We have regressed backwards quite a few steps since the play off final. Guess who took control not long after that game?
Need I say more?
Getting this thread back on topic, we have won lots more football matches, made the play-offs twice and visited Wembley which would not have happened had we stuck with the non-league numpty residing at Burton
We have regressed backwards quite a few steps since the play off final. Guess who took control not long after that game?
Need I say more?
[QUOTE=Oldtimeram;38663535]We have regressed backwards quite a few steps since the play off final.
No question about that.
Nigel was the right man at the right time IMO. He took over an aging, overpaid and underperforming squad. DCFC didn't have a pot to piss in. He culled that squad and built the basis of a very good side. The lack of funds to recruit the kind of player he really wanted meant he was limited in his choice of incoming. Despite that he put together most of the team that took us to Wembley. He was forced into some kind of siege mentality that he couildn't get out of. Stuck in a rut. Possibly in that mentality due to the attitude of the press and many fans. Would he have done better had he been given money to spend when it became available? I don't thnk he would as he was stuck in that siege mentality. I will be eternally grateful for what Nigel did for DCFC, hauling us up from being on the verge of imploding to being close to something special. His departure came at the right time. Mclaren was the missing piece of the jigsaw and we came so very close. Keogh has taken a lot of stick for that error at Wembley but he wouldn't have been put in that situation had Buxton put the ball into row Z, as he should have done, 3/4 of a second earlier.
As for players we have seen fail in recent seasons, I don't blame the players. I blame the Managers we have had. How many strikers have we bought and then played them out on the wing? Blackman came in for a lot of criticism and that was understandable as he didn't perform for us. However, what I miss in much of the criticism he got was the reality that he was a centre forward being played as a winger. He appears to be playing well for Tel Aviv where he will feel wanted as Jordy Cruijff was after him when we outbid Tel Aviv for his services.
Kieftenbeld? That transfer going wrong hasn't helped. I feel for the lad. He is back at Brum and still "surplus to requirements", not even making the bench. That offers us the prospect of being able to sign him on January 1st, unless Ledley comes good.
MM? Any blame attached to him is related to his choice of Manager and giving them an open cheque book. That has changed as we don't have a huge amount of breathing space due to FFP. GR doesn't have carte blanche but he does decide who he wants and does the contract negotiations himself. Source, Gary Rowett.
Tbf OTR, I think MM only took about a 22% holding in the club following the Wembley defeat. It was fif**** months later that he took full control and the situation he inherited from McClaren at the end of the 2014-15 season wasn't pretty.
Agree entirely with MadAmster's post except I'm not sure about Nigel's man management. He brought some good players into the club and undoubtedly stabilised us. Seemed to find falling out with players all too easy though. Dean Moxey was a classic example...never been fully replaced at left back...what a waste.
If you want moxey back hes at exeter again so no trouble to replace him
So many different opinions but the league table does not lie.
Some awful signings have been made over the last few years of managers and players.
Pearson appeared to fall out with some players and, I don't know, but I suspect Rowett is also not the flavour of the day with some players. At this moment there is not a great prospect of on field success........
But then over decades Derby County have managed to claw defeat from the jaws of vistory.
Not really after the version that's now approaching 32...but I'd have kept the one we sold, for comparatively little profit, to Crystal Palace where he played almost 100 games, taking them up and keeping them there. Never seen anything better for us at left back since he left...and he was versatile.
Only scored one goal for Palace though - I won't even give you three guesses who it was against......
There has been a filtering down of the Premier League in the last couple of seasons. Hard to say if it is due to a weakening of the top end of the EPL or a strengthening of the top end of the Championship, or just due to increased funding of leading Championship clubs (probably a bit of all three). We were very well placed to get promoted and consolidate our position in the top flight in the same way as a team like Bournemouth or Swansea has done. Maybe not to hang around for ever but definitely to take advantage of a few years of television funding to build a decent squad.
But we completely cocked it up through poor leadership, a terrible transfer policy (for reasons that are now somewhat obvious) and a horrible inability to stick to a plan. The price that we have paid is that we are now being dragged into rebuild at exactly the time we should be strengthening on a solid base. By the time we are ready to challenge the top end of the Championship will be even stronger and instead of looking at the three teams coming down as the most likely threat for the next season promotion slots we now effectively have teams building a three year plan to get themselves out of this division. Even the scum that are Leeds seem to have worked this out - yet we now have to bathe in the consequences of our bad decisions. I'd love to see us do a Huddersfield, Brighton or Bournemouth but I seriously doubt we are capable.
So, sadly, I would conclude that we are actually further back than we were five years ago - we have less chance now of mounting a serious challenge for promotion than since the days of Dave Walton and Tomas Cywka.