Quote Originally Posted by Woodypie View Post
Quarter of a season to go. We can't sign better players. We can't rely on a coach to achieve anything with his "tweaks", can't rely on a coach to make sure players players have discipline and don't show petulance to our supporters. Maybe there might be a an alternative to avoid a flirtation with relegation that doesn't involve tippy tappy football at the back that consistently highlights our deficiencies, resulting in one or two mistakes that end up with the ball in the back of our net. The one thing we can do is look to better defensive system, delivering security - as Maynard himself says - but obviously this old fashioned view is alien to the rose-tinted specs brigade. What worked for one of our seasons in non-league hasn't worked in League 2. We are playing better teams with more nous. Cliche? "Give the manager more time."
"Give the manager more time" may well be a cliche and I didn't write it, but I did write "evolution not revolution", which I suppose is another!

Seven games and one month isn't enough time to make a measured judgement about any manager, and I would be very surprised if the owners made any changes in the immediate future, because it's not their way. They make judgements based on reasonably large sample size of results and performances, as they did with Neal Ardley. The fact that there is a 'quarter of the season to go' will not be an overriding factor in their planning, because they have never adopted a 'promotion or bust' approach anyway. They keep calm and focus on the bigger picture, regardless of whether we're having a good or bad run of results in the short-term, and even if it means taking the long route rather than the short route to our ultimate collective goal of promotion. That's the right way compared with the constant chopping and changing seen under the previous regimes which led us out of the league. It's the patient approach of the current owners that led us back into the league, overcoming a couple of failed attempts and some dodgy runs of results along the way.

You seem to be making the case against 'tweaks', but then you suggest a single tweak. If you're talking about playing less tippy-tappy football in our own half then I agree and have said that myself in previous posts. Neil Warnock used to say "play your football in the opponent's half and not your own", and I think his reasoning was perfectly sound, i.e. if you're going to lose the ball or play a sloppy pass, which players at this level tend to do, then don't do it in the part of the field where there's no time to recover.

I don't see any reason, with the players we've got, why we can't continue to play the sort of stylish football we played at Newport under Maynard, but make things less complicated in the defensive third, as we arguably did in that game. It doesn't have to be an either/or choice between 'tippy-tappy' and lumping it to the forwards or hitting balls down the channels every time. There's a right time for all of these things, but the players are far more likely to be able to adapt to that mixed approach if you make gradual tweaks. If you try to change too much too quickly, you get confusion and risk a loss of confidence in all approaches.

The "rose-tinted specs" brigade is another lazy cliche, usually used to lump together anyone who doesn't agree that there must be immediate and drastic change. It's perfectly reasonable to recognise that recent results haven't been good enough, and to agree that things need to improve, without jumping to the conclusion that we should sack the Head Coach and completely abandon the playing identity we've been developing.

Anything worth building takes time, and you hit many setbacks along the way, but the fanbase needs to play its part in understanding this and not over-reacting during times like this. All panic does is create more panic, further undermining the confidence of the team and damaging the morale of the club. It's easy to cheer and shower praise when your team has scored over a hundred points and won promotion through the play-offs, however it's times like now, when the team/club has hit a barrier, where the fans need to be calmest and most supportive. I realise that's a massive ask of the football fan mentality, and sometimes I come up short myself (such as when I've just seen Aden Baldwin give the ball away for Sutton's second goal), but it's something we must try to do, because that's when support really matters.