Mark Robins

[jackal2]

AT LAST!!!!!!!!!

And if you look at all the teams that got promoted- from Wolves right through to us, virtually none of them play hoofball.

If Nolan is this messiah you seem to think he is then he will have noticed that.

Such a lot of nonsense is talked about styles of football. Football on the ground is better to watch, but there's no "right" and "wrong" way to play. If going direct suits the players you have at a particular time gets you better results, then fine. I suspect Nolan wants to move towards a more attractive style, but not until he has the right players to do it.

The fortunes of Stoke City and West Brom have both declined this season, and in both cases it can be traced back to their decisions to get rid of Tony Pulis, whose "hoofball" saw them safe in the Premier League for many years.

[Truthful]

You suspect Nolan wants to develop a more attractive game? Has he emailed you?

West Brom & Stoke- nothing whatsoever to do with getting rid of old managers, it was the ineptitude of the new managers that took them down. And don’t forget, the reason the old managers left was because the fans- like all knowledgeable, real, football fans know- that to be competitive in any division you need to be able to play football as well as lump it and compete.

And don’t give me this garbage about it suiting certain players- there is a difference between a game where long passes are played & defense is key and a game where you punt the ball aimlessly upfield in he vague direction of a big target man. I don’t care if you’re a 7 ft tall Messi- if someone just hoofs it to your general direction all the time you’re gonna struggle.

[Jeekay56]

What's that, Thai League?

jeek by jowel

Another wizard of the written word

.

[Old_pie]

is probably getting a good deal of satisfaction from the fact that he lost out on the Notts job to Kevin Nolan. If you recall some 18 months ago it was between these two for the manager's job. He has turned his disappointment to a solid achievement and it looks like he has a team that can negotiate League 1 to finish in its upper reaches
Mr Hardy plumped for Nolan's enthusiasm and relative raw talent against the vastly experienced Robins. I think we would be churlish not to admit that at Cov Robins has built a young challenging team at relatively low cost and that this has proven a better strategy than the combination of old heads and rejuvenated first teamers that Nolan put together.
Did Hardy make the right decision? Is it just a matter of patience?

So you're comparing the performance of a team that was in a league above last season to a team that not much before was non-league fodder? mmm.

[jackal2]

You suspect Nolan wants to develop a more attractive game? Has he emailed you?

No, but unlike you I've seen enough Notts County games this season to offer an informed opinion. We had our best results playing a direct style in the first half of the season, and in mid-season Nolan brought in a couple of new players, changed to a five-man midfield and clearly did give the players licence to play much more of a passing game in two home games to Exeter and Crawley. They actually did it quite well and played some good attacking football, but it also made us too open defensively and we ultimately lost both games, costing us 6 points which would have got us automatic promotion. It was a nice idea, but the wrong time to experiment, and those two defeats knocked our confidence and affected us for a while. So, ironically, if we had stuck to the more direct plan A we may well have finished in the top three, but if nothing else it demonstrated Nolan's desire not to just settle for direct football as a permanent tactic. People remember him playing under Sam Allardyce and probably make the long-ball assumption from that, but he also spent a significant spell of his career at West Ham, the so-called "Academy of Football", so there's no reason to assume his managerial career will be defined by one approach.

West Brom & Stoke- nothing whatsoever to do with getting rid of old managers, it was the ineptitude of the new managers that took them down. And don’t forget, the reason the old managers left was because the fans- like all knowledgeable, real, football fans know- that to be competitive in any division you need to be able to play football as well as lump it and compete.

West Brom and Stoke were as competitive as clubs their size are ever entitled to expect in the Premier league under Tony Pulis, finishing well inside the top ten on occasions. So yes you're right that the new managers were inept, because apparently they were unable to understand that their predecessor Pulis had already implemented the style most likely to bring relative success to teams with their limited resources. I'll grant you the fan bases at both clubs were split over Pulis' tactics, because a lot of football fans are basically thick and don't even realise when they've got it good, but now at least they may get the chance to watch some very pretty football in the Championship (or lower) for a while!

[Truthful]

No, but unlike you I've seen enough Notts County games this season to offer an informed opinion. We had our best results playing a direct style in the first half of the season, and in mid-season Nolan brought in a couple of new players, changed to a five-man midfield and clearly did give the players licence to play much more of a passing game in two home games to Exeter and Crawley. They actually did it quite well and played some good attacking football, but it also made us too open defensively and we ultimately lost both games, costing us 6 points which would have got us automatic promotion. It was a nice idea, but the wrong time to experiment, and those two defeats knocked our confidence and affected us for a while. So, ironically, if we had stuck to the more direct plan A we may well have finished in the top three, but if nothing else it demonstrated Nolan's desire not to just settle for direct football as a permanent tactic. People remember him playing under Sam Allardyce and probably make the long-ball assumption from that, but he also spent a significant spell of his career at West Ham, the so-called "Academy of Football", so there's no reason to assume his managerial career will be defined by one approach.



