coalman

I'm hoping for another Poch Lambert conversation where a senior player goes to complain about double sessions

The takeover should be done this week so I guess we'll find out.

Can they afford not to? Apparently the board has ghosted him for a while now perhaps in the hope he'll just quit and save them compensation

Russ will be holding out for Rangers. Champions League at his spiritual home north of the border. You don't do the whole low lighting Lineker kitchen interview unless you're going places.

It seems like Martin is a good person to have on your manager shortlist so your fans can be delighted with whoever your board chooses instead of him.

Oh man. It's the hope that kills you

Armstrong's goal scoring record in the Championship means he should have a place in the squad but, in the same way I wouldn't build our defence around Bednarek and Stephens, I would want him in addition to better attacking players. Whether that's a striker or wingers.

It's stage two of the grieving process.

They also said Martin is 100% not happening and it's Rohl instead so 🤷‍♂️

You'd want data to help identify potential targets along with first hand scouting. Data can help you identify targets you may not have been aware of that you want to scout. You want first hand scouting to validate what you're seeing in the data. You might also want to sanity check what your scouts are seeing with data. Doing data without validation is madness. Doing scouting without data is inefficient. A club in our position can afford neither madness or inefficiency (somehow we've managed the worst of both worlds since Sport Republic took over) However - you should only use data if you have a clue how to interpret it. If you don't you wind up getting excited by anomalies without seeking to understand the why behind them.

I'm not sure we ever gave Downes a chance in the Premier League. It felt like we set up so he'd be overrun in midfield every single game.

I'm 100% satisfied that the season has went. Was 0% satisfied during it.

Yes

It already seems like he's on the case. After last summer this is a very refreshing change.

Exactly. Oh wait, you're saying that as a positive.

The scary thing is he's sort of right but for the wrong reasons. It's possible to play well, create lots of chances and lose and play badly create nothing and score from your only chance. As long as you're creating lots of chances and conceding few chances you can expect to win more than you lose. With Martin he was happy as long as he was controlling the football. He didn't mind if we gave our opponents multiple clear cut chances as long as we did it his way. He himself said he was upset that Saints didn't follow his game plan in the playoff final - though I don't remember him being too cut up about it at the final whistle.

Maybe injured and shit? Sign him up!

Only over a sufficient time period. For example - you could play a game and create 30 chances to your opponents 1 and lose 1-0. Does that mean your approach to the game was wrong? Probably (though not certainly) not. The outcome alone is useful and indicative but insufficient. So for example - we got promoted from the Championship and scored lots of goals. Was our process right? What signals were there to indicate it was or wasn't working. If you purely looked on the outcome - we got promoted - you could argue our process was good. Yet, from from the number of goals we conceded you could also argue we were likely to be ruthlessly exposed at the higher level. The outcome alone isn't sufficient to say that our process for approaching football was good. As evidenced by this season. Same process very different outcome. In any endeavour you can do everything right and still lose. You can also be utterly shit and still win. It's called Outcome Bias (or Self-serving Bias) in decision making and often results in us learning the wrong thing because we focus on outcomes to the exclusion of all else. If you ask someone what was the best decision you made last year they are highly likely to share a decision that led to a good outcome for them. The same if you ask about the worst decision they made they're likely to say something with a bad outcome. If you truly want to learn you have to focus on how you made the decision to decide whether it was a good decision or not and divorce that from the outcome. If you make better decisions you should have better outcomes over a long time period. However, if you solely correlate good outcome with good decision/process you are limiting your ability to learn. Another example would be playing poker - you can play perfectly and lose on the last card due to chance. Is that a bad process or not? You get good at poker by examining everything up to the outcome because the outcome is not fully in your control. Over time you end up with more good outcomes than bad outcomes. The same is true in anything where there is an element of chance. Outcome bias excuses our bad outcomes as bad luck and makes us pat ourselves on the back for our ability when things turn out ok. It's why I roll my eyes when someone says "but Martin got us promoted" to justify his brand of football. The same could be true of us getting relegated. Knowing what was bad in your process is how you correct it. However good outcomes are not guaranteed. Another example might Nottingham Forest's gamble on signing everyone when they joined the Premier League. The outcome has been good for them but I would argue the process they took to get there was dubious at best and it could've gone south in many ways. Outcomes are still important because you want to correlate your process to the outcome but focusing on outcome to the exclusion of process is a blind spot that inhibits growth.

I'm not sure that his 2nd dad is relevant. Or that his 2nd dad built a team around his best traits. Martin had a lot of reluctance to play him at all initially from where I was sitting.

There's an easy solution to this. Simply get the chairman's daughter to film herself putting up "Free Mateus Fernandes" posters around Nottingham. Their job is to get the players they want for as little as possible. Our job is the ensure we get what we consider to be fair value for our players. Whining about that in the press is just part of the performative art of it.

I'd assume he only stays if Still thinks he's going to do the job he wants. Same with any of the players. After last season they should embrace anyone who walks through the front door with a clue. If they think they know better after the shit show we just witnessed then they should be out the door.

I choose to make of it that next season is going to be great.

The trouble is neither of those arguments is entirely right. Results do matter and process does matter. If your process is good then over a longer time horizon you can expect better results. If your results are good then it doesn't mean your process is good. And that's the trap Martin fell into. We had good results in the Championship but that doesn't mean our approach was good. We had shit results in the Premier League so he persisted with his process on the basis of his belief that his process was good. The trouble is it was apparent that elements of his process simply didn't work. And obviously didn't work. A winner's mentality, and why Martin is never going to be anything other than a Pep wannabe, is to be constantly re-evaluating your process. Your process is never perfect and always can be improved and adapted. We had a prime example of that during the playoffs that we somehow didn't learn from. Not only that but this rigid inflexibility leads to you becoming predictable and anyone capable of adapting will take you apart. At the start of the season we looked more threatening but as it became clear how we played we got easier to play against every week. Throw in the desire to be friends with everyone and you wind up with a feedback and reflection mechanism where you get worse over time. Which then becomes the cultural norm. Net result is every game you played well and were brave but unlucky. Nobody learns and you wind up in a cultural death spiral. Winners learn and adapt. Losers repeat and make excuses. The fine learn is in how you learn.

I haven't written him off at Championship level but he is tainted by having fully embraced Martin Ball. As evidenced by his ill advised statement that it was working and the problem was the fans didn't understand football enough to fully appreciate it. I prefer my centre backs to display better judgement on and off the pitch.

Don't forget his ability to develop youth talent. Without Martin, Tyler Dibling would be just another 19 year old hanging around the training ground watching YouTube videos. People talk a lot about his style of football without properly crediting his man management and ability to develop players.