Sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom

[On Balance]

Baggieal: I think the problems go deeper than the manager. You are right that a clueless manager can drag a team down but your example of man united proves my point. None of the managers since Ferguson retired could be described as clueless - we would kill to have had any of them. But they all failed in one way or another. Was it all their fault?

All successful managers have to have three things in place to succeed: they have to be the right man for the job, they need the right players for that manager, and the right club culture has to be in place.

We put way too much emphasis on how good the manager is. We seem to expect a ?good? manager to come in and wave a magic wand and everything is good. But being good and the right man is often difficult to put your finger on. For example, Brian Clough was useless at Leeds and Brighton, and brilliant at Derby and Forest. Megson was brilliant for us and definitely the right man at the right time, but didn?t really do that well anywhere else. Hodgson was great for Fulham and us but useless at Liverpool and England. If Jose Murinho could not make it work at man united, how good do you have to be to succeed there? if you are not the right man at the right time with the right players and the right culture, you are doomed.

And we also forget that it took Jurgen Klopp five years to win the league at Liverpool and yet we give a manager a few months or even a few games to succeed or be labelled clueless and cast aside.

I suspect the culture at West Brom is terrible and yet we never give a manager the time to fix it. The writing was on the wall when Corberan just upped and quit because he had no real reason to do so. The fact it was his hometown team that lured him away was in my mind, a convenient excuse. He clearly had no faith in the culture of the club and the people in charge and knew he wouldn?t be given the time or resources to change anything.

So Ramsay is fighting the fact that the two things he cannot control in the short term - the players and the culture - are just not good enough. Maybe he is clueless or maybe he?s Brian Clough at Leeds, or Roy Hodgson at Liverpool, (or Sam Allardyce at West Brom) or maybe he?s just a decent manager thrown into a very bad situation. But what are the chances we can find someone else who can magically turn things around in the next 13 games?

We thought we had nothing to loose when we fired Mason. We may still have nothing to lose if we fire Ramsay. But don?t expect it to make much difference until the club culture changes.

Spot on Calgarybaggy. That is an excellent post with very valid points and well made. I couldn’t agree more up until that is the appointment of Ramsey. Mason was turning the corner but with Ramsey we have gone backwards.

I totally hate to roundabout style of coaches we have adapted.

Do we change now or not I am on the fence. I don?t want us to go down but I?m not sure Ramsey can halt this rut we are in.

Again a great post.

[Prando]

With all respect to my home town, Canada beats the hell out of Dudley.

Happy memories of our coffee together in NW Calgary ! Dave has moved some 12 months ago to Bears Paw. I think you told me that you also had moved?North ?

Take care buddy.

[SwedishBaggie]

What we are witnessing is the result of terrible management over the last 9 years, starting with Lai and moving down through the ranks. Patel may prove better but he has inherited a complete mess and it will take a while to fix it. We have overspent on a lot of ok to mediocre players and tried to make up for the inevitable lack of performance by hiring and firing a succession of ok to mediocre managers.

Our recruitment had been mediocre and we managed to run into spending trouble even though we had several years of premier league payments to fall back on.

And our youth system didn’t provide enough young talent to make a difference. It has also been hampered by a series of managers who were desperately trying to keep their jobs by attempting to install a structure the players wouldn’t or couldn’t make work, making them too scared to risk untested youth players. But those few youth players who did come through ended up being sold to make up for other terrible decisions anyway.

So now we are completely stuck in a rut. Two of our three ok-ish forwards have been injured so much it’s no wonder their form is tentative and mediocre. The third is still trying hard but is hampered by the fact that our two most creative midfielders seem to have given up - Isaac Price can’t pass or shoot straight anymore for some reason and Mickey Johnson spends most of his time trying so hard to do everything that he inevitably fails and gets frustrated.

Our best defensive midfielder has the bad habit of consistently slowing down any forward momentum preferring (or instructed?) always to play the safe ball back instead of the risky ball forward. Our must aggressive defensive midfielder who plays more with passion than skill keeps losing his head and making bad decisions.

And our defence has been turned upside down and then riddled with so many injuries and enforced changes that it never gets a chance to settle into a proper routine and structure. Errors become inevitable. Above all, you want consistency in your defence and that has been impossible to achieve.

The goalies are probably ok but are given so little support that it wouldn’t really matter how good they were.

The end result is we are far too easy to play against. We play like we know we are never going to score. All the opposition has to do is bide its time until our disjointed and inconsistent defending inevitably serves up an opportunity on a plate and that’s that.

The fans are understandably frustrated but booing your own team when it is clearly so fragile that it wouldn’t surprise me if half the team, the manager and the physio burst into tears is not helping anything.

So now we are going to sacrifice yet another young manager on the alter of hopeless causes. I don’t really care how good or bad Ramsay is or how good or bad Mason was, I doubt if anybody is going to fix this mess in the short term.

So we have to hit rock bottom so we can clean house and start rebuilding. We might get lucky and stay up this season as the other teams fighting against relegation aren’t where they are because they are any good either. We can always count on them to drop as many points as we inevitably will.

Or we might get relegated. Either way, we have to hit rock bottom so that we can clean house and start again. Our pride will not allow us to contemplate relegation just yet but we may not have any choice. In some ways it may actually be easier in the long run to rebuild after relegation than to keep struggling along in mediocrity in the championship.

The sad thing is that any of the failed managers we have had in the past few years would probably do a good job of rebuilding if they were freed from all the other nonsense that has gone on around them. Hiring and firing manager after manager in hopes they can somehow wave a magic wand and fix a team that could well be beyond fixing is never going to achieve anything other than making the problem worse and delaying the inevitable.

So fire Ramsay or keep Ramsay? I’m not sure it will make any difference at this point.

A lot of sensible thoughts there.

However, I can?t refrain from commenting on how many young managers/coaches nowadays are so stubborn with their system, data, style of play etc. It?s their way or no way. If players are suited for the system or not, is irrelevant.

I think Ruben Amorim was that way with Man U, we (Sweden) suffered from it under Jon Dahl Tomasson, and now we have Ramsay?

If available players were best suited for, let?s say 4-4-2, they?d never use that, because that?s old school, deemed archaic, not modern etc.

And this baffles me.

[Calgarybaggy]

Happy memories of our coffee together in NW Calgary ! Dave has moved some 12 months ago to Bears Paw. I think you told me that you also had moved?North ?

Take care buddy.

Hi Prando: I actually live in the mountains about halfway between Calgary and Vancouver now. I thought of changing my name to NotReallyCalgaryBaggie but thought that might be confusing!

[kettering_baggie]

Hi Prando: I actually live in the mountains about halfway between Calgary and Vancouver now. I thought of changing my name to NotReallyCalgaryBaggie but thought that might be confusing!

A lovely place to live. I last went to Canada in 2008, seems just like yesterday, though, travelled from Calgary to Banff, Jasper, Rocky Mountaineer to Vancouver and then toured around Vancouver Island. It was beautiful, saw some great wildlife close up, including a Grizzly; a spectacular holiday.