Owners will not take risks with our fanbase

[optipez]

Exactly this and I said so based on interviews before he joined us. You can say it doesn't matter but how do you motivate players if you can't enthuse them? All top managers have a way of communicating that can be inspiring. It's like we are paying for his apprenticeship but we don't have time for that and what guarantee is there he will ever be good enough?

Talk of consolidation is nonsense if your second half of the season is much worse than your first half. Teams tend to carry their end of season form into the next year. As someone else pointed out, you're either going forwards or you're going backwards, downward momentum is very hard to reverse, as we have seen in the past.

We do have time. We're not going down this season so there is time for him to learn and come back stronger next season. There will be a lot of churn this summer regardless and the manager, recruitment team and coaches will hopefully be learning.
Maybe Maynard won't work out, most managers don't but we have this season to see if he grows but also to line up a new coach if it doesn't like it's going to work.

[marky]

It's Montague that should be in the firing line, not Maynard.

[durhampie]

Are you sure? As I recall Parkinson told his players to target Cameron.

They could have targeted any of our defenders, as none of them, apart from Macari and Baldwin are any good..

[Jampie]

The owners reacting to crowd size changes by sacking a manager (?) would be wildly out of character for them. Sounds like Hardy's leadership not the Reedtz brothers.

They will almost certainly give SM this season to sort himself and the team out, and hopefully we can field a stronger team next year. If we lose Macca and Jones (does seem plausible) we will have money from their sales to bring in new talent and/or bring the club closer to financial sustainability.

I gotta wonder how many lost ticket sales would be paid for by whatever we got for LW's departure? I'd guess quite a few.

People need to chill out a bit. It's understandable to be disappointed after a bad run of results, but our new owners just don't make knee-jerk decisions. You can expect them to adjust a strategy that's not working, but they'll hardly decide that after a handful of games.

[hissingdwarf]

Are you sure? As I recall Parkinson told his players to target Cameron.

Yes it was Cameron, but to be fair, all of them have errors in them regularly. Not being harsh, just factual. Baldwin, who we probably all agree is our best CB, still has at least 3 errors per game. Hence him being a L2 player and not Prem.
Cameron would struggle to get into Sunday pub team…unless they make him captain and undroppable…bit like Notts!

[nw6pie]

The current owners are intelligent and strategic enough not to not pay heed to passive aggressive posts like this.

The club will give Stuart Maynard ample time to develop the team in his own image and improve results. There will be no knee-jerk reactions, no panic, and no decisions taken on the basis of placating the week-to-week mood swings of football fans (witness the euphoria after the Newport result only two games back).

As with Neal Ardley, there will come a time, after an extended period of analysis and reflection, where the Reedtz Bros will decide if Stuart Maynard is making sufficient progress, but it won't be for quite a while yet. The ethos and decision-making of the club now is very different from previous regimes.

I actually agree with the point being made by one or two posters that the current run of results probably wouldn't have been that different under Luke Williams. I think we were destined to hit a wall with the current team regardless of who was manager, which is quite normal when you're in a new league finding out which players can cope with the step up and which can't. "You win or you learn", and from the current struggles the club and management will be learning which positions and attributes of the team need upgrading.

What's needed from fans, if possible, is a calm, patient, mature attitude while we go through this process.

Jackal, you’re far too sensible for this board. I do think part of our problem as a club over the years has been the lack of patience from owners/fans when things aren’t going well. The most obvious examples are Martin Allen and Craig Short, but I’m sure there are more. I may not have 100% faith in Stuart Maynard yet, but we need to give him time to find his feet. It was a big gamble giving him the job as it is a huge step-up from part-time Wealdstone to Notts, but he needs our support right now, not our derision. I’m sure it’s hard for him not to feel a little “imposter syndrome”, but it’s also up to him and his team to make the most of this opportunity.

