FGR did us more of a favour!

[durhampie]

It's the "building up his fitness with game time" that doesn't make sense to me.

If someone is blowing out their @$$ in a competitive game you sub them. You surely don't leave them out there as a liability to gain more minutes/fitness.

You've got all those non matchday training sessions to build up fitness.

When a player turns it around , or hits a purple patch you can always rely on a fan to tell us that it's the manager / head coach's fault that it didn't happen sooner.

Unless you know the players, seeing the training sessions it's pretty much guesswork.

You could well be right it probably should have been fixed sooner, people make mistakes (players, head coach). What I do know is IB got far more out of him than NA, and I'd guess IB inherited a fitter, more disciplined RR than NA did.

We can critique and comment as much as we like but never forget we have the glorious benefit of hindsight and no responsibility as fans, it's a wonderful hugely advantageous combination.

The issue with Ardley was that he preferred to play people that he knew and trusted. I suspect he may have been under pressure to play the radar signings but, opted to play the likes of Doyle and Reeves in the hope of a quick return to the EFL. For all we know that may have been the reason for his sacking. Every manager is under pressure to produce the goods, NA is no different, but decided to do it is way. IB was a one directional coach, and simply had no idea how to deal with the high press and also defend crosses coming into the box. An issue of which he never got to grips with. And from the sounds of it, some things never chance,