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Steve Gibson's decision-making since 2006 Uefa Cup final?


Steve Gibson's decision-making since 2006 Uefa Cup final?  

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  1. 1. Steve Gibson's decision-making since 2006 Uefa Cup final?


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  • Poll closed on 08/26/2020 at 04:00 PM

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Whilst Steve Gibson's financial and emotional commitment to Boro can never be questioned, what would you rate his decision-making out of a score of 10 in the fourteen year spell since our Uefa Cup final in 2006?

With none of the local media not asking such important questions, I'm genuinely intrigued to see this question answered by a decent sample size. This broad question covers the overall strategy of the club, appointing managers, appointments to other key positions such as head of recruitment and chief executive, transfer dealings in general, and success of the academy etc. Literally anything that you think is within Steve Gibson's powers to influence through either deciding himself or delegating the responsibility to someone else. It would also help if you can post the reasons for your ratings such as the decisions that he has got right and wrong.

I'd like the poll to be as objective as possible so I won't post my views immediately.

Just incase it isn't completely clear, 10 = excellent decision-making; 1 = terrible decision-making.

 

Edited by p_mards
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We've had 9 managers in this time period, so I'm marking Gibson out of 9 (rather than 10).

Southgate - Poor appointment, too inexperienced. Poor sacking as he seemed to be on the right track at the time. 

Strachan - Poor appointment, poor signings which left us in a real mess financially. Only shining light was that he waived his compensation when he left us.

Mowbray - Good appointment, had 1 (if not 2) hands tied behind his back due to the financial state of the club. Brought in some hugely influential players during his time with us (Leadbitter, Friend and Adomah off the top of my head). 

Karanka - Good appointment, shifted the whole culture of the club, brought the fans back and brought a real buzz about us again. Was backed well in the Championship, due to the belt tightening under Mowbray.

Agnew - Poor decision basically accepted relegation with this decision. 

Monk - Poor decision, like a kid in a sweet shop was given too much money to burn. Ultimately didn't have a clue what his best 11 was despite spending close to £40 Million and bringing 10 first team players in.

Pulis - Poor appointment, ultimately almost got us to the play-off in successive seasons. But didn't "sort" anything behind the scenes. Sold some of our best players (Gibson, Bamford and Traore), and replaced them with some awful players and did nothing to sort our abject lack of Goalscoring or creativity issues.

Woodgate - Poor appointment, much like Southgate was too inexperienced and the coaching set-up around him was also way too inexperienced. Also a little similar to Mowbray was limited financially, partly due to Monk's splurge and Pulis' spending, despite saying he wouldn't spend.

Neil Warnock - Good appointment at the time, in terms of steering us away from relegation. Jury is still out longer term however. 

All in all I'd give him a 3 (being generous). 1 for Mowbray, 1 for Aitor and as it stands 1 for Warnock.

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Its a 2 for me. Its not just that the only stand out success of an appointment is karanka (arguments can be made for Mogga but sour ending and didnt back him. Too soon to say with warnock but everyone knows my thoughts on that), but its how spectacularly wrong hes gotten everything else and his unwillingness to learn from previous errors of judgment.

Its like every decision he makes hes trying to make the worst possible choice- he doesnt even get middle of the road appointments like most chairmen would.

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6 for me. It’s easy with hindsight to say some appointments were poor if they turned out that way but a lot of the decisions made looked reasonable at the time. I’m obviously not referring to the Agnew or Woodgate ones as they never looked plausible even though I hoped it would have worked out for both.

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1 hour ago, Blanco said:

6 for me. It’s easy with hindsight to say some appointments were poor if they turned out that way but a lot of the decisions made looked reasonable at the time. I’m obviously not referring to the Agnew or Woodgate ones as they never looked plausible even though I hoped it would have worked out for both.

I agree with some decisions at the time looking better than what they turned out to be. But surely the only way to judge is with hindsight? 

 

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When Gibson's biggest fans are giving him 6/10, then you know it's not gone well... 

