| Food for thought from Dave Mac... on 01:46 - Oct 4 with 1627 views | Ingham |
Just skimmed through a long and interesting article, will read it properly tomorrow. But I don't really understand the bit about 'his face doesn't fit'.
Surely Ramsey's problem is the usual one - not winning. How much criticism does an impressively winning manager get - none, not of any significance, not in general terms.
My feeling is that the Club doesn't know enough about the game to understand when it should get rid of this manager, and keep that one. Simply doing it on the basis that keeping WHATEVER manager you have is the right thing is meaningless, as meaningless as sacking whatever manager you have.
It isn't the keeping or sacking that is the problem, it's the lack of understanding of WHY that paralyses us when we reach this, our usual state of uncertainty and bewilderment.
Poor performances and results undermine the manager's reputation.
We understand that a GOOD manager should be given time. And if he starts poorly, because he has a lot to do, and it takes time to get it all together, that makes sense.
But when we will know? And how will we know, if playing badly and losing aren't a sign that he is getting it wrong?
It's a problem that goes down to the basic structure of the game. One Club wins, all the rest lose. Apart from a coterie of big Clubs who win everything big, and a few also-rans, some quite big, but serially unsuccessful, who float about harmlessly, mostly avoiding relegation, and never challenging the big handful convincingly, the rest - most of them smaller clubs like QPR, give or take a few thousand on the gate - enjoy brief surges, usually in the lower leagues, before they're quickly replaced by some of the dozens of other wannabes.
If we merely keep Ramsey because we think we should start keeping managers now, because getting rid of them hasn't worked, we need some reason for believing that just keeping ANY manager will work wonders and prevent the manager hitting a losing streak.
Because the same problem will arise in a year, or two years, or three years. If he is winning convincingly, and doesn't get one of those deadly, prolonged, losing runs where everyone eventually gives up on him, fine.
But if he still isn't doing well, what then? At that point, we're still left with all the same problems, which are that we don't seem to understand the game. Instead of finding out what will work, do we just decide in advance that sacking will work, then keeping him will work, then something else will work.
I agree that we should take our time finding out why things go wrong so consistently, but I think we need to shift away from the desperate desire to impose instant 'solutions' in order to maintain a positive and optimistic narrative. By doing this, we're forced to sack him at the point where the performances bear so little relation to the positive build-up.
It is an old dilemma, and it can't be resolved by a GENERAL decision either way, stop sacking, start keeping. That won't help. We need to find out why. Why we might KEEP this one, and GET RID of that one. To do so, we need to know why ONE manager won't cut the mustard, and the other one will.
And this is something we do not know. Just keeping on with Ramsey is fine with me, but not because he is Ramsey and I think things will work out with HIM. Just sacking him is fine anyway.
We need to shake off the idea that this choice or that choice will be followed by something BETTER. Just watch, just learn how it all works - if we can, and find out IF there are things we can do to improve our performances.
Maybe that is best served by keeping a Manager, but we still need to know WHICH Manager. That problem won't go away, unless it is true that ANY Manager becomes a good one eventually, provided you just go on keeping him in the job, no matter what.
That sounds a little implausible to me, implying, as it does, that they're all equally good, some just more slowly than others.
Of course, we might get lucky, and Ramsey prove to be our salvation at last. But that's what we always think, with every Manager. And if Ramsey IS the one, it's a damn good job we didn't apply the principle of keeping any of his PREDECESSORS for long.
In any case, the principle of getting behind the manager or squad we have seems so often flawed because it amounts, in principle, to an assertion that we wouldn't want anyone better.
We do. Believe me, we do. It's just that we don't know how to get one. THAT'S where our problem lies. Either we lack the personnel who can decide between a loser and a winner, or we lack a method for doing so independently of changes of personnel.
And if we depend on the Manager to turn the Club into a winner, we're relying on a person who has a vested interest in claiming that he is the right one for the job, irrespective of any objective evidence that that is so.
One of the reasons for so much supporter criticism is that, in practice, we're the only group of people who can be trusted to tell the truth, because we don't have a vested interest in claiming that WE are the man for the job, we aren't lining our pockets with hundreds of thousands or millions of quid at the Club's expense on the basis that WE KNOW. All the others, the Board, the Manager, the Players, will tell us that THEY are the answer, and that has proved wrong so many times it has no credibility at all any more.
Fascinating topic and thread. |  | |  |
| Food for thought from Dave Mac... on 02:55 - Oct 4 with 1607 views | Pommyhoop |
| Food for thought from Dave Mac... on 01:46 - Oct 4 by Ingham |
Just skimmed through a long and interesting article, will read it properly tomorrow. But I don't really understand the bit about 'his face doesn't fit'.
Surely Ramsey's problem is the usual one - not winning. How much criticism does an impressively winning manager get - none, not of any significance, not in general terms.
