The Relegation Years

[The Royal Forester]

In 88 and 98, the squads were shit. In 2008, we didn't strengthen in January.

Bit early to suggest a continuation of the the pattern.

Is it still too early?

[The Royal Forester]

We are far too good a team to go down IMO. We are in a purple patch. Nothing more.

We will finish about 14th I think.

Are we still too good to go down?

[The Royal Forester]

We're shit, but we will gradually get ever so less shit.

Be surprised if we go down.

Aren't we still as bad as we were?

[windermereROYAL]

We did it a year early in the 70s. 1977 we went down.

[Dickie's Spear]

1977. Was that the final game at Villa when we went down ?. I remember being there it was a very sad day still remember it painfully well.

[LUX]

That was 1971. Our centenary.

[From Despair To Where?]

In 88 and 98, the squads were shit. In 2008, we didn't strengthen in January.

Bit early to suggest a continuation of the the pattern.

Is it still too early?

Yes, but the system isn't working, the players can't do it consistently, and something needs to change, be that tactically or personel wise. I fear Stam has emotionally too much invested in trying to make the system work and has got the blinkers on. He needs to show pragmatism and bloody quick or the owners must get someone in who does.

Personally I think Gary Monk is looking as good an option as anyone at the moment. He turned Swansea around in pretty similar circumstances. Not sure if he's shown enough to prove he's up to the long haul though.

I think it was around Christmas that I said on here that I thought that the season was starting to shape up like 2007/08 where we were constantly one result away from pulling ourselves clear of the relegation shitstorm only to go to shit in January and February's and start losing to teams around us (actually had we lost 1-0 at home to Fulham instead of 2-0, we would have stayed up). Carry on as we are and it doesn't look good.

[Dickie's Spear]

That was 1971. Our centenary.

Thank you yes the years are getting away ! Was real bad as I think it was our first visit to the 4th division.

[Royalwaster]

We are far too good a team to go down IMO. We are in a purple patch. Nothing more.

We will finish about 14th I think.

Would be very concerned if this was our purple patch...

Completely agree, it's nothing. It's only 5 games since our last win. People just seem to go full on d1ck mode in football circles

You seem to be missing the fact that our only win was against the team in last place ...

[BR0B0T]

I think it was around Christmas that I said on here that I thought that the season was starting to shape up like 2007/08 where we were constantly one result away from pulling ourselves clear of the relegation shitstorm only to go to shit in January and February's and start losing to teams around us (actually had we lost 1-0 at home to Fulham instead of 2-0, we would have stayed up). Carry on as we are and it doesn't look good.

Moder8 success can be a killer, a slow cancer that makes you think things may work

[Denver Royal]

Yep, Monk might be a decent shout. He does like a lot of fan support, though. He had that at Swansea and Leeds, but less so at Boro, and he commented on it towards the end. He also spent a lot of money at Boro. Just saying...

[CountryRoyal]

We're shit, but we will gradually get ever so less shit.

Be surprised if we go down.

Aren't we still as bad as we were?

No, we're actually worse. I have no problem admitting that initially I thought relegation talk was premature and unjust, and now am much more aware of the precarious position we find ourselves in. I think there is a very, very real chance we will go down under Stam. I haven't made any effort to hide that so I'm not sure what the use is of quoting me from October. If point scoring is your thing though I hope it makes you feel better that now you can tell everyone you were right all along - how much solace that will give you in League One I'm not sure.

[The Royal Forester]

We're shit, but we will gradually get ever so less shit.

Be surprised if we go down.

Aren't we still as bad as we were?

No, we're actually worse. I have no problem admitting that initially I thought relegation talk was premature and unjust, and now am much more aware of the precarious position we find ourselves in. I think there is a very, very real chance we will go down under Stam. I haven't made any effort to hide that so I'm not sure what the use is of quoting me from October. If point scoring is your thing though I hope it makes you feel better that now you can tell everyone you were right all along - how much solace that will give you in League One I'm not sure.

Sorry, if I upset you, I was not trying to point score. I would not have any solace from relegation to the third tier. been there, done that and got the club shirt. I think being in the lower divisions could well spell the end of this club as we are not in a good financial state. I have enjoyed the best period in the club's history to want it to end at any time, is far better up here.

