Here's a question - does Football Radar look at potential manager stats or just players? Could the brothers have a list of 'possibles' in their back pocket until the time is right?
Here's a question - does Football Radar look at potential manager stats or just players? Could the brothers have a list of 'possibles' in their back pocket until the time is right?
Gary Mills, Chris Kiwomya and John Sheridan would probably top the list of managers who while I didn't call for their dismissal, I wasn't disappointed when they got the boot. I'd say that serves to show that I'm more tolerant than most on here when it comes to sacking managers, because they were a pretty uninspiring trio.
When you look at the subsequent careers of managers we've fired this century, there are very few who have enjoyed success elsewhere or are still employed as managers.
Keith Curle is the obvious exception - and he was definitely sacked too soon by us in my opinion - while Martin Allen always had Barnet as his back-up plan. John Sheridan has somehow managed to stay in gainful employment (and in fairness, he was managing us at an impossible time - during the fall of the Ray Trew empire). Gary Mills, meanwhile, has eked out a living in nonleague (he's now at the mighty Corby Town).
Many others, though, have probably had to rely on the old boy network to get jobs on the coaching/scouting staff elsewhere: Shaun Derry, Craig Short, Kevin Nolan, Charlie McParland, Gary Brazil (doing a great job across the river, alas), Steve Thompson.
Paul Ince hasn't managed a club since 2014 (Blackpool), and Harry Kewell only recently clambered back onboard the managerial carousel at Oldham (played three, lost three so far this season). And lord knows what Chris Kiwomya is up to these days.
You've got to go back to the 1990s and the days of Neil Warnock and Big Sam (we'll gloss over Howard Kendall) to see how underwhelming most of our managerial appointments have been since the turn of the century.
... well, Snobhead 1, (by the way you only just retain that title as, more recently, you have been a little off form - perhaps like most of the players; although they have not really experienced full league games whereas you are permanently at a heightened game status). I digress: any Notts player who stands off the opponent and allows them to cross the ball is commiting sin. It's mentally lazy, physically lazy to drop your team mates in the sh1t like that. That's nothing to do with management; it's fundamental. The defending mantra should be - first to the ball; stop the cross. That's it, no discussion. It's also not about the F ing shape or F ing system. It's about player mentality once they cross the white line. That is all. ...
If they're in the business of predicting results then they must surely factor in manager stats. You'd be at least looking for patterns such as, this manager has never won a game against that manager and then if you have data on favoured tactics/play style, you might conclude this manager doesn't tend to do well at away grounds where managers employ a high press, etc.
Would they have much data on league two or tier 6? They'll have to specialise in the top league's around the world as that's where their clientele will mostly be placing their bets, but self interest should dictate they now have a handle on tier 5 and an increasing knowledge of similar levels. If so then they must notice which lower league managers are getting results playing the type of football they'd like to see at Notts, but with foreign owners there's got to be a temptation to look abroad to inject something different that's going to take the rest of the league by surprise, especially if you want to go down the total football route.
Yes he's abandoned the passing game and built a direct, physical side and it seems to be serving him well, although his managerial career with several clubs has been one of good starts followed by a tail-off in form, so it will be interesting to see if he has more sustained success at Northampton or whether the previous pattern continues.
Curle was the most frustrating of all recent managers for me. He had immense success playing a 4-2-3-1 system away from home, but then insisted on playing the same tactics in home matches even though it consistently failed to get results. It was obvious that in home games we should have played a more attacking formation with two strikers, and he could have achieved that simply by tweaking his existing system to a 4-1-3-2 at home, which is exactly what Martin Allen subsequently did with success, but Curle stubbornly refused to mix up his tactics and it seemed to become a matter of pig-headed pride that he knew better than the fans who were pleading for a second striker. It eventually cost him his job, denied us a really good chance of promotion, and probably blew Curle's chance of becoming anything more than a lower league manager.
As i said before lado, i wanted Ardley sacked In Janusry 2019, after he managed to get us 8 points from safety between then and november when he arrived, the only reason he was not is because Hardy had ran out of cash . If not then certainly when the new owners came in, they should of brought there own man in.
The best time for a club to return is in the year or the second year after relegation, otherwise it is usually much longer, plus the 2 years of parachute payments, Ardley will probably blow Notts chance of a quick return .
At this moment in time, unless a new manager had relegated us from the National league, we would be no worse with a new manager than sticking with Ardley , another manager could well have promoted us last year
sacking mangers that had a good , or even average track record ,has lead to our demise, but sticking with the worse one, has lead to our destruction and could see us cemented in the national league for many years
And as far has a GudJon Thordason performance, at least he kept us in league 2, which is more than Ardley did
Thinking about it - When could the owners have sacked Ardley? He's always just done enough and put a few results on the board whenever the heat has been turned up on social media. They didn't have time to replace him at the start of last season and even though narrowly missing out on promotion often results in a terrible hangover and, in our case at least, relegation battles the following term, it never looks good sacking a manager who's just got you to a play-off final.
We may have got carried away with this idea that they aren't the sacking type. Compared to Trew and Hardy, any chairman is going to look as though they have the patience of a Zen Buddhist.