My feeling is that the Club doesn't know enough about the game to understand when it should get rid of this manager, and keep that one. Simply doing it on the basis that keeping WHATEVER manager you have is the right thing is meaningless, as meaningless as sacking whatever manager you have.
It isn't the keeping or sacking that is the problem, it's the lack of understanding of WHY that paralyses us when we reach this, our usual state of uncertainty and bewilderment.
Poor performances and results undermine the manager's reputation.
We understand that a GOOD manager should be given time. And if he starts poorly, because he has a lot to do, and it takes time to get it all together, that makes sense.
But when we will know? And how will we know, if playing badly and losing aren't a sign that he is getting it wrong?
It's a problem that goes down to the basic structure of the game. One Club wins, all the rest lose. Apart from a coterie of big Clubs who win everything big, and a few also-rans, some quite big, but serially unsuccessful, who float about harmlessly, mostly avoiding relegation, and never challenging the big handful convincingly, the rest - most of them smaller clubs like QPR, give or take a few thousand on the gate - enjoy brief surges, usually in the lower leagues, before they're quickly replaced by some of the dozens of other wannabes.
If we merely keep Ramsey because we think we should start keeping managers now, because getting rid of them hasn't worked, we need some reason for believing that just keeping ANY manager will work wonders and prevent the manager hitting a losing streak.
Because the same problem will arise in a year, or two years, or three years. If he is winning convincingly, and doesn't get one of those deadly, prolonged, losing runs where everyone eventually gives up on him, fine.
But if he still isn't doing well, what then? At that point, we're still left with all the same problems, which are that we don't seem to understand the game. Instead of finding out what will work, do we just decide in advance that sacking will work, then keeping him will work, then something else will work.
I agree that we should take our time finding out why things go wrong so consistently, but I think we need to shift away from the desperate desire to impose instant 'solutions' in order to maintain a positive and optimistic narrative. By doing this, we're forced to sack him at the point where the performances bear so little relation to the positive build-up.
It is an old dilemma, and it can't be resolved by a GENERAL decision either way, stop sacking, start keeping. That won't help. We need to find out why. Why we might KEEP this one, and GET RID of that one. To do so, we need to know why ONE manager won't cut the mustard, and the other one will.
And this is something we do not know. Just keeping on with Ramsey is fine with me, but not because he is Ramsey and I think things will work out with HIM. Just sacking him is fine anyway.
We need to shake off the idea that this choice or that choice will be followed by something BETTER. Just watch, just learn how it all works - if we can, and find out IF there are things we can do to improve our performances.
Maybe that is best served by keeping a Manager, but we still need to know WHICH Manager. That problem won't go away, unless it is true that ANY Manager becomes a good one eventually, provided you just go on keeping him in the job, no matter what.
That sounds a little implausible to me, implying, as it does, that they're all equally good, some just more slowly than others.
Of course, we might get lucky, and Ramsey prove to be our salvation at last. But that's what we always think, with every Manager. And if Ramsey IS the one, it's a damn good job we didn't apply the principle of keeping any of his PREDECESSORS for long.
In any case, the principle of getting behind the manager or squad we have seems so often flawed because it amounts, in principle, to an assertion that we wouldn't want anyone better.
We do. Believe me, we do. It's just that we don't know how to get one. THAT'S where our problem lies. Either we lack the personnel who can decide between a loser and a winner, or we lack a method for doing so independently of changes of personnel.
And if we depend on the Manager to turn the Club into a winner, we're relying on a person who has a vested interest in claiming that he is the right one for the job, irrespective of any objective evidence that that is so.
One of the reasons for so much supporter criticism is that, in practice, we're the only group of people who can be trusted to tell the truth, because we don't have a vested interest in claiming that WE are the man for the job, we aren't lining our pockets with hundreds of thousands or millions of quid at the Club's expense on the basis that WE KNOW. All the others, the Board, the Manager, the Players, will tell us that THEY are the answer, and that has proved wrong so many times it has no credibility at all any more.
Fascinating topic and thread. |
You're losing your touch Ingham.
Neil's post is about an inch longer.  |  |
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| Food for thought from Dave Mac... on 10:44 - Oct 4 with 1542 views | francisbowles |
Guys, in the interests of easy scrolling/reading is it really necessary to hit the reply to the individual tab on every long post? Surely prefacing your comments with Neil or Ingham would be as effective and this thread might be about three pages shorter! | | | |
| Food for thought from Dave Mac... on 20:38 - Oct 4 with 1473 views | sevenhoop |
Good to hear from you Inghams. As usual, you make sense. It is clear we are going for stability for the sake of it. It's admirable, but misguided if the wrong man is appointed in the first place, which most of us instinctively knew, and certainly knew by the end of last season, and definitely by the end of the first 90 minutes of this. All underlined by the preposterous addiction to Karl Henry. |  | | |
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