West Brom and Stoke were as competitive as clubs their size are ever entitled to expect in the Premier league under Tony Pulis, finishing well inside the top ten on occasions. So yes you're right that the new managers were inept, because apparently they were unable to understand that their predecessor Pulis had already implemented the style most likely to bring relative success to teams with their limited resources. I'll grant you the fan bases at both clubs were split over Pulis' tactics, because a lot of football fans are basically thick and don't even realise when they've got it good, but now at least they may get the chance to watch some very pretty football in the Championship (or lower) for a while!

Errr... hate to disappoint you mate but Nolan spent his entire West Ham career under... Sam Allardyce. Allardyce had him at Bolton and West Ham.

As for the “limited resources” at Stoke, perhaps you might want to check their squad and recent expenditure. And West Brom? Darren Moore has them playing passing football and winning games, whereas Pardew was a catastrophe.

Jeez, if you’re gonna clutch at straws then at least do some basic fact checking first, eh?

[jackal2]

Errr... hate to disappoint you mate but Nolan spent his entire West Ham career under... Sam Allardyce. Allardyce had him at Bolton and West Ham.

As for the “limited resources” at Stoke, perhaps you might want to check their squad and recent expenditure. And West Brom? Darren Moore has them playing passing football and winning games, whereas Pardew was a catastrophe.

Jeez, if you’re gonna clutch at straws then at least do some basic fact checking first, eh?

Allardyce and Nolan were together throughout much of their careers, and both were very successful. That's why they're never out of work for long. Allardyce was/is famed for being brought into clubs that are dead set for relegation and getting them out of trouble. I wouldn't be so judgemental, because you might need an Allardyce-style manager at Coventry next season when you find your best players have been sold and other teams can play better, prettier or even more effective football than you.

The fact remains, though, that West Ham is a club steeped in a certain way of playing, right from the youth levels up, and Kevin Nolan will have seen plenty of the evidence of that and played with several graduates of their academy. There is no reason to assume he just wants to be a Sam Allardyce clone. Most managers are a composite of the many different managers/clubs/cultures they've seen during their career and it just doesn't follow that they will automatically and permanently adopt one particular approach. Nolan's own signings have tended to be football-playing types like Noor Husin, Terry Hawkridge and Jorge grant, but he inherited other players in the squad who perhaps suit a more direct style.

And as for Stoke, which manager's success over several years enabled them to accumulate the resources Mark Hughes wasted in his pursuit of a better style of football? Stoke were not loaded with cash when Pulis brought them up, which is why they employed a manager like Pulis in the first place. He got them promoted on a relative shoestring and kept them in the Premier League against much richer opposition for several years, allowing them to become established and wealthier as a club. Then they sacked the guy who had delivered established Premier League status and appointed Hughes, who wasted bucket loads of that cash and (effectively) delivered them back to the same place Pulis found them.

I grant you, I thought Darren Moore did well in his last few games with West Brom, but it's far too early to judge what his long-term prospects will be as a manager, or indeed whether he will favour one style of play.

[irishpete]

is probably getting a good deal of satisfaction from the fact that he lost out on the Notts job to Kevin Nolan. If you recall some 18 months ago it was between these two for the manager's job. He has turned his disappointment to a solid achievement and it looks like he has a team that can negotiate League 1 to finish in its upper reaches
Mr Hardy plumped for Nolan's enthusiasm and relative raw talent against the vastly experienced Robins. I think we would be churlish not to admit that at Cov Robins has built a young challenging team at relatively low cost and that this has proven a better strategy than the combination of old heads and rejuvenated first teamers that Nolan put together.
Did Hardy make the right decision? Is it just a matter of patience?

You sure? Word on the street was Flitcroft

[kill_the_drum]

In my 27 years of watching Notts we’ve had 3 managers that have got us promoted. Warnock, Big Sam and Cotterill. None of which play passing football. They all looked to feed the forwards as quick as possible and play off them. Nobody looks back and remembers those times as anything but successful, but it wasn’t pretty it was just effective. Nolan is of the same mould. There are no rules in football that say a ball has to be passed on the floor X amount of times before a goal is scored. And when we have had managers that have tried to play football you just hear the ‘gerrit forward’ brigade from the stands.
Playing ugly seems to suit us. As long as it’s effective I’m all for it.
Considering we were relegation fodder prior to this season (even by many of our own fans) then I would say it’s certainly effective.
And without going into the obvious farce that was the playoffs, over 46 games we finished better than ‘total football’ Coventry.
So to answer the original question, Nolan was absolutely the right man for the job!

[LaxtonLad]

I rather liked his version of "El Paso".