We have an incompetent board who just about got away with their managerial appointment last season but RM was an average champ manager and was never going to be good enough for the prem. To be fair he didn't hide it, he openly stated that he wasn't going to change his tactics even when the team were being spanked week in week out. A half decent manager would have had a bit of self reflection and tried a different way but not him.
The incompetent board then held on to him for half a season when he should have been shown the door after 6 games.
By that stage it was already too late. Juric was no better but our fate had already been sealed. I really don't have any feelings about him either way, he was doomed.
So we had an incompetent board and incompetent managers following an incompetent strategy hiring players to play a way that was doomed. Heads dropped, morale fell and a self fulfilling cycle was established.
We should have adopted the strategy of being a very hard to beat team from day 1, grinding out enough low scoring games to have at least made us competitive. That is what Brighton did, that is what Forest did and others. You cannot expect to come up and play pretty football straight off, you WILL get run over but no-one at the club seemed to realize this. Ramsdale and KWP apart we never had a defence that even came remotely close enough to what was needed.
No-one realistically thought we'd be anything other than a relegation candidate but I think most of us expected to at least be somewhere in the mix come this part of the season. To have effectively been down by Xmas was abject.
The club has to understand that you need to adapt to your environment, not just stay stuck in one mode of thinking. RM was held on to for far too long.
Off the pitch SFC needs to massively improve its scouting and data operations which over time will reap rewards in the academy and transfer market. We used to have them so what happened? Incompetent board strikes again?
Maybe a new recruitment team will make some differences but if the heads running the show stay the same we'll have the same problems going forward. I also think we are really going to suffer next year on the back of this. A season like this really takes its toll.
If the club gets it right I think it's going to take 2 years minimum to get back up. That's if the club gets it right......