Re the initial question, this season will hopefully give the owners a better insight into the EFL and what’s needed to succeed. The most glaring thing for me as the season has progressed is that possession is meaningless if you don’t do anything with it to hurt the opposition. LW always used to talk about dominating teams, but we’ve not really been able to do that enough in L2. Eighty percent possession is worthless if you’re not scoring goals with it and conceding bad ones from the other 20%. The only way we will dominate teams again is by having better players all over the pitch, like last season - quicker, stronger, bigger, more athletic; able to keep the ball and win it back quickly. However, that may take a few seasons to get right.

I notice the youngsters beat Brentford 6-0 the other day. Worth bearing in mind that we’re talking about a club ethos here and a specific way of playing, and that’s hopefully going to be ever-more important in the years to come. In that regard, we’re still playing catch-up with the likes of Mansfield and Crewe.

[Glad2BeAPie]

Are you sure? As I recall Parkinson told his players to target Cameron.

He said this in his interview

[Bohinen]

I may not have 100% faith in Stuart Maynard yet, but we need to give him time to find his feet. It was a big gamble giving him the job as it is a huge step-up from part-time Wealdstone to Notts, but he needs our support right now, not our derision. I’m sure it’s hard for him not to feel a little “imposter syndrome”, but it’s also up to him and his team to make the most of this opportunity.

In other words, you have no faith in Maynard either but won't go against words of wisdom from Jackal and other 'respected' posters. But you will reach the tipping point sooner or later. Others will turn sooner.

It's a bit like in 1984 where some people will swallow the party line that the chocolate ration has gone up again, when in reality it has gone down. A shockingly bad decision was made to appoint Maynard over Warnock. All the 'intelligent' posters in the world will not convince me otherwise.

[TSANHO]

In other words, you have no faith in Maynard either but won't go against words of wisdom from Jackal and other 'respected' posters. But you will reach the tipping point sooner or later. Others will turn sooner.

It's a bit like in 1984 where some people will swallow the party line that the chocolate ration has gone up again, when in reality it has gone down. A shockingly bad decision was made to appoint Maynard over Warnock. All the 'intelligent' posters in the world will not convince me otherwise.

If Warnock was really open to this position then it was a massive gaffe by the owners, one of very few I may add, to not appoint him.

The players and club just needed that impetus after LW leaving, for the rest of the season whilst taking time to find a successor in the mould the club want. The players would’ve known their roles and duties to a tee, there wouldn’t be any confusion….and it would’ve added hundreds onto the gate, never mind other coaches suddenly being weary of having to face Notts.

Instead we’re sleep walking towards the end of the season.

[jackal2]

In other words, you have no faith in Maynard either but won't go against words of wisdom from Jackal and other 'respected' posters. But you will reach the tipping point sooner or later. Others will turn sooner.

It's a bit like in 1984 where some people will swallow the party line that the chocolate ration has gone up again, when in reality it has gone down. A shockingly bad decision was made to appoint Maynard over Warnock. All the 'intelligent' posters in the world will not convince me otherwise.

My post wasn't actually advocating for or against Maynard himself. I was observing that those fans urging/wanting an early decision on the Head Coach are being unrealistic, because the current owners don't operate that way. They will assess Maynard - or indeed any Head Coach they appoint/inherit - over a longer period of time. It's what they do.

Many football fans will make their minds up much quicker, because that's what fans do, but we fans are notoriously emotional and fickle. If Maynard won his next few games then many of those expressing severe doubts about him today would fall silent or even become pro-Maynard (after a discreet interval to spare their embarrassment).

With the benefit of hindsight I certainly prefer the Reedtz approach to what went before. What a club doesn't need, as proven by Trew, Hardy and a few others, is Chairmen or Boardrooms who think too much like fans, or worse still read and get influenced by message boards like this, because we've seen where that leads: chaos and confusion and overall decline.

The key decision-makers at the club need to be rational, patient and strategic in the decisions they make, at least one step removed from the melee, rather than over-reacting to short-term runs of results or fan mood. I think that's the kind of long-term-thinking we have with the Reedtz Bros and their data-driven approach, which of course isn't guaranteed to be constantly successful - nothing is - but to date has been far more successful - and calm - than what we had previously.