sadoldgit

Could say the same about you Victor Meldrew.

Jeez, already? Nice to give the bloke time. He hasn't even played his team yet. If things are still rubbish Christmas you might have a point, but right now, you don't.

Spot on. Trouble is we have some fans who get their licks from us being rubbish and revel in slagging the club off. Of course Lowe was a Godsend for them but since his depature nothing has changed and the discontent is now moving Pardew's way. Even the new owner came in for stick for not spending millions. It is frustrating but it is going to take time.

What is ironic is that were are more rubbish than we have been for decades but the hanging mob still want to lynch a blokes who have nothing to do with the club now.

Yep, because it was not as if we were desperate for the money was it? I seem to remember those who followed him doing the same thing with Baird, Bale and Jones.

Yeah why would we want a manager back who has the biggest win % of any previous managers? There'd be noting to moan about and God knows there is a faction on here who are only happy when they have something to ***** about. Frankly what has his time at Scotland got to do with us? They are a poor side and I doubt Alex Ferguson could do much with them. If Pardew's record ends up equalling Burley's for us I shall be well pleased. But he going to have to win matches to do that, something Burley did, despite his detractors on here.

Well I tend to think that the years spent in the Premiership were better than those since, so yes, overall I would say that the good times exceed the bad times, for a club of our size.

I acn't be arsed to go through everything here Wes because you have your opinion and nothing will change that. What I will say is how much investment did anyone else bring in when Lowe wasn't here? FFS, good stuff happened, bad stuff happened, as it did to clubs that Lowe had nothing to do with.

What would you rather have? Some like Harry "We'll go up f'sure" Redknapp (and no we didn't f'sure) or someone who is pragmatic and realistic?

Managers can only manage in the league they are in. YOu can carve up the results anyway you like. A manager in the Premiership will have better players to work with. Hoddle did okay with us but how long would that have lasted if he stayed? Hisman management skills are supposed to be non-existant. Anyway, all that stuff is history. Pardew is here now and needs total support. Not the meely mouthed support we have given to managers in the past. Burley didn't get us up but we gave it a good shot that year. It was the best season we have had for years but he still gets slagged off. McMemeny would have lasted 5 minutes these days, the fans on here would have ripped him to shreds well before the cup win. Give Pardew a chance. Not a few games, not a few months. It could well take 2 or 3 seasons to get promoted. There was no magic wand to get us up from the CCC, there is certainly no wand to get us up form Div 1. It is going to take hard work and patience, the latter being something that is in short supply on internet chat forums.

Yep, well I hope this new guy is such a loser that he can take us to a Cup Final too. Still, better just to stay focussed on the negatives eh? Not so complicated then.

Check the stats. As I said beforem success for us was staying up, which we did for longer than we probably should, plus a purple patch under Strachan. The move from the 15k capped Dell was a positive. If you are going to give the bloke a kicking for the negatives you aslo need to balance things up and accept there were positives too.

Other revenue streams, a good infra structure, first class academy...what did the Roman's ever do for us eh?

Wind the clock back a bit Wes. Staying up was success for us which we did for most of his time here, add in a Cup Final, highest ever Prem finish and European football I would say we had a decent run before the wheels came off. My arguement he had more better years than bad years overall.

Yes it is interesting that our two "best" managers had longer to build their teams. THey also took longer to achive success - in fact McMenemy took us down and we stayed down with a team full of 1st Div standard players for a few seasons before he had success. Burley inherited a pile of rubbish from Redknapp and in his first full season was perhaps unlucky not to make the play off final. If he had been able to keep Bale, Baird and Jones and if Hone hadn't effectively come out and publically pulled the plug on any ambition re promotion, perhaps he would have done better if he had stayed longer - we shall never know. What we do know is that when we stick with managers and give them time it has worked better for us (in terms o success) than chopping and changing all the time.

I suppose it you want to split hairs, Lowe was more successful than unsuccessful in his tenure but hey, who cares any more? Getting back to managers, only three have managed to average 1.5 per game or more - Burley, McMenemy and Hoddle. Bates is next with 1.4 per game. Strachan started well but faded. His figure of 1.35 a game is slightly better than Ball's 1.34 per game.

Yep, ain't gonna happen. I think the best we can hope for is mid table this season.

Lose ratio: Redknapp 30.6 (drew a lot) Ball 31.3% McMenemy 31.5% Burley 32.3% Hoddle 34.6% Strachan 35.4% Bates 35.9%

The Forecast is not good then?

McMenemy had the best squad ever. Bates had Ron Davies and two fine wingers to supply him. Don't you think that Burley would have liked Channon, Keegan, Armstrong etc? But he manged to win more matches with inferior players.

What is success? Burley said clearly the aim was the play offs, which he achieved in his only full season. With a slice of luck we might have gone further. We were ceratinly one of the top 6 sides in the Championship that season. What we didn't have was consistency, something you can't buy unless you have a bottomless pit of money. He won nearly 43% of his matches. I don't think he did that badly. Be nice to get somewhere near that now wouldn't it?

Win ratios:- Burley 42.7% Hoddle 42.3% McMenemy 41.7% Bates 39.2% Sturrock 38.5% Strachan 35.5% Doesn't make Burley the greatest manager we ever had but does show that he won more his his matches than anybody else, so not such a mug maybe? Certainly much better than Strachan!

You can think what you like, it doesn't change the stats and what he achieved in a short time. How many away games have we won since (and how many 6-0)? It is just a shame that we didn't keep the services of somebody that knows a thing of two about a "winning mentality" too. Funny that this is a hot topic now but was derrided at the time when we had the "best" exponent of it in the business.

So you are telling me that they just had one brief spell of spending cash and were instantly successful? I seem to recall all of those clubs spending a great deal of cash over a long period of time.

McMenemy had better players to call on and didn't do as well points wise. I am not saying that Burley is the best manager in the world but in his only full season for us he did okay and we have gone downhill rapidly after he left. Perhaps people have forgotten what is was like to win matches because he was the last manager we had that used to do that.