[strap]

Yep, Monk might be a decent shout. He does like a lot of fan support, though. He had that at Swansea and Leeds, but less so at Boro, and he commented on it towards the end. He also spent a lot of money at Boro. Just saying...

Sorry a no-go. He simply chases the money, and we don't have enough to interest him.

[handbags_harris]

Just to confirm the death of so-called Dutch "Total Football", see the recent article in When Saturday Comes titled Total Disaster, which contains this quote about De Boer's spell at Palace - "his faults partially reflect the inflexible and obsolete thinking that now characterises the Dutch game".

van Gaal, De Boer, Koeman and Stam - all playing boring, pedestrian, one-paced, (allegedly possession based), football that has no chance of success in the English game. The Dutch National team failed to qualify for the recent WC Finals, nor did they qualify for the 2016 Euros. The last Dutch side to appear in a CL Final was Ajax in 1996.

I agree with the broader sentiment of your post, but I can't let this highlighted comment pass by without further comment.

In the 25 years since the European Cup was rebranded to the Champions League in 1992 (the £££ watershed moment for both Premier League and European football) 45 of the 50 finalists have come from one of four nations:-

England - 10 (Man Utd x 4; Chelsea x 2; Liverpool x 2; Arsenal x 1)
Italy - 13 (AC Milan x 6; Juventus x 6; Inter x 1)
Spain - 15 (Real Madrid x 6; Barcelona x 5; Valencia x 2; Atletico Madrid x 2)
Germany - 7 (Bayern Munich x 4; Borussia Dortmund x 2; Bayer Leverkusen x 1)

Of the remaining five finalists, two each have been from France (Marseille and Monaco) and the Netherlands (Ajax x 2), one from Portugal (Porto).

With the exception perhaps of Porto and Ajax, and maybe Atletico Madrid in contemporary times who buck the disproportionately weighted trends towards Barcelona and Real Madrid, you have to say that the strong denominator here is £££ - the more money a league has, and the more money a club in a rich league has, the more likely they are to be able to compete for this specific trophy, and that denominator is even more heavily weighted towards more recent years. The problem with the Dutch league is it isn't a rich league, and even though the league possesses three of the biggest clubs in Europe, because of the money they're not able to compete because any player with an ounce of talent will be tempted to head to one of the big leagues. Take for example the last competitive Dutch starting line up v Sweden - just one player plays in the Netherlands - Tony Vilhena for Feyenoord (very Danny Williams like, and it won't be long before he is snapped up by a fair to middling PL club). The rest play in Spain, France, England, Germany and Turkey. Even the last Dutch starting line up v Romania in November contained just three players who play in Holland -Veltman, De Ligt and Berghuis. So it's not that the Dutch aren't producing decent players (albeit far from the world class standard we grew accustomed to), it's that no sooner do they display any talent than they are shipped off elsewhere in Europe.

The rest of your post (which I deleted to emphasise the point I wished to challenge) is absolutely spot on however.

[Forbury Lion]

Just to confirm the death of so-called Dutch "Total Football", see the recent article in When Saturday Comes titled Total Disaster, which contains this quote about De Boer's spell at Palace - "his faults partially reflect the inflexible and obsolete thinking that now characterises the Dutch game".

van Gaal, De Boer, Koeman and Stam - all playing boring, pedestrian, one-paced, (allegedly possession based), football that has no chance of success in the English game. The Dutch National team failed to qualify for the recent WC Finals, nor did they qualify for the 2016 Euros. The last Dutch side to appear in a CL Final was Ajax in 1996.

Any chance you could do 4 photocopies of the article and send each one to the club addressed to Gourlay, Tevreden, Stam and the Board?

[muirinho]

Just to confirm the death of so-called Dutch "Total Football", see the recent article in When Saturday Comes titled Total Disaster, which contains this quote about De Boer's spell at Palace - "his faults partially reflect the inflexible and obsolete thinking that now characterises the Dutch game".

van Gaal, De Boer, Koeman and Stam - all playing boring, pedestrian, one-paced, (allegedly possession based), football that has no chance of success in the English game. The Dutch National team failed to qualify for the recent WC Finals, nor did they qualify for the 2016 Euros. The last Dutch side to appear in a CL Final was Ajax in 1996.

