Quote Originally Posted by Jampie View Post
In from me, for now.

Before we seriously consider replacing him, I'd want:

  1. To have a decent comparison done between him and his competition. As in, hard numbers, not internet forum guys' opinions. People throw things around like the budget and players he's got, but what are the actual numbers? If he really is better funded than the 2-3 teams outperforming us in this league, then that's a big deal. If he's not, then changing the manager might have no benefit and might even hurt.
  2. To have it decided who his replacement is, and be quite sure that replacement would do a better job. Otherwise in all seriousness what's the point in changing managers? We made the mistake twice in our relegation season where we fired the manager with NO replacement lined up. That's kind of crazy, and I can't see the new owners behaving like that at all. So far all of their decisions seem to have been careful, sensible, and measured.
  3. A plan to deal with the transition. Notts have suffered from bad manager transitions quite a lot over the last decade.


If he gets us promoted this year I would absolutely sign a one year contract with him to consolidate in L2. If he doesn't, as I said a few months ago, I'd want to understand why not. If he was out-managed then that's an issue. If the teams that beat us were just better teams, then replacing him makes no sense.

We're not doing quite as well as I thought we would be by this stage of the season season. We're a few wins off the pace and that's a little disappointing.

However, I think given the squad depth we've got and the clear strategy from pre-season onward of having at least two complete teams to field... combined with the number of new signings, I expect our second half of the season to be a better overall performance than what we've seen so far.

Meanwhile, other teams might cop a bunch of injuries and choke from the relentless workload. That said, we're the ones with the higher workload for the foreseeable, not to mention the injury problems.

For the record today I'm posting as Thomas the Tank Engine.
Totally agree, I expect the Sutton and Torquay’s budgets are not as good as ours, but I imagine Stockport, Hartlepool, Wrexham are in the same ballpark, Stockport have spent a lot on training facilities and have a decent squad. We haven’t been playing great but we are ahead I think of last seasons points. As you said, there’s a tough schedule so luck will play a massive part with injuries and we do have good strength in depth. I was confident a few games ago but we do really need to up our performance levels of late or we will struggle.