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Well clearly this window was all about balancing the books from last summer's spend. I don't blame Gibson for having to do it, but it's his and the recruitment team fault that we're stuck where we are. But can anyone actually explain Adrian Bevingtons role at the club? Head of Recruitment Operations? Also, Interesting to see this little snippet from Gary Gill last summer - “We thought we had to try and change the make-up of the squad in many ways. We felt like we wanted to get a little bit of our identity back and we got on with it pretty quickly." So did we achieve that? What identity were we trying to reclaim? Was that scrapped when we sacked Monk and brought in Pulis? Did we get close to that identity this year?

 

Obviously the club have struggled to retain and replace this summer. We've got 1 senior full back at the club, we don't have a top end Championship winger. Assombalonga struggles to score goals in this system. Will Gestede reach previous heights if he can stay injury free? Fletcher an expensive flop? Is Hugill good enough? We lack pace, width and creativity. Most importantly, we lack depth and options.

 

With the loan window not closing untill the end of the month, do we have ambition and pull to secure targets over other Championship clubs? Do players want to play for a Pulis team?

 

Lastly, why are some fans being ridiculed for feeling negative about the club? We can all see the weaknesses within our club and it's failure to act upon them, but isn't it just born out of frustration as we all want to see the club moving in the right direction?

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I've discussed this loads of times on here with people over the last couple of years.

 

The problem at the club is that we never seen to have a long term plan and we lurch from one extreme to the other with our appointments. It goes all the way back to Southgate's appointment and when you look at the subsequent managers we've changed the way we play with wholesale changes to the squad virtually every time.

 

We've done the 'young, hungry players' experiment under Southgate, the Scottish experiment under Strachan where we signed loads of 'Men'. Mowbray had no money at all and was tasked with playing more entertaining football while working on a shoestring budget.

We did the Spanish experiment after that and when things went pear shaped under Karanka it was a case of getting every Spanish speaker out of the club. After Karanka we wanted to change from a defensive emphasis to open attacking football with mostly home grown players under Garry Monk.

We've now changed to the other extreme under Pulis where we are looking at going back to pragmatic football with less flair.

 

Steve Gibson has been brilliant at the club and the years under Robson and McClaren were fantastic. He was a young, hungry chairman who's ambition transformed the club. Saying that when you look back it was almost impossible to fail, we were one of the biggest spenders in the country at the time and we could blow most of our rivals out of the water with transfer fees and wages.

 

I'll always be grateful to Steve Gibson for those years we had but now the job of running our club is so much more demanding. We can't spend our way out of the division anymore and although we are still a big fish in the Championship we are far more reliant on making good decisions off the field.

 

As a club of our size you live or die on your managerial appointments and recruitment and we keep making too many mistakes.

 

Under the current method of chopping and changing we'll hit the jackpot every now and again like we did with Karanka, then we'll ruin a few years of good work by hiring the wrong people like Agnew and Monk.

 

Ideally I'd like a long term plan with us sitting down and deciding what type of club we want to be, look at a club like Southampton who've consistently recruited good managers bought brilliantly in the transfer market and have a top class academy.

 

If we are going to strive to play entertaining football like we wanted to under Monk then stick with it under the next manager, the same with pragmatic football after Pulis has gone. If we want to change the identity of the club then at least evolve rather than ripping everything up and starting again every couple of years.

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I've discussed this loads of times on here with people over the last couple of years.

 

The problem at the club is that we never seen to have a long term plan and we lurch from one extreme to the other with our appointments. It goes all the way back to Southgate's appointment and when you look at the subsequent managers we've changed the way we play with wholesale changes to the squad virtually every time.

 

We've done the 'young, hungry players' experiment under Southgate, the Scottish experiment under Strachan where we signed loads of 'Men'. Mowbray had no money at all and was tasked with playing more entertaining football while working on a shoestring budget.

We did the Spanish experiment after that and when things went pear shaped under Karanka it was a case of getting every Spanish speaker out of the club. After Karanka we wanted to change from a defensive emphasis to open attacking football with mostly home grown players under Garry Monk.

We've now changed to the other extreme under Pulis where we are looking at going back to pragmatic football with less flair.

 

Steve Gibson has been brilliant at the club and the years under Robson and McClaren were fantastic. He was a young, hungry chairman who's ambition transformed the club. Saying that when you look back it was almost impossible to fail, we were one of the biggest spenders in the country at the time and we could blow most of our rivals out of the water with transfer fees and wages.

 

I'll always be grateful to Steve Gibson for those years we had but now the job of running our club is so much more demanding. We can't spend our way out of the division anymore and although we are still a big fish in the Championship we are far more reliant on making good decisions off the field.

 

As a club of our size you live or die on your managerial appointments and recruitment and we keep making too many mistakes.

 

Under the current method of chopping and changing we'll hit the jackpot every now and again like we did with Karanka, then we'll ruin a few years of good work by hiring the wrong people like Agnew and Monk.

 

Ideally I'd like a long term plan with us sitting down and deciding what type of club we want to be, look at a club like Southampton who've consistently recruited good managers bought brilliantly in the transfer market and have a top class academy.

 

If we are going to strive to play entertaining football like we wanted to under Monk then stick with it under the next manager, the same with pragmatic football after Pulis has gone. If we want to change the identity of the club then at least evolve rather than ripping everything up and starting again every couple of years.

 

Some really good points there but there is a problem with your thought process. What happens when the club's long term plan isn't working in the short term and fans are crying out for change?

