It’s been a frustrating start to the season for fans and club alike.
We have been hit with COVID more than most clubs in the division. But after a preseason that was a comparative dream to last season’s nightmare (with fantastic facilities and all the signings made well in advance of the opening fixture), does anyone find it remotely acceptable that we’re one point better off than at the same stage last season? Even more concerning is the generally poor level of performance - 90 good minutes split between the three home games and an awful lot of dross away.
I don’t expect the owners to say publicly that it’s not good enough, but I do expect Ardley to be telling the players that privately, and I do expect the owners to be telling Ardley that privately, too.
My only hope is that if things don’t improve and they do decide to pull the trigger, they already have someone in mind to replace Ardley. We don’t need another lottery of waiting to see who’s going to apply and does a mean PowerPoint presentation.
I don’t mean the postponed games, though only playing once in a month isn’t great for momentum. We had seven players test positive for COVID, with some of them apparently being quite badly hit by it. Wes Thomas had COVID and now has something else, which isn’t helping us either.
Absolutely true. I get sick of the small minority of attention-seeking fans who think that the owners should not only 100% share their view but act on it too. I'm sure the Reedtz Brothers have their own ideas about what they expect from the manager and when, and it's their prerogative to make those decisions.
The communication from the club in recent times has been very good. If they've got news to tell us they let us know pretty quickly through various media, and if there's nothing to report they say nothing, as opposed to certain past owners who began to love the limelight and making 'big' announcements whether there was any justification or not.
Last edited by jackal2; 18-11-2020 at 07:59 PM.
Absolutely no chance they will sack Ardley any time soon. Firstly the first season under their ownership he has massively over achieved on their target. Secondly and more importantly is they want to run the club in a methodical and stats driven way which Ardley has always been an advocate of.
Can you imagine some of the old school managers sitting with their stats guy analysing the games, mad dog or sheridan come to mind, it would be a car crash. They will keep him or fire him on stats of the games and probably less so the results (we not results in the short term). Very rarely do you get owners and managers happy working together, the last for us probably Warnock and Pavis and that brought success, well till he sacked him, which was a mistake.
For me the best owners are like good referees not seen and not heard. We don’t want anymore types that make it about them. Likewise if a manager leaves then a better one should already be lined up.
You’ve hit the nail on the head in that the owners don’t need to come out and publicly and say anything. The manager is the media man and public face of the club and is accountable and responsible for what happens on the field.
I don’t think it’s acceptable that we are only one point better off than this time last season, either not with the teams we have played so far and we should be kicking on from last season.
Likewise I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand better certainly away from home and actually go out and give teams a game and create enough chances to win a game. Today we should have been talking about Slocombes save of the season that got us all three points and how we had built on our early lead and killed them off because we had scored again and gone 2-0 up. Then it would not have mattered about one player making a mistake at the death.
Performances like we are putting in away from home at the moment leave me wondering just how low has this club got to sink in the football pyramid before we can actually put out a side that competes on a regular basis? Performances that leave you thinking afterwards we really gave them a game and asked questions of their defence and keeper regardless of the result.
Last edited by MAD_MAGPIE; 18-11-2020 at 08:21 PM.
Abbott is Knowle's agent.......
https://smiworld.co.uk/team
Well didn’t we do something like this before where we only signed players from a certain agent ?
Not sure I’m keen on this arrangement if honest as Abbott might get a cut of money for recommendations of players, this might be common in football who knows but doesn’t sit right with me as I thought football radar was going to do the bulk of the scouting.
I am aware this is only one player but it is worrying that Ardley/Cox would have drawn up a list and we bring someone in known to Abbott which means either Ardley had scouted him already or that we are listening to Abbott advice too much when he didn’t know the squad we had here.
Last edited by legs77; 19-11-2020 at 11:31 PM.
I would love to know what our owners make of his latest comments in the press "we'll look at the shape of the opposition but if I can't get my group right and motivated, if we can't get that then we probably we won't get the points anyway."
Already making excuses about the inevitable loss to Chesterfield. I've been so unconfident about his ability to defeat a team down in the dumps in all my years supporting Notts to be honest. This guy is getting worse by the day.