Freedmans genius tactics.

[Romanis]

[quote="wanderlust"]Majority of Bolton fans turned on Freedman so you'll be lucky to get a balanced opinion, but I'll have a go at explaining the circumstances.
With £160 million of debt and relegation from the Premiership we were shafted. Off the pitch Freedman did a great job, offloading lots of overpaid ponces and putting a team together on the cheap. He built up the youth set up which has now benefited Lennon who has taken all the glory for it.
On the pitch Freedman was atrocious, dogmatically sticking to a system when we didn't have the quality of player to make it work - his focus on clean sheets reflects his managerial training in Italy but sadly we didn't have a bunch of Maldinis.
But he did the groundwork on a low budget and I for one am convinced it would have come good eventually, but patience ran out. Lennon has done the opposite, focusing on the first X1, getting a few results by making a few tweaks - and in part, cashing in on the foundations F

[Forestaddict]

Well Don to be honest, I think he's only a short term fix. I too don't see him lasting under trigger happy Fawaz.

But at the moment clean sheets are a premium with us and if he can stop the rot in defense, then we should be able to build from there.

And yes, we do need to get used to borings 1 nils. Our fans will eventually start moaning the dire football, we are a fickle lot and love to moan when things go even a little awry, so expect a lot of complaints when we become dour.

But for the moment I'll take dour over dire, which is what we've been playing in every single game bar that victory over Derby.

I reckon your about right there, Romanis, with your comment on Freedman not being here long. If rumours are to be believed, Petrescu was not happy being offered a short term 3 month contract - What did Freedman get offered in terms of contract length? In any case, I think he's been hired to see us out to the end of the season and I

[essexred52]

18 month contract DF is on.

[rodred]

Managers pick teams and tactics to suit the players that they have available to them. Freedman produced an attractive team at Palace because the pleyers were capable of playing like that. West Ham are playing better football this season under Allerdyce, again because there are now more players capable of doing that.

We have had managers who came to the club with a long ball reputation but produced teams that passed the ball and knew how to attack. The players we have are far better than the ones he had available at Bolton, and I find it hard to believe that players like Assombalonga, Antonio, Lansbury and Reid will be asked to spend the whole game on their own goal line.

The negativity from outside is therefore irrelevant - give the bloke a chance, clean slate and all that !!