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Neil Warnock, Steve Gibson & Long Term Vision?


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1 hour ago, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

Sounds like the writing is on the wall for Warnock, I’m not surprised after our recent home results, I wonder who Gibbo’s got lined up. 

Yes no doubt our shrewd chairman's football knowledge will once again come into play when picking our next manager I wait with bated breath, surely the law of averages mean he can't keep getting it wrong can he.

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As it's looking a virtual certainty that Warnock is going to get the job for next season, it's worth noting both the significant positives and negatives that will result from Warnock being our manager

👀Thanks for the invite, really appreciate it.

The Evening Gazette has said that Steve Gibson is against a director of football because it would add another 6 figure salary onto the wage bill. I can't help but question whether that is the true mot

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11 minutes ago, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

I know, that was tongue in cheek wishful thinking. I guess there is still a chance that NW will decide he’s not going to stay on. 

Nah, he'll want one 'proper' season at least.

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We've never had any long-term plan so I don't see Warnock being here on one-year deals as anything new. We've only had words from Gibson promising a long-term plan, but in substance there has never been a long-term plan as we go in a very different direction with every manager. It's only a plan if it's followed, otherwise it's just PR baloney like the "golden thread" which lasted the whole 41 games of Woodgate's tenure. At least with Warnock here, there's going to be no illusion of a long-term plan. 

Warnock built the backbone of his Cardiff promotion winning squad through free transfers who turned into great signings so I'd trust him to build a good team here on a tight budget.  Whilst he has had some bad signings for us, I'd trust him a lot more than any other manager to have a wide scope on new signings and selling players to raise funds. Warnock is ambitious and I'm sure that he'll only stay here next season if he thinks he can get us promoted, so I don't think he's going to keep here to tread water like we have this season.

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Not a popular opinion on here and  football is all about opinions but I do hope NA stays.

He has taken us from relegation certainties to outside the play offs in the space of 6 months. On that basis alone i think he both deserves and has earned the right to have a proper crack next season.

Has he made mistakes along the way? Course he has.  But he also done some very good things. 
 

In the 4 seasons we been back in this league he is the manager i feel most confident with.

NW knows what we need and for me he not wrong in the weakness he identifies. I hope with a proper summer and some backing we can have a squad that can challenge under a manager who knows what it takes to challenge for promotion.

 

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On 2/24/2021 at 1:57 PM, DanFromDownSouth said:

Southgate's appointment was the start of the slow decline. Southgate's/the club's decision of letting Schwarzer go was probably the biggest nail in the coffin for the relegation season. 

It's what Gibson does when we are skint, appoints a player the fans love. Southgate, Mowbray and Woody.

 

 

 

 

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Personally I want an end to these ‘caution first’ containment managers. That doesn’t mean I’m expecting guardiola type football because believe it or not you can have exciting football without constant silky passing moves.

Things that *** me off that I want to see an end to is:

No movement up front and from midfield - We seem to have had this problem for years, static isolated strikers. Monk was the only manager who looked like trying to solve it, some of the moves from Britt, braithwaite and bamford were really good when things clicked.

Aimless balls up the pitch - For the love of god can we please get a manager who isn’t seemingly happy just to see the ball going up the pitch by any means necessary. We almost always lose it and end up under pressure. Again I’m not expecting to play out from the back, but at least good it up there with a plan, target a full back or get guys up in support of the receiver.

Attacking patterns of play - When was the last time we regularly put some good forward passing moves together? When did we regularly counter with purpose and direction? Sick of seeing the majority of our goals come from seemingly ‘lucky’ ball rebounds, loose balls in the box etc. I call it ‘hopeful’ football where you just ‘get it in there’. Yes many goals will come from this route but I don’t want it to be our ONLY chance of goals.

There are other smaller things but in the end I just want a manager that wants to play football. Not one that puts defence above everything, not a launcher, not one who wants to fill the team with big lads and people that ‘get about’. 
 

I think Karanka was the closest thing to what we can hope for, all he needed to do was just loosen up the ropes on the forwards and midfield a bit. Get the ball out a bit earlier, let players make forward runs a bit earlier.
 

I feel our biggest mistake was ripping up what Karanka had built, despite our performance in the premiership he had built a totally solid base to build from, it simply needed tweaking. Imagine what we could have added to the base of that team with The £50m monk had to spend.

Which I guess sums up what direction I want, stop ripping things up and starting again every couple of seasons, decide what you want and stick with it why oh why we never went for dean smith after monk left I’ll never know, he was tailor made for what we needed.

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On 2/23/2021 at 4:52 PM, YusufBoro said:

👀Thanks for the invite, really appreciate it.

Welcome Yusuf, i think you will enjoy this forum. Lots of lively debate, good mods and is usually gets quite interesting during the transfer windows.. 🤭🤣

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26 minutes ago, Johnmfc81 said:

Welcome Yusuf, i think you will enjoy this forum. Lots of lively debate, good mods and is usually gets quite interesting during the transfer windows.. 🤭🤣

Cheers John! 

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My concerns with Warnock is that it will always be a short term one season thing. 
Hypothetically, aren’t we just treading water with him? If we pin our hopes on going up with Warnock next year and miss out, we’ve just wasted another year of not building a longer term plan. 
 

Next season Warnock will bring in players but then will not see through the length of their contract, say for example a 3 year deal. 
 

Do we then not risk the problem of a new manager coming in and having to shoe horn square pegs into round holes left behind by Warnock?
 

For example, Warnock signed a big lad on a 3 year deal. The CB who’s amazing in the air, is trash playing out from the back. Warnock retires and we’re left with the big lad. A new manager comes in who wants to play out from the back and we then have a useless player. 
 