I gave him a 2/10. Possibly a little harsh if you're just thinking about managerial appointments, but the way the rest of the club has been run (behind the manager) has been awful. Our academy production has dropped off significantly (Spence and Wing are from elsewhere), our transfer dealings have been awful (why did we sell Bamford?!), he's not backed the good managers when they needed it (Mowbray/Kraranka), has been too slow to fire the bad ones (Monk aside) and we've fallen well behind in our ability to compete. The club has no clear identity or consistent strategic approach. People point to the money he has put in (for which I am grateful) and his history of helping the club - but we've wasted an awful lot of it. We could get by on far less if the club was well run (see Brentford).   

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He keeps the club afloat regardless of what decisions he makes to try to make us a successful club so that's already a pretty good start. It would be very easy in the aftermath of bad decisions he's made to say he's one of the worst owners since 2006, there are definitely worse and some significantly worse owners compared to Gibson. Some clubs don't even exist any-more. So with that in mind, I don't think it's right to put him in the 1s or 2s.

Then you look at what we had, what we ended up with, how we got to where we are now and things don't look good. The club exists but for what purpose? It would seem the purpose is to irrationally try and beat the system, to be thoughtless with money when we have it and incapable of strategic thinking when without it, to exist at the top of the footballing ladder without actually committing to a way of doing it.

We struck gold when we got Karanka and we followed that thread to the Premier League. Mogga did the hard work keeping us going for a long time on little money but then Aitor came in and we really hit the stride of being a successful team on the pitch. It was a strange feeling not knowing where the next loss was going to come from, it feels even stranger thinking about that now that it's often been a wonder where the next win will come from.

One of the frustrating things is out of the last 14 years, the only degree of success has been that promotion. We saw it took time but it came together. We had a plan, the manager had a plan, we stuck to it and it bore fruit. Karanka was here for 3 years until the wheels really came off the wagon, since he was sacked, in 3 years we've been through 4 managers and are now onto the fifth, flip-flopping between footballing ideas and concepts hoping something hits gold. Gibson is keeping us alive but whilst making unsustainable changes to how we work, hoping the next guy will fix all the problems before realising their way of doing things has problems too.

Not only that but as has been noted on here, he has developed and enforced this stranglehold on scrutiny. One of the most deplorable attitudes from the owner of a business is to think they are infallible and deserve to be immune to criticism. I don't know for sure why Gibson decides to take this attitude over media criticism but until he addresses it himself (HAH) you'd have to think it is just quite a sinister way of handling criticism.

So I'm going with a 4. Karanka's appointment was one shining light in the otherwise thoughtless ***-show that has taken place since 2006. We exist and for a few years we felt like we had a reason to exist.

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I gave Gibson 2 out of 10. The main reason is because there has been an absolute absence of a long-term plan - that is exactly the crucial role that he should fill. In the incredibly competitive environment of professional football, the smaller clubs like ours need a long-term strategy if we're to achieve success.  I look at similar sized clubs to ourselves (taking Premier League money out of it) like Burnley, Norwich, Brentford, West Brom, Sheffield United etc and get so frustrated about how we are so far behind them, not due to anything unavoidable such as they're a far bigger club or have something else that means that we are incapable of competing against them, but due to sheer awful decision-making at the top of the Club. Whilst some of them teams listed are within the Premier League now, they got there through being well run and that is what we completely lack. There is nothing preventing us from being like them. Forget the Evening Gibson articles about how we're inherently inferior to others - we're here through sheer incompetence from the top. It has held us back for 14 year and it's going to continue to hold us back unless something changes.

Steve Gibson fundamentally lacks the knowledge and self-restraint for the role that he holds.  His knee-jerking between: McClaren > Southgate > Strachan > Mowbray > Karanka > Agnew > Monk > Pulis > Woodgate > Warnock demonstrates no long-term plan. All are contrasting in many ways, most notably tactically as each manager had a completely contrasting style of play to their predecessor. That's why during this 14 year period we've generally been in a state of transition, aside from Karanka's progressive reign, with the every new manager have a glut of unwanted players with several years left on their lucrative contracts.

