Top scorers in title winning seasons

[nw6pie]

For sure. Even if you are one of the best teams in the division, you really need all the stars to align if you want to win it. That means top players avoiding injury, big decisions going in your favour, winning tight games, and having a couple of players who have freak seasons and perform at their very best, at least one being a striker (like Jones in 97/98). You also need momentum, so that means either getting off to a great start or going on an epic run at some point.

While some of those factors are out of your control (like injuries and key decisions), others are mostly down to attitude. Teams that have a win-at-all-costs attitude instilled in them by the manager are the ones that turn draws into wins or get last-minute equalisers. If you have a manager who is happy to play for a draw or set up in a way that is naturally cautious, you'll never be the type of ruthless machine that finishes top.

I just can't see us winning this league unless something fundamental changes in the way we approach games. We're just too easy to beat. If we play badly, we're almost guaranteed to lose. But if we play well, we aren't at all guaranteed to win.

Agreed, championship-winning sides find a way of winning even when they don't play well, but we seem to find a way of losing games we should win (the home games against Maidenhead, Boreham Wood and Hartlepool, for example). Some of that comes down to luck, but also to the type of personalities you have in your squad and their bloody-mindedness.

That said, both of our championship sides of recent vintage evolved as the seasons went on. Big Sam's team was top 5 material until that record-breaking run of successive victories from December to February - when Gary Jones suddenly looked like he'd found a pair of magic boots (a la Billy Dane) and was firing them in from all angles. And it was only under Cotterill that we became a relentless winning machine in the Munto season.

Going back still further, it was the arrival of Dean Thomas in March 1990 that was the last piece in the puzzle that made us a promotion-winning side under Warnock.

I'm hoping the return of a fit Cal Roberts and, to a lesser degree, Wes Thomas - and the arrival of a dynamic, box-to-box midfielder - will prove the catalyst that sends us on a winning streak. But there are too many question marks about the side - including the lack of a trusted formation and the inability to perform well for 90 minutes (managed it once all season, against Wealdstone) - to have any confidence that this will actually happen.

[jackal2]

I don’t know the bloke, but does he come across as that sort of manager to you?

He always comes across to me as a nice man who lets strong characters dominate him, plans his match tactics according to what the other team (no matter how sh!t) might do, can’t get his players up for anything other than a big game, and falls back on poor excuses when his team loses.

The evidence seems to back that up.

We certainly agree that he worries too much about the opposition, but whether that's due to weakness of character or perhaps too many hours on UEFA badge coaching-by-numbers courses I'm not sure. Over-analysis seems to be a problem for some modern managers.

I think Ardley is fundamentally a good/nice bloke and I'm not going to criticise someone for that. Nevertheless, every good manager needs a bit of steel about him and I genuinely don't know how much he has, because like you I've never met him or seen how he behaves inside the dressing room. He's certainly resilient, because he came through tough days in the early part of his reign at Notts, and I figure that any individual who 'survived' in the Wimbledon dressing room during their Division One/Premier League days must have a bit about them.

On the flip side, you do wonder why Ardley seems incapable of telling 39-year-old Michael Doyle that he can't expect to play every league game. Likewise, it sometimes feels as if the players respond initially to Ardley and lift themselves after a defeat to put in two or three good performances, but then begin to rest back on their laurels again, leading to the inconsistency that has plagued our season so far. Would a Warnock or a Cotterill or an Allardyce have kept them on their toes that bit more?

I'm not in the 'Ardley Out' camp. As I've said before, I'm happy to leave the owners to judge how well or badly the manager is doing compared with their expectations, and I'll back whatever judgement they make. Even so, it does get frustrating to see the manager and his team appear to be making progress, only to let the momentum slip over and over again. Let's hope he can finally get us on a prolonged winning run.