THE Ardley In/Out Thread [Multiple threads merged]

[The_Don_ORiordan]

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

My thoughts on Neal are:
His overall win rate is 40% with the club as a whole, making him one of the better managers in recent years

Mostly played at the lowest in the clubs history and against the poorest and often part time opposition. It does not make him one of the better managers.

If you exclude the horrific situation he walked into as third (and terminal) manager in our relegation year, you really only have last season to judge him by. Last season he managed a win rate of 44.7% in the league, putting the team firmly in the playoffs. Later results tended to be better than earlier results, too.

If you ignore all of his defeats and draws he’s got a 100% record.

If you ignore that fact he did worse with an awful lot more against a rookie manager, managing a team who weren’t being paid regularly. You might be able to ignore that season.

He had the ability to sign an entire team with few budget restrictions. And still did worse with them than rookie sol Campbell.
You cannot ignore that season.

The long term trend of both results and his hiring is one of improvement. The results he's getting over time are improving, and the number of excellent hires he seems to be able to make has gone up, particularly with the involvement of Football Radar

So how many seasons in non league where our budget far exceeds others does that equate to before that gradual improvement isn’t good enough?

I’m not for sacking the guy. And aside from the relegation season you’ll never see me have called for his head. But the excuses really need to stop. He’s had time, and a lot of help and support. He needs to deliver this season.

Regarding this year's performance, I expect it to start a lot weaker than it ends, and we've had a reasonable start so far. We've got a number of very interesting new players who will need a bit of time and patience to hit their stride, and the strategy NA's implementing of essentially having two complete teams he can field so he can rotate whenever necessary is one that will pay off a lot more in a few months time than it does now. In fact it could be seen as a hindrance now because it will take longer to get "minutes on legs" as he puts it.

See that’s the sort of excuses that he shouldn’t have. Every other team has signed new players.

But down the track, teams who only really have one full team they can field will suffer more than we do from fatigue and injuries. We'll continue with a more consistent high performance while theirs drops off. I expect our win rate to peak nearer the end of the season as a result.

But that’s really more about our club/squad size than the managers skill...

Lastly, the fact is that replacing a manager will incur a performance hit in the short, long and medium term. With the frequency Notts has been replacing managers in the last decade, we have been operating under a kind of "new manager penalty" the entire time. This is a self defeating strategy.

That simply isn’t true. Changing managers can have a short term gain. If changing them in the long term didn’t work then no team would ever improve.

In the past dozen years our most successful season (wins/goals/trophies) how many managers did we have? What about behind the scenes? Chaos? Milk bill being paid?

Successful sides have long term managers because they are successful. Teams which changes their manager usually have reason.
That doesn’t mean either is correct or incorrect.

Sacking a manger isn’t the problem, replacing them with one who isn’t better is.

With all of that in mind, I'd be very much inclined to apply a bit of patience. I would regard a minimum acceptable result for this season to be a playoff spot, and think the goal should clearly be to win the league. I would not seriously contemplate replacing NA as manager unless we find ourselves in the bananarama league yet again next season. And even then, I would want to carefully analyse our results and situation.

I’m with you on the patience now. Unless we don’t look like making the playoffs he should stay. But, you cannot talk about gradual progress and talk about being in the same league next year as being ok. If we are no better with a better budget than pretty much every team in the league and with complete stability, what’s the benefit of stability? Is our ambition only to be in the top tier of the non league?

[Jampie]

Mostly played at the lowest in the clubs history and against the poorest and often part time opposition. It does not make him one of the better managers.

If you ignore all of his defeats and draws he’s got a 100% record.

If you ignore that fact he did worse with an awful lot more against a rookie manager, managing a team who weren’t being paid regularly. You might be able to ignore that season.

He had the ability to sign an entire team with few budget restrictions. And still did worse with them than rookie sol Campbell.
You cannot ignore that season.

Man you guys are defensive. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "making excuses" and everything to do with ending Notts' long term miserable performance. This is not a club that belongs in the bananarama or league two. You aren't going to get back up there with a new manager every year. Who thinks that?

I'm looking at Ardley's performance, and yes that means win rate and other long term stats not individual games, trying to identify what impact he's had on results, and the data is pretty clear - results are improving. That's a silly time to replace him, end of story.

So how many seasons in non league where our budget far exceeds others does that equate to before that gradual improvement isn’t good enough?

As I said, I'd examine it if we don't go up this year and want to understand why.

Regarding this year's performance, I expect it to start a lot weaker than it ends, and we've had a reasonable start so far. We've got a number of very interesting new players who will need a bit of time and patience to hit their stride, and the strategy NA's implementing of essentially having two complete teams he can field so he can rotate whenever necessary is one that will pay off a lot more in a few months time than it does now. In fact it could be seen as a hindrance now because it will take longer to get "minutes on legs" as he puts it.

See that’s the sort of excuses that he shouldn’t have. Every other team has signed new players.

That paragraph has absolutely zero to do with "excuses". I'm talking about why I think performances will be even better as the season progresses. Three games in, we're solidly in the playoff spots. Too early to tell, looks like an OK start to me though. As I say, I expect a much stronger finish, and a much stronger finish compared to other teams for the reasons I outlined above.

But that’s really more about our club/squad size than the managers skill...

It's his strategy. Yes it's good the club can (apparently) afford it. I think he is due some credit there.... if it works

That simply isn’t true. Changing managers can have a short term gain.

Irrespective of how good the new manager is, there is a penalty to changing managers. It takes a long time for that negative impact to wear off. You need a massive manager upgrade to see significant improvement right away, and/or you need the problems the squad were facing to be mostly manager related.

Successful sides have long term managers because they are successful. Teams which changes their manager usually have reason.
That doesn’t mean either is correct or incorrect.

Bear in mind Ardley's last post went for six years, and he's currently got a higher win rate than he achieved there.

Sacking a manger isn’t the problem, replacing them with one who isn’t better is.

Sacking a manager is a problem. It's always a problem. Failing to replace sacked manager with a better one is an even bigger problem, for sure.

I guess that's a question for me to ask the pro-sacker crowd. Who do you want to replace him with? IMO you should have a better replacement signed before you let him go. A big problem we had in the relegation season is that managers were sacked with NO replacement lined up, twice. That's borderline insanity.