If you've overseen the 14 year drift from a Uefa Cup final to the position we are today, then something has drastically gone wrong. That's all the more stark when you consider that we've actually spent some huge money. The problem is that it has been spent in an incredibly wasteful manner - and that comes down the way that Steve Gibson has made awful, short-term focussed decisions for the past 14 years. When you're out of your depth, you delegate to someone who is better capable than you. That's true leadership. Surrounding yourself with your incompetent mates like Gill, Woodgate and Bevington etc is what incompetent people do.

To conclude, if I was Steve Gibson I would get on the phone to Peter Kenyon and ask him to oversee the recruitment process for a new director of football or sporting director in the mould of Stuart Webber. I'm sure that there will be lots of credible candidates from foreign leagues, Championship, League One etc. However, that would require Steve Gibson to give up power - and that is something that I cannot see him doing anytime soon. If not, we'll probably still be on here in 10 to 20 years time discussing the same problems with Victoria Gibson as our chairwoman making equally bad decisions.

Edited by p_mards
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Dan and Wilson above sum it up perfectly for me so I won't repeat it all.

I voted with a three, purely on the basis that a two seemed too harsh and a four was way too generous. I doubt the Gazette lads will be picking up on this debate and running a similar feature in the paper anytime soon. I do however suspect that they already have a pre-prepared piece for when Gibbo departs that will highlight the highs and lows of his tenure just sat gathering dust with a paragraph or two being reworked or tweaked each year. Hopefully things will end on a high note but right now its very difficult to see. Perception amongst the over 45's is very different to the younger fan base.

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I gave him a 4 - based on some highly scientific measurements... 😉

 

8 - in the McLaren years, culminating in the UEFA Cup Final.

4 - for replacing McLaren with Southgate (a promising but inexperienced manager) and failing to give him adequate support.

3 - for replacing Southgate with Strachan (nuff said)

5 - for replacing Strachan with local hero Mowbray. An experienced manager but forced to work with very limited funds.

6 - for replacing Mowbray with the previously unknown Karanka. A big gamble, but one that paid off.

3 - for awful transfer market activity in the lead up to our PL season which left us woefully unprepared.

3 - for replacing Karanka with Garry Monk and splashing the cash to "smash the league".

4 - for replacing Monk with Pulis midway through the season - an experienced but unimaginative manager. Did a solid if unspectacular  job - also with limited funds.

1 - for even thinking appointing Woodgate was a good idea.

6 - for replacing Woody with Warnock - another solid, experienced manager but working a season at a time at this stage in his career.

So (8+4+3+5+6+3+3+4+1+6) / 10 = 4.3

 

Told you it was highly scientific! 😁

Edited by AnglianRed
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4/10 from me,  im at odds trying to summarise that score and was going to start by saying what he did in 1986, saviour of the club and all that gave him a massive credit to begin with, but looking at it more circumspectly he actually showed then, early signs of his ruthlessness to wear the crown, firstly accepting sole acclaim as the saviour then wallowing in fans god like status for all these ensuing years. he stepped in alongside others to back the club financially but the real honour of ressurecting the club should be given to bruce rioch. so that said his initial credit is lower than my first point of opinion.

theres been a few good appointments hidden amonsgst the horrendous and poor ones as correctly identified with unargueable reasoning. but i still trust in his love for the club and that he genuinelly cares. signings wise theres the likes of rhodes and downing that ,for mewere personal vanity projects, and the upshot of those led to a deterioration of trust and friendship with karanka which was the start of the end in that tenure. 

now we come to the reason ive lowered his score from mid range to 4 ,... my perception of him as a human being and his manipulation of the local press, he has become a puppet master and shown himself to be egocentric and arrogant. i dont like him as a person these days and dont trust him, dont believe him and dont have faith in his decisions. he oprates the strings of the recruitment department , tried to do similar with managers , some backfired others like woody were plain bad choices of puppet. where he will fail and will lead to his downfall is attempting to operate the strings of the supporters. 

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On 8/25/2020 at 10:46 PM, p_mards said:

There is nothing preventing us from being like them. Forget the Evening Gibson articles about how we're inherently inferior to others - we're here through sheer incompetence from the top.

I think you've just identified how we're inherently inferior to those other clubs. 😉

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