Any chance you could do 4 photocopies of the article and send each one to the club addressed to Gourlay, Tevreden, Stam and the Board?

This article might also come in handy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why- ... -rq0wp6grq

As it's behind a paywall, here's some extracts.
Why former defenders don’t always make good defensive managers

One of the interesting features of the Premier League season so far has been the malfunctioning defences of five of its underperforming teams — Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Everton, West Ham United and, to a lesser extent, Liverpool — and the identity of the men presiding over these shonky backlines: Eddie Howe, Slaven Bilic, Jürgen Klopp and, before their sacking, Frank de Boer and Ronald Koeman. Notice anything these five men have in common? That’s right: during their playing careers, they were all defenders — in the case of Bilic, De Boer and Koeman, at the game’s highest echelon. So why are they seemingly unable to organise a defence?

Defending is, theoretically, the simpler of the two core constituents of a football manager’s job: stopping goals can be achieved through shape and organisation, whereas scoring them depends more on quick and incisive ball movement, creating something out of nothing. That’s why, when a manager takes over a dysfunctional team, they’re usually able to tighten the defence much more quickly than oil a creaking attack. Logically, you’d think that, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of organising a defence, years spent enacting those plans and practices as a player would confer a substantial head start. So why doesn’t that appear to be the case?
............
Look at the work done by Koeman, Klopp, Bilic, De Boer and Howe this season and one common theme emerges: each has done a lot of chopping and changing with their defence. Bilic and Howe have both oscillated between a back three and a back four, as did Koeman and De Boer, ultimately to their downfall. In fact, Koeman didn’t line up with the same defence from one game to the next at any point this season. Klopp is the only one who hasn’t changed shape, keeping faith with his back four, but he has made numerous personnel changes, in particular rotating liberally between Dejan Lovren and Ragnar Klavan in the left-sided centre-back position, and Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez at right back.

Does having played as a defender breed a damaging overconfidence in one’s ability to experiment with defensive systems? The mind returns to Klopp’s indignant comment after the 3-2 win over Leicester City that he “could write a book” on the art of defending. Perhaps there is a problem of information overload, of overthinking things, in a part of the pitch where the most effective plans hinge on simplicity.
............
Do defenders have to work harder to sell themselves as attacking coaches, in order to avoid being pigeonholed as boring or pragmatic? It’s a common complaint that defenders who become primarily defensive coaches — like Dyche, Sam Allardyce or Tony Pulis — are overlooked for big jobs. We often talk about a lost relish for the art of pure defending, but it seems that many of the most successful, marketable defender-managers of the recent generation are not those that lionise the nitty-gritty of penalty-box defending.
If you think about it, it isn’t so illogical that coaches who spent their playing careers trying to score goals would be good at working out how to stop players scoring: it’s the classic poacher-turned-gamekeeper scenario.
............
Consider this quote from Jérôme Boateng, the Bayern Munich defender who spent his early youth career as an attacker: “Want to know the best way to figure out what a defender does? Become a striker,” he wrote for The Players’ Tribune last year. “I’d been playing offence since I was six, so it was like having the top-secret plans. I knew where the strikers wanted to go, what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it, because I was one of them.”


So - we need an ex-striker to coach our defence, and an ex-defender to coach our strikeforce!

[Forbury Lion]

So - we need an ex-striker to coach our defence, and an ex-defender to coach our strikeforce!

Funny enough, I recall Alan Pardew saying that was the system they had with us, he coached the defence and Martin Allen attack - I know they were both midfielders, but in my mind Allen was more defensive and Pards more attacking.

Do we have any ex strikers on the coaching staff?

[Snowflake Royal]

So - we need an ex-striker to coach our defence, and an ex-defender to coach our strikeforce!

Funny enough, I recall Alan Pardew saying that was the system they had with us, he coached the defence and Martin Allen attack - I know they were both midfielders, but in my mind Allen was more defensive and Pards more attacking.

Do we have any ex strikers on the coaching staff?

Gilkes played as a winger and wingback, so had plenty of offensive and defensive duties. Although only being able to judge on the latter stages of his career he wasn't best known for the thnking aspects of either, more the kick and chase approach.