The issue we have with Warnock is that he is approaching this position too late in the day to spend 5 years on a project. He’s the right man but at the wrong time. With the contracts freeing up at the end of the season we have an actual window to plan a new look boro team. 

My concern is that we’ll try to please Warnock with some signings but build for the future with an eye on when he’s gone. We then find ourselves in a scenario where we’ve got players who don’t fit a system.

This again underpins how our club is run. With no director of football, there is no one recruiting players to fit a certain philosophy which is how modern approaches appear to be. As a result we recruit based on the managers and find ourselves working with what’s left.

As my toilet time is coming to an end, I would like to reiterate that I want to see a boro team with a clear identity and philosophy that reflects the town. I’d love for us to then see a recruitment model which either brings players through in a certain way OR we recruit players based on our philosophy. Let’s move away from seeing who we can get out of a bad bunch and ramming them into a system and let’s actually scout and find players to fit our style. 
 

Let’s end the cycle !

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I see that Tony Pulis is poking his head above the parapet again. I think it's generally unappreciated among fans that he did a good job at clearing up the huge financial mess from Monk's reign. After then, however, he started to create his own mess with paying inflated fees and not getting the best out of a lot of his signings like Saville, McNair & Harrison. One thing that he deserves unreserved credit for is him bringing the best out of Traore; The transformation in him was remarkable.

Criticising Pulis for selling and/or not rating Bamford is unfair too. Whilst he was lucky to stumble upon him being our best striker, I can understand the financial pressure to sell him considering how we had Assombalonga, Gestede, Fletcher and Braithwaite all on inflated 3 or 4 year contracts - and unsurprisingly Bamford was the only striker that other clubs were willing to pay some serious money for.

Another thing which stands out is that the last season under him was incredibly painful. He seemed like he didn't know what to do to get us to score more goals and he seemed to have hit a brick wall with his unwillingness to sign and play creative wingers.

The decision-making from Gibson in the summer 2017 was nothing short of idiotic. The team that we got relegated with had solid foundations that could have easily been transitioned into a promotion winning squad if we kept Karanka's 4-2-3-1 template under a new manager. If we had more of a plan then there would have been no Monk to create the mess, and no Pulis to clear up the mess. We should have done what Norwich done this season: keep the core of the team and build upon the foundations in place.

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3 hours ago, Johnmfc81 said:

Welcome Yusuf, i think you will enjoy this forum. Lots of lively debate, good mods and is usually gets quite interesting during the transfer windows.. 🤭🤣

 

302A1F8C-5086-4D92-93FB-46D7F1C5A826.gif

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17 hours ago, p_mards said:

Criticising Pulis for selling and/or not rating Bamford is unfair too. Whilst he was lucky to stumble upon him being our best striker, I can understand the financial pressure to sell him considering how we had Assombalonga, Gestede, Fletcher and Braithwaite all on inflated 3 or 4 year contracts - and unsurprisingly Bamford was the only striker that other clubs were willing to pay some serious money for.

If we were in such a parlous a state financially why did he then relieve all the Bamford money up the wall on Saville? 

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25 minutes ago, Redcar Rioja said:

If we were in such a parlous a state financially why did he then relieve all the Bamford money up the wall on Saville? 

he actually did that without seeing any of the Bamford money. IIRC, we didn't see much of anything for a year of the Bamford money.

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3 hours ago, Redcar Rioja said:

If we were in such a parlous a state financially why did he then relieve all the Bamford money up the wall on Saville? 

It's just a lot more complicated than that though. Pulis played with just one striker - ideally a targetman - yet he took over a team with the forward options of (estimated fees and wages): Assombalonga: £15 million fee, £40k a week with 3 and a half years remaining (£7.28 million in wages); Braithwaite: £10 million fee, £40k a week with 3 and a half years remaining (£7.28 million in wages); Fletcher: £7 million fee, £30k a week with 3 and a half years remaining (£5.46 million in wages); Gestede: £6 million fee, £30k a week with 2 and a half years remaining (£3.9 million in wages); Bamford: £7 million fee, £30k a week with 3 and a half year remaining (£5.46 million in wages).

So whilst they're back of a packet of fags estimates, that's roughly £45 million in transfer fees and £29.38 million in wages: so £74.38 million combined. I dread to imagine what that would have looked like to our accountant, especially when our parachute payments ran out. To me it's abundantly clear that having the astonishing amount of money tied up in 5 forwards - 4 of which nobody else wanted -  would create the financial pressure to sell the one saleable asset who was our best forward, Bamford. It's also important to note that the last of our parachute payments were expiring at the end of the 2018/2019 season with 2 years remaining on Assombalonga, Braithwaite, Fletcher and Bamford, and one year remaining on Gestede. When the parachute payments expired, we simply wouldn't be able to sustain the bloated wages of our many forwards as it would leave us incredibly short in many other areas of the team such as midfield and defence. There was a huge financial gap that needed to be plugged. Bamford was therefore unfortunately sacrificed.

Whilst Pulis done an abysmal job in the 2018/19 season, I'm confident that his primary aims during his time here were: 1.) to sort the financial mess, especially with so much long-term budget committed to forwards; 2.) strengthen the team throughout all areas of the squad that he thought needed extra quality added, such as Saville who he was hoping was going to be a box-to-box goalscoring midfielder and McNair at CB.

Therefore, whilst I'm gutted about us selling Bamford, I can understand why Pulis did it in the financial circumstances. The blame for selling Bamford lies in Gibson's hands for not acting more responsibly in the way we had a scattergun approach to signing them 4 inferior forwards, which we shouldn't have touched at them prices and wages in our circumstances. It's in them circumstances that a competent Director of Football, like Orta did at Leeds, would have built a defensively solid and creative team around Bamford and not wasted so much money on inferior strikers - which created the financial pressure to sell him.

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