Fabrice29

Hope all the people advocating a rotated/weakened side aren’t the first ones to bemoan the result if we lose.

He, along with a few other of the under 18's were ball boys at one of the first team games a few weeks back fwiw.

Okay, last May and the subsequent summer. You can find all this from page 1 of the Russell Martin thread. It wasn’t speculation, just people posting how we should be going for someone with experience of getting promoted, and rarely actually coming up with any realistic/good names.

There was lots of this chat last summer and it didn’t really make sense then and rarely ended with any realistic/inspiring names. You can now point to the highly experienced, however many promotions and not at all wedded to a possession based style, manager Enzo Maresca as an example too.

I didn't say it did. Nor did I imply it or suggest it did in anyway. I just said having some shit defenders probably is a mitigating factor for conceding lots of goals.

There's also 8 games less in the PL btw but yes, as I said, we've conceded far too many. (I'd argue that any defence with Bednarek/Stephens in is going to concede goals whatever division you're in btw, because the skill of defending your box doesn't change depending on the level and I'm yet to see any evidence either of them can do it consistently but lets not get into that).

I was one of the few that tried to defend Jones on here as well to be fair so don't label me with that He spoke some truths that people weren't ready to hear about some of our players that I quite enjoyed hearing.

It looks like it'll achieve a crack at the play offs. So you might be able to enjoy those draws and a play off victory which will be nice.

Yeah perhaps. That's why I said he's not perfect. Fwiw, our players have conceded 60 plus goals a season since 2017/18, and there's a couple of very common themes running through those teams who are still here btw.

Listen to yourself. Actively choosing not to enjoy things because of a weird little point you want to prove to some people on a online forum.

Club. Record. That's the context. 🎇

I've no idea mate, probably something along the lines of the excuse we used for our efforts last season too.

He's quite clearly a good coach, evidence by the complete change in style he's overseen. I accept the test isn't the same as last season but he can only do what he can do and I personally find it much more enjoyable to watch now (I accept thats subjective). We've scored more goals this season than we're likely to for quite a while and his style is a big part of that. He's also quite clearly a good man manager, evidence by keeping a bunch of players engaged who could have sulked last summer and some of which are still looking for a way out this summer. I personally find him really engaging as a person too, his outlook on the game and life is positive and I much prefer that to alternatives. He's not perfect, obviously. We've conceded far too many and his "style" is to the extreme of course but I do think there's some mitigating factors there (having a keeper who could save some shots, a defence that didn't include 2 CB's we bombed out last season, and wide players who didn't flatter to deceive would help). I accept some of the above is subjective and people have different opinions but the idea he's done a bad job when we're still going to have 3 games to hit our target and we've set a club record for unbeaten games this season is utterly for the fairies and should be called out at every opportunity.

It was the recruitment of players suited for Ralphs system that left us utterly devoid of any quality on the ball, so yes, whilst it started well it gradually declined and left us very short and out of our depth by the end of it. We've gone to the other extreme end this year, I personally much prefer it and I agree there's probably a happy medium ground to be had but I actually don't mind us doing what we've done, because it's much easier to watch and has quite clearly got much better results (obviously with the caveat of the levels).

You've named fads rather than ambitious managers. I think Martin's record would stand up against any of those, so him.