Sensible decision by the owners.
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Sensible decision by the owners.
What actually went wrong for Maynard?
We got ourselves into the top 3, but then over the final dozen games or so, with players coming back from injury, we proceeded to throw away a pole position over a run-in that wasn't so hard really.
Yes, our squad was flawed and unbalanced but the competition was no great shakes either - the importance of the games should have dragged out better performances from the likes of Macari, Palmer, Grant, Jatta, Traore etc etc.
What was it? Fear and nerves? Overcomplicating things with tactics and team changes? Poor team spirit? Just plain old poor leadership? Bad training and preparation? Poor instructions to the players?
I suppose it doesn't matter, we have a chance at a new start now. But we should've done significantly better than we did and it's a curiosity as to exactly why we/he/they blew it so badly
I think he got to be so concerned about losing that he couldn't bring himself to do the things that would make us win. We put ourselves in a position where we just couldn't move from Stuart's understanding of what possession based football meant.
Williams also believed in possession based football, but with the intention of drawing opponents out of position and understanding when it was time to go then it had to be done quickly. We also had Baldwin who had the skillset to do that.
Maynard never decided to go because he viewed possession as the goal (anti-pun absolutely intended) but, perversely, when pressure was applied we went long because we didn't have a first class passer in the back 3 or 4 (if you included Bass). We did have better defenders but we didn't have anyone who could do both not least because we were in L2. [Off topic, I'd love to see Platt and Baldwin in the centre of a back four; they'd complement each other really well.]
I suspect it was a combination of all those things. The last 16 games were pretty disastrous - we maybe managed 4 decent performances in that time, and there went the season. The fact this happened after the Saunders bros left seems to be very telling - wasn’t there one game when SM was out at halftime warming up the subs? It does feel like the Reedtz had already made up their minds by then. Hard to disagree with them, but SM can leave with his head held high. He came up short, but no one can fault his commitment. We do need a more inspirational leader next time, though.