks about how well we played.

2) The idea that he's lost loads of players. This is broken down in to two pieces. 1) We sold our best players. Yes we did and it would be nothing short of a lie to think he didnt know, or wasn't suitably aware that that was going to be the case when he came to us. It was his job to replace those players and not one person can say with a straight face that he has gotten even a quarter of a way towards that. 2) Injuries. I would argue that all clubs suffer them. You mitigate it by bringing suitable players in, not relying on older players or players who have barely played to a decent standard in recent years who are more likely to be injury prone.

3) Tactics, tactics, tactics. Defending Pep by saying that under MApp we played boring football in the beginning is crazy. We didnt play boring football under MApp in those early days, we just failed to play to our strengths. His solution to that was to bring in better players and switch, quite heavily in the second half of that season, the way we played. We started to play to our strengths. The attacking, free flowing football that people remember from MApp didnt really get going until he started his second season, by which point the team was a very different makeup to when he first started. This is my biggest worry with Pep. He doesn't seem capable of playing the team to its strengths. His insistence on not playing 4-4-2, which in recent months has easily been our most successful tactic, is frustrating and incredible difficult to understand.

January for Pep will prove to be a pivotal time. If, as he has said on more than one occasion, the signings are completed, and we don't fundamentally change the way play to really suit the players we have, then I believe Eales will probably react around the end of February, by which point we could very likely be in a relegation battle. I truly hope this doesn't prove to be the case. I would love to see him succeed here, I just worry that we have another Patterson/Rix type of manager. Highly regarded coach who just doesn't have what it takes to manage a club.

 

[Lundinsponytail]

As long as enough customers continue to buy in to what various owners tell them it will always be a "this season" scenario,
I'm probably in a minority but i want us setting out for automatic promotion as every season begins, all this talk of as long as we make the play off's is crazy imho as though getting to them is a given they you'll qualify.

Last season we were a country mile from auto promotion and the same this which for an ambitious club with aspirations of being a championship club has to go down as a very disappointing season.

as i said when we exited the f a cup what exactly is there left for the fans you should be attracting, in that regard it was clear we were not good enough for even the play offs so effectively the season was over.
Not to worry though it all starts again come July.

Well, in reality people agree with you. It won't please the sycophants - as one poster describe them - but official home crowds are down to 6k and I'm told that nearly 500 season ticket holders didn't turn up yesterday.
That tells its own story. Whilst I don't agree with Colin that this is just about the manager I do echo what is a cry from a very experienced supporter for people to get their fingers out of their ears.
We are not, as the sycophants claim, currently playing like a mid-table side. We should have lost to Blackpool and then did lose to Walsall and Bury. Those are three of the worst/ most out of form sides in the division. THAT is where we are. 'Mid table sides ' don't lose 7-0. That feat is saved for the dregs.
The remaining hope is that somehow Brannegan, Pekalski, B-R and Dickie make a swift and decisive difference and do indeed turn us back into a mid table side. Because at present it's only our two opening wins that are shielding us from the bottom six.