Malpas was picked by Butcher and left behind when he went to Australia. Lasley was already been guided by the club through the youth coaching, his qualifications and part of Robinson's job has clearly been to develop him. You may disagree with having a succession plan or that Lasley should be the chosen one and the result might be the same - but it's obviously been a completely different process to what left us with Malpas. And when you look at the club leadership now and where we are compared to where we've been, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt if that's the call that's made.

Plenty of companies have succession plans in place, is there a fundamental reason it can't work in football? Liverpool did fine with it for a while...

I would say Robinson's record is reality and you're the one being theoretical...not much has changed since November 2017?? He completely changed the team and style in January 2019, lost several key players from it and rebuilt a side which was almost certainly going to finish in the top four before the pandemic hit.

Much like I never understood why people talked down how good Hammell and Lasley were for us when their times were coming to an end, I don't understand why there's a desire to put such a negative slant on everything Robinson has done with us now. His time may very well be up but the suggestion he's been rubbish the whole time or lucky or only played hoofball is simply not true.

If we write down all our managers since McLean (or even further back if you want) in two columns with those who achieved more than Robinson on one side and less on the other, it will be immediately apparent just what a good job he's done.