by southbank1871 » 17 Jun 2013 12:01
by Maguire » 17 Jun 2013 12:01
ZacNaloen Not obviously sarcastic enough??
by Maguire » 17 Jun 2013 12:06
winchester_royal Every team needs luck to win a competition. Football matches are often decided by who gets the breaks on that given day, and it stands to reason that to win more games than you lose then you'll need to have more than your fair share of luck
by creative_username_1 » 17 Jun 2013 12:07
southbank1871winchester_royal Every team needs luck to win a competition. Football matches are often decided by who gets the breaks on that given day, and it stands to reason that to win more games than you lose then you'll need to have more than your fair share of luck.
That doesn't mean we were undeserving of the title, we won the most points therefore we deserved it, but just because we were deserving that doesn't mean fortune wasn't massively on our side a number of times last season.
Anyone who went to games such as Brizzle or Brighton and can seriously say that luck didn't play any part in us becoming Champions is a 'tard.
But it's largely irrelevant unless you also discuss the games when Southampton and West Ham were lucky to win or draw games in that season.
by AirRaidSiren » 17 Jun 2013 12:15
southbank1871 ARS - your statement that "we were very lucky to win the league under him" seeks to discredit McDermott and lessen his achievements to suit your agenda. I think that is Mags's and others' issue.
by AirRaidSiren » 17 Jun 2013 12:17
MaguireZacNaloen Not obviously sarcastic enough??
No - I started off thinking you were being sarcastic but then you went on to talk about a deflected free-kick at Brighton so I assumed you were actually being serious. If you'd only written the bits I quoted then it would've been clear.
by ZacNaloen » 17 Jun 2013 12:20
MaguireZacNaloen Not obviously sarcastic enough??
No - I started off thinking you were being sarcastic but then you went on to talk about a deflected free-kick at Brighton so I assumed you were actually being serious. If you'd only written the bits I quoted then it would've been clear.
by winchester_royal » 17 Jun 2013 12:27
Maguirewinchester_royal Every team needs luck to win a competition. Football matches are often decided by who gets the breaks on that given day, and it stands to reason that to win more games than you lose then you'll need to have more than your fair share of luck
That doesn't "stand to reason" at all. How many games you win isn't a product of how "lucky" you are, it's a product of ability and application. Which famous sportsman was it (Gary Player perhaps?) who said "the harder I practive, the luckier I get"?
And how can the "stats" possibly, in any way, back up this idea that RFC were "luckier" than anyone else? Which stat measures "luck"? It's a totally abstract concept.
And we were "lucky" that West Ham and Saints had bad patches at the right time for us? What does this even mean? You could just as easily say they were both lucky we took a while to get going at the start of the season having sold our best players in the summer.
by winchester_royal » 17 Jun 2013 12:35
by Maguire » 17 Jun 2013 12:40
winchester_royal Luck is absolutely not an 'abstract' concept
by winchester_royal » 17 Jun 2013 12:54
by mumbo-jumbo » 17 Jun 2013 13:18
winchester_royal P.S. In no way is this 'anti-McD' diatribe, he did a fantastic job, but lets not pretend last season was won by a series of tactical masterclasses, he assembled a motivated squad that came together with fantastic spirit that got on a roll, a roll in which received our fair share of lucky breaks. Does this automatically make him a better manager than Adkins as some have tried to suggest? Not IMO, as it is very hard to make any sort of quantitative comparison given the variations in circumstance at any 2 clubs.
by 'lista » 17 Jun 2013 13:23
by Snowball » 17 Jun 2013 13:27
by Maguire » 17 Jun 2013 13:30
mumbo-jumbowinchester_royal P.S. In no way is this 'anti-McD' diatribe, he did a fantastic job, but lets not pretend last season was won by a series of tactical masterclasses, he assembled a motivated squad that came together with fantastic spirit that got on a roll, a roll in which received our fair share of lucky breaks. Does this automatically make him a better manager than Adkins as some have tried to suggest? Not IMO, as it is very hard to make any sort of quantitative comparison given the variations in circumstance at any 2 clubs.
Spot on IMO
by AirRaidSiren » 17 Jun 2013 14:04
Maguiremumbo-jumbowinchester_royal P.S. In no way is this 'anti-McD' diatribe, he did a fantastic job, but lets not pretend last season was won by a series of tactical masterclasses, he assembled a motivated squad that came together with fantastic spirit that got on a roll, a roll in which received our fair share of lucky breaks. Does this automatically make him a better manager than Adkins as some have tried to suggest? Not IMO, as it is very hard to make any sort of quantitative comparison given the variations in circumstance at any 2 clubs.
Spot on IMO
Certainly the last sentence is true.
The reason I keep coming back to this thread is because Reading fans are so fickle and ungrateful that it irks me to see them abusing a man who did such a stellar job for the football club. Taking that as your stance is weird enough, but then trying to rewrite history to demean his achievements is just bizarre. We didn't fluke the Championship. It's a 46 game season. We were the best team over 46 games. That's it.
Does in make Brian a great manager? No. But conversely last season didn't make him a dreadful one either. Or a "baldy pcunt", as some of you like to call him.
by winchester_royal » 17 Jun 2013 14:06
Maguiremumbo-jumbowinchester_royal P.S. In no way is this 'anti-McD' diatribe, he did a fantastic job, but lets not pretend last season was won by a series of tactical masterclasses, he assembled a motivated squad that came together with fantastic spirit that got on a roll, a roll in which received our fair share of lucky breaks. Does this automatically make him a better manager than Adkins as some have tried to suggest? Not IMO, as it is very hard to make any sort of quantitative comparison given the variations in circumstance at any 2 clubs.
Spot on IMO
Does in make Brian a great manager? No. But conversely last season didn't make him a dreadful one either. Or a "baldy pcunt", as some of you like to call him.
by Maguire » 17 Jun 2013 14:16
AirRaidSiren seriously, who gives a shit now?
by Snowball » 17 Jun 2013 14:36
by creative_username_1 » 17 Jun 2013 14:43
Snowball I for one am not ungrateful to McDermott and will applaud him when we play Leeds
Good bloke, did well, chose a strategy which ended up working and got us up but we were
left woefully short of the kind of class required to stay in the Premiership and
that, IMO, was partly due to the squad over-ahieving and "pinching" top spot
the season before.
I think player for player, and as a team there were three teams/squads better than us
Saints, West Ham and Birmingham. Below that three there were 3-4 sides much of a muchness
(including us) and we had a decent shot at the POs, but should have been long odds for automatic.
I can't think of any game in the title season where it was "extra managerial brilliance" that won us the points. It was partly
a few brilliant crucial games from a keeper in form, other sides bottling it, a few opposition shots hitting the woodwork
and Alfie coming good as super-sub.
Surely all you have to do is realise we won at Leeds with Simon Church scoring a wonder goal to realise that it was all a dream?
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