Ackey

Whilst I appreciate that making a decision on the present based on the alternate is not ideal, I am left with "if not him then who...?" We've tried novice (Unsworth), we've tried seasoned (Shez), we've tried novel (Selim), we've tried proven (MM), we've tried homegrown (Wild, Scholes)... we've tried a fuckload of managers and we've been consistently shit. Some have had pennies, some pounds. I will keep asking - are poor results a direct result of a string of 20 shit managers, or symptom of a deeper root cause? Frank's put right a lot (LOT!) of things, but changing from a culture of expected failure to one of patient winning is hard. We seem to want (expect) to exist in an impossible place...

At what point do we have to look at a guy who's been a serial winner at this level and wonder if he's the problem (some of the criticism above is very reasonable and fair), or if it's us. Something has to give. Is changing the manager changing every 12-18 months the answer? Has it ever been?

Are you suggesting the quality of a fullback should be based on if they have enough shots? Kitching is flawed (he's playing in non-league, they all are) but surely he's been a better player than almost all the others this season?

Without being too simplistic - this place costs money we don't have. But, I will talk to Matt and see what's what.

Genuine question - to who?

And then some... Unsworth was unproven and quickly out of his depth. Mellon's considerable pedigree at this level means it's a sensible decision to be more patient with him.

All the best teams in the world are heavily stats based these days? There's no elite team winning a top-tier league in Europe without a sizable data department used for all kinds of things...?

Fuck me, even for you that's a deep-cut of a reference! You've hit marrow, never mind bone, with that one!

Wayback Machine (archive.org) that link should take you directly to what they have captured. Unfortunately as Matt said, they only have the homepage and not the actual threads.

Immediately forgets it. Lovely stuff, J!

Where you pulling these screenshots from @Matt?

As you can see from @Matt's homage (also at the top of OWTB right now), it was indeed Jack and Kate:

That's a fair point. I should have also added this: To the post which followed right after, too: Bigger picture - I'm biased by the fact I can't remember the last time I watched us at home, given I don't live there anymore. I'm also biased by generally liking numbers more than opinions. The data suggests he's doing a good job, and whilst the sample is small the hope is the trend continues. When factoring in other things (such as his incredible pedigree at this level, as I mentioned above) you'd hope that to be true - but that can't be said for sure yet, I accept. I think what I sense a lot on OWTB at the moment is a combination of two things: Impatience - as above, fixing a broken team of any kind is hard and slow (ooh err). Perfect being the enemy of good - we should strive for more, we should be better, we should not be complacent... but ultimately we're points per game performing better than ever, let's not take that for granted. Again, that's not to say we can't improve. But we have to surely be happy. This thread, and many others, seems so painfully sad and unhappy about what is - stats wise - good. We started the season expecting first, we should expect first next year (if it comes to that) - but right now we're doing good, very good, and that brings it back to point number 1. But then I live 250 miles away, see us 4-5 times a year. So I do accept and appreciate that my opinion by its very nature has a luxury of time and space, and many on here don't have that. It's less personal to me, no matter how much I care. So I certainly don't want to seem condescending or dismissive of others and how personal poor performance feels to them.

I was curious. As it stands (lies lies and damned statistics not withstanding) MM has the highest Points Per Game of any Latics manager ever (>19 games managed). Fucking shit. Get rid.