Quote Originally Posted by the_anticlough View Post
I took posters' tip and watched the first 16mins (I've only seen bits and pieces before, mainly due to my Leigh Curtis aversion but even he's grown on me for his rapt attention to Mace and bonkers hair)

Yeah its oh so slow - but Mace is a far better communicator than Burchnall and I totally agree with the main thrust of his argument - that basically we've landed ourselves with a real dud, a real pair of duds actually, that we're in trouble and it's only going to get worse.

I'm already at the stage where I cannot and will not click on a single clip to listen to Burchnall. I think at least half of NCM are in deep denial about the wreckage IB has wrought, turning a strong play-off position into dust. There's an imaginary idea about who and what he is, that Mace skewered pretty convincingly when going through his record.

In my book, you don't deserve to oversee a long-term project when you've made such a unholy mess of a straightforward short-term project, seal a play-off berth to give us a lottery ticket at least for getting out of non-league after what is already feeling two LONG years. That meant studying the film of our entire season with particular focus on those rare moments when we did look like a side capable of running through the league. Who was making it happen then? How can we replicate that form/structure/balance for the rest of the season. Instead we got 'clean slate', who do we like, who do we need to pick to win over the 'senior pros' (which is likely to include the 'senior pros') and 5-3-2, O'Brien, Doyle straight back, Turner, Miller, Griffiths and the players who held the key being dropped completely.

Mace is right, if he fails in this short-term project to seal a play-off place, you can add it to his failure at Viking and Ostersunds and any talk of being allowed to 'build his own team' sounds pretty daft to me.
I really hope you are wrong, but I'm not sure that you will be. I have been seriously underwhelmed by what Burchnall has shown us so far, but it will take a fair bit longer for me to call for his sacking whatever happens this season. It's obviously a long term plan from the owners, but the short term was bloody important as well given the position he inherited. My only hope for the next month is that we are one of those teams who are distinctly average for much of the season, but then hit a rich vein of form and sneak into the playoffs, and then use it to beat teams who have been better than us over the whole season. The games are starting to run out, but there are still enough left. I say that more in hope than expectation.