Last Night

[chipsncake]

I agree he’s not getting the best out of them and I don’t think Clough was a wank manager. He has his faults for sure but he also had strengths. We say it’s the same squad but Clough finished 5th with Brayford, Murphy, Holt, Doyle, Davies and Davies again at his disposal. Adkins doesn’t have them but does have Edgar, Woolford, Hammond, Sammon and Sharp. The only real assets left from Clough’s reign seemed to be Murphy, Brayford, Adams and Done. 2 of them haven’t been available to Adkins. But I think a bigger issue is that the squad had been assembled by Clough to play the way he wanted. They were therefore more likely to buy into his philosophies etc. It might be that Clough’s players are not behind Adkins and he needs to replace them with people who are. What Clough did better than Adkins has done was getting the best out of predominantly someone else’s players in his first season. But, from then on, his squad building was mostly poor. I would hope that is the area where Adkins will exceed Clough and will recruit people of the right character with a good balance to the squad. For me, the players he has recruited haven’t had enough pace between them but they have had the right sort of attitudes at least. He needs to get the balance a lot better in the summer as well as having people with good attitudes. I can’t accept that changing manager yet again is the way to fix this mess. There has to be something else and for me, that is letting a manager with a very good CV have a proper crack and building a team of real quality and application and then judge him.

But dane, it's all ifs and maybes, I'm looking for something in Adkins' make up to suggest he has it in him to turn things round. No good pointing to an ok CV from yesteryear when he's shown zilch in every department since he walked through our door. Be interesting to see whether the board see it your way or mine if we lose again Saturday, but one things for sure if Barnsley do beat us Adkins could well find he's lost the majority of fans and from there there's only one way it's likely to go.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

But dane, it's all ifs and maybes, I'm looking for something in Adkins' make up to suggest he has it in him to turn things round. No good pointing to an ok CV from yesteryear when he's shown zilch in every department since he walked through our door. Be interesting to see whether the board see it your way or mine if we lose again Saturday, but one things for sure if Barnsley do beat us Adkins could well find he's lost the majority of fans and from there there's only one way it's likely to go.

I fear you could be right. He will be under pressure. I think if he was sacked, a new man might lift us in the short term but I can't see us attracting anyone with his sort of record. ok CV is a huge understatement. Sack him and we'll probably end up with someone like Lee Clark or at best maybe a Chris Powell

 

[Smirth]

We probably will sack him because the fuckers running the club are totally useless.

We may as well just hand the job to Morgan for the rest of the season if they do.

 

[Pittsburg Blade]

Much as I understand the fans' frustrations, the booing and singing "you're not fit to wear this shirt" don't particular help either. One poster above said that you'd think the abuse would be enough to spark some enthusiasm, but it can obviously work the other way too. It's obviously a chicken-and-egg situation, in that we only boo when they play badly, but I can't help see it as a vicious circle and the players/fans will get more and more alienated from each other.

To use the OP's analogy, it would be like me turning up to work, turning my computer on and my boss walking up behind me telling that me I didn't turn it on properly, and then proceeding to berate me every five minutes for each thing that I did less than perfectly. In that kind of situation, I'd probably feel pissed off and I'm sure that the quality of my work would suffer. I'd certainly have one eye on looking for a new job.

I know that 'we' pay their wages and that we're entitled to provide feedback and that they should be big enough to ignore the abuse. However, it does appear that we're the bullying kind of boss that thinks that shouting at people will get the best out of them. Some of them are still just young lads and they're only human and they'll wobble under that sort of pressure. It's certainly hard to get behind the players when they're not doing well, but one side has got to break this vicious circle and I'd like to think that the fans could be big enough to try that.

Good post! We've seen what can happen at Bramall Lane when the times are good. 30k+ Blades filling the stadium. Chip Butty anthem to make a grown man cry etc. We all want that back, but seem to be permanently let down, hence the massive (sic) frustration. We were promised "game changing investment" that has never arrived. Van Gaal saw he had a midfield problem and went and bought the best in Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger. We have less resources obviously but we dumped Doyle and went for a barely fit Hammond..? You can get out of Lg1 with proper investment, surely with our Saudi backing and minimum 20k Blades every week we can do better than this. Who the heck is running this sh*t show Mr. Cabe?

 

[chipsncake]

I fear you could be right. He will be under pressure. I think if he was sacked, a new man might lift us in the short term but I can't see us attracting anyone with his sort of record. ok CV is a huge understatement. Sack him and we'll probably end up with someone like Lee Clark or at best maybe a Chris Powell

How right you are, which takes us on to the next problem. As much as I am convinced Adkins is not up to the job, I'm afraid those involved in appointing his replacement aren't up to it also. Whilst sticking with Adkins isn't the answer, unless McCabe accepts the recruitment of his successor should be taken out of his hands then we are on the road to nowhere. They say the Prince doesn't suffer fools gladly, maybe we are about to find out what he's really made of.

 

[Red Hot Currie]

A lot has been said about the fact that our players are on better wages than most in this Division. I don't know if that's true or not.... but my feeling is that it is. It's also been pointed out that many of them are journeymen and/or crocks. Again, I'd go along with that view.

Clough gets a load of stick for this..... and he certainly deserves much of it from a footballing perspective because he's the guy who wanted them brought them in. BUT..... I'm not sure that he's responsible for the wages they were offered....? Isn't that Mr Brannigan's remit....? Just where the hell is the bloke now? Who is he and who is asking him to be accountable for the decisions on wsges/contracts which now appear to be killing us???

I'm not interested in hounding Clough - he's part of the past now. But Brannigan remains in post (whatever his post is). For me it's at this level where our club has made and continues to make some monumentally, Olympic standard shit decisions. I'd love to see our squad cleared of the dross which is currently choking us, but there's a level above the football management that needs raking out too. I think the wage thieves at the club go beyond the playing staff.... and potentially cause much bigger, long term damage. God, how we miss a Derek Dooley character right now......

 

[Jehovah]

It was coming. We didn't sort out the defence in the off season which was absolutely unforgivable. Imagine weeks before the window closed I told you we would see long, j Mac and Collins I in our defence? I'd have been banned for trolling.

 

[ziggy4001]

All went wrong as soon as McEv was announced as club captain. Baffling decision that.