 

Would anyone have been happy if Monk had stayed last year all because it was part of a long term plan? 

 

Football is a very short sighted business if results aren't good in the short term fans demand change. There are very few managers who last more than a couple of seasons and those that do tend to be consistently successful.

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No I'm not saying that we should have kept Monk but I think if we were committed to playing a certain type of football we shouldn't have swung from one extreme to the other and appointed Pulis.

 

If we go back a bit further I think Karanka's reign had been pretty successful apart from the last few months. I would have gone for a foreign coach rather than Monk and tried to continue the things that brought us success under Karanka, being well organised and drilled as a team and utilising the overseas market where you tend to get better value for players.

 

We obviously had to change personnel after relegation but I think giving an inexperienced manager the task of transforming the club in the space of a summer was too much.

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No I'm not saying that we should have kept Monk but I think if we were committed to playing a certain type of football we shouldn't have swung from one extreme to the other and appointed Pulis.

 

If we go back a bit further I think Karanka's reign had been pretty successful apart from the last few months. I would have gone for a foreign coach rather than Monk and tried to continue the things that brought us success under Karanka, being well organised and drilled as a team and utilising the overseas market where you tend to get better value for players.

 

We obviously had to change personnel after relegation but I think giving an inexperienced manager the task of transforming the club in the space of a summer was too much.

 

Spot on sir.

 

It was bizarre that once AK went, the club decided that we would cleanse the team of all foreigners and appoint an English coach. The clever thing would have been to have appointed a decent coach from abroad that would work well with the players we had, whilst we were still in the Premier League. Instead we waited until we had been relegated, were therefore less attractive and for some reason thought that Monk was the answer, he never was and never will be.

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No I'm not saying that we should have kept Monk but I think if we were committed to playing a certain type of football we shouldn't have swung from one extreme to the other and appointed Pulis.

 

If we go back a bit further I think Karanka's reign had been pretty successful apart from the last few months. I would have gone for a foreign coach rather than Monk and tried to continue the things that brought us success under Karanka, being well organised and drilled as a team and utilising the overseas market where you tend to get better value for players.

 

We obviously had to change personnel after relegation but I think giving an inexperienced manager the task of transforming the club in the space of a summer was too much.

 

Spot on sir.

 

It was bizarre that once AK went, the club decided that we would cleanse the team of all foreigners and appoint an English coach. The clever thing would have been to have appointed a decent coach from abroad that would work well with the players we had, whilst we were still in the Premier League. Instead we waited until we had been relegated, were therefore less attractive and for some reason thought that Monk was the answer, he never was and never will be.

 

Given the divisions that were clearly there in the squad I don't think it was that bizarre really.

 

And one of the criticisms of the Monk appointment was that he was going to be "too like karanka", that he was quite defensive minded and didn't have a plan B (the fact is that he turned out very differently!).

 

I do wonder how many people would be happy if after Pulis we try to get another pragmatic, defensive manager and how many will want another big change to a different style?

 

Overall I really agree with you both, but fans are very fickle creatures

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No I'm not saying that we should have kept Monk but I think if we were committed to playing a certain type of football we shouldn't have swung from one extreme to the other and appointed Pulis.

 

If we go back a bit further I think Karanka's reign had been pretty successful apart from the last few months. I would have gone for a foreign coach rather than Monk and tried to continue the things that brought us success under Karanka, being well organised and drilled as a team and utilising the overseas market where you tend to get better value for players.

 

We obviously had to change personnel after relegation but I think giving an inexperienced manager the task of transforming the club in the space of a summer was too much.

 

Spot on sir.

 

It was bizarre that once AK went, the club decided that we would cleanse the team of all foreigners and appoint an English coach. The clever thing would have been to have appointed a decent coach from abroad that would work well with the players we had, whilst we were still in the Premier League. Instead we waited until we had been relegated, were therefore less attractive and for some reason thought that Monk was the answer, he never was and never will be.

 

Given the divisions that were clearly there in the squad I don't think it was that bizarre really.

 

And one of the criticisms of the Monk appointment was that he was going to be "too like karanka", that he was quite defensive minded and didn't have a plan B (the fact is that he turned out very differently!).

 

I do wonder how many people would be happy if after Pulis we try to get another pragmatic, defensive manager and how many will want another big change to a different style?

 

Overall I really agree with you both, but fans are very fickle creatures

 

Does Gibson really give a stuff what we think when he appoints a manager? I'm sure he will have known that Steve Agnew wasn't going to be a popular choice to replace Karanka but he did it anyway.

 

You're right fans are fickle but there'll also turn up to watch winning football whether it's attractive or not. Karanka used to get criticised for saying it but he was right when he said that he added 10 thousand fans onto our attendance.

 

I don't think this has to become an entertaining vs pragmatic thread either. When I said about our identity as club there's more to it than just that.

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If only we were willing to pay a manager on the same level as our top earner on the pitch. I appreciate that we are probably paying Pulis a fair amount now but somehow I think that is an anomaly and down to Gibson somewhat panicking when Monk failed. I reckon we could attract quite a few quality managers both domestic and foreign if we are willing to pay them 40-50 k a week. A good manager is after all more important than another expensive player.

 

I appreciate that it's probabæy harder for a foreign manager to adapt to the Championship than the Premier League though, but I do hope that we are leaving no stone unturned when Pulis stops - hopefully after securing promotion. There is a lot of managerial talent on the continent and I bet a lot would jump at the chance to come here on wages they can only dream about.

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