How Long Will BM Last at this rate?????

[ZacNaloen]

He did what I hoped he would do, bought better ball players across the pitch. But the players he bought haven't adapted well and our tactics remain the same so they probably won't.

[Ian Royal]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer, totally changing our style in the process
nor is that a sensible idea(QPR)
all we could do is gradual improvments,improve the problem areas, with a blend young and hungry, bit of prem experience
and go from there

we will buy another 1 or two in january, and we will be in with a shout of staying up at the end of the season

thats all you could have hoped for imo.

The thing that bugs me is that McDermott doesn't really seem to start the season with a coherant plan and fall back position. It's like he starts the season testing the water still and trying to figure out what his best team is. Happens every year.

Still, I don't think you can find many better at adapting and troubleshooting throughout a season.

[Lacoste]

Yeah, his consistent poor starts don't help him to be honest.

[Royalclapper]

And even if we had a fairly stable mid-table prem side, there's always the potential to get drubbed by the big hitters at any time. A result against one of them would do wonders mind you.

[Lacoste]

The idea was, though, to get decent amount of points from the lesser sides in this league already, thus makingt the games against the bigger sides less important.

All our bad start has done is put immense pressure on these games now.

[melonhead]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer, totally changing our style in the process
nor is that a sensible idea(QPR)
all we could do is gradual improvments,improve the problem areas, with a blend young and hungry, bit of prem experience
and go from there

we will buy another 1 or two in january, and we will be in with a shout of staying up at the end of the season

thats all you could have hoped for imo.

The thing that bugs me is that McDermott doesn't really seem to start the season with a coherant plan and fall back position. It's like he starts the season testing the water still and trying to figure out what his best team is. Happens every year.

Still, I don't think you can find many better at adapting and troubleshooting throughout a season.

agree to an extent

though in other seasons this has been due to selling our best players late on in the summer, and having to rebuild
and this season its taking a while because of all the new players, and mostly just cos this league is a big step up, and everyone, including brian is still finding their feet

[Ian Royal]

Yeah, big players going was certainly a factor. I think we always needed to recruitment more to this team than we could afford to do in one transfer window. We just didn't have any areas of the team where we didn't need to recruit some quality.

[RoyalBlue]

Business plan is already swinging into action to prepare for the event of relegation come the end of the season. Two jobs in the media department are for initial six month contracts only (and don't give me bull about 'probation period' that is a very different thing).

[SydenhamRoyal]

I read that last sentence and silently added


"under my management"


He's attempting justifying his continued employment with those comments in my opinion, nothing more.

No. He is keeping the spirits of the players up at a difficult time in the season, keeping them motivated, keeping them believing, acting as a leader.

[RoyalBlue]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer, totally changing our style in the process
nor is that a sensible idea(QPR)
all we could do is gradual improvments,improve the problem areas, with a blend young and hungry, bit of prem experience
and go from there

we will buy another 1 or two in january, and we will be in with a shout of staying up at the end of the season

thats all you could have hoped for imo.

The thing that bugs me is that McDermott doesn't really seem to start the season with a coherant plan and fall back position. It's like he starts the season testing the water still and trying to figure out what his best team is. Happens every year.

Still, I don't think you can find many better at adapting and troubleshooting throughout a season.

agree to an extent

though in other seasons this has been due to selling our best players late on in the summer, and having to rebuild
and this season its taking a while because of all the new players, and mostly just cos this league is a big step up, and everyone, including brian is still finding their feet

Maybe they should have considered bringing in a mentor for him in his first season. Cannot afford slow starts in the PL, particularly when your squad is fundamentally weaker than so many in the league.

Talking of mentors, I wonder whether SSC did say 'Whatever you do Brian, don't make the same mistake as me, loyalty to players can only take you so far'.

[royal_ross]

Maybe they should have considered bringing in a mentor for him in his first season. Cannot afford slow starts in the PL, particularly when your squad is fundamentally weaker than so many in the league.

Talking of mentors, I wonder whether SSC did say 'Whatever you do Brian, don't make the same mistake as me, loyalty to players can only take you so far'.

Sort of agree with the mentor thing but suppose he would argue he got the side promoted so he should be the main man. Hopefully this is our traditional slow start of the season.

[Cobi]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer...

It was never about what money was available. McD wanted to give the players a fair chance, which I agree with usually, but knowing a lot of this squad is playing way above their means, it was equally foolish, and we should have invested in at least 2-3 more players.

January will, I hope, rectify that - but I fear it will be far too late by then to stay up.

[Lacoste]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer...

It was never about what money was available. McD wanted to give the players a fair chance, which I agree with usually, but knowing a lot of this squad is playing way above their means, it was equally foolish, and we should have invested in at least 2-3 more players.

January will, I hope, rectify that - but I fear it will be far too late by then to stay up.

And we did have the money in the summer, he chose not to spend it.

[Ian Royal]

At the same time, it's just not feasible to bring in an entirely new first team. The number we brought in was one player shy IMO - we needed an extra midfielder. The problem is the players we got have failed to live up to expectations so far and McDermott is struggling to put together successful partnerships across the pitch.

[Cobi]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer...

It was never about what money was available. McD wanted to give the players a fair chance, which I agree with usually, but knowing a lot of this squad is playing way above their means, it was equally foolish, and we should have invested in at least 2-3 more players.

January will, I hope, rectify that - but I fear it will be far too late by then to stay up.

And we did have the money in the summer, he chose not to spend it.

I think you're right. AZ clearly has big ideas that are not shared by McD and Hammond, who still want the same 'ethos' to continue. One is the owner, two are the minions. There will eventually only be one winner. I doubt AZ likes being told by the manager (if BM isn't lying that is) that we don't do this, or that, and watch what you say in public...

[westongeezer]

It would be absolute suicide to make any massive changes to the squad now and to remove BM, im not syaing the squad don't need fixing, perhaps a couple of Prem hardened players may help, but changing skippers this time of the season will be fruitless, and could not make a positive impact in the time left to recover.

[Cobi]

At the same time, it's just not feasible to bring in an entirely new first team. The number we brought in was one player shy IMO - we needed an extra midfielder. The problem is the players we got have failed to live up to expectations so far and McDermott is struggling to put together successful partnerships across the pitch.

I completely agree. It would have cost us easily £30m plus to bring in maybe 8 players of proven quality, and that was never going to be achieved. We will improve over the course of 2-3 years, such is the amount of work this squad needs, and if we stay up the side will look completely different by then, but we have to stay up to do that.

[Ian Royal]

AZ should probably listen to the professionals though. McDermott's got three year's managerial experience and over a decade in coaching and scouting. Hammond's getting close to a decade of DoF experience.

Anton's got 6 months experience as a playboy owner.

[melonhead]

thats the squad we have/had though

and we didnt have the money to do a total rebuild in the summer...

It was never about what money was available. McD wanted to give the players a fair chance, which I agree with usually, but knowing a lot of this squad is playing way above their means, it was equally foolish, and we should have invested in at least 2-3 more players.

January will, I hope, rectify that - but I fear it will be far too late by then to stay up.

i said didnt have the money for a total rebuild
not bringing in another 2 or 3 players

[Lacoste]

Changing the whole squad I agree, would have been stupid. All I am saying is that their was plenty of cash available for Brian to spend and he didn't spend enough of it or well enough.

I think we can all agree on that.