Pidge

I’m thinking his defeated attitude is because the answer to change things is a new squad and he knows he had most of this squad for another 12 months. It has to be on his mind to get out of this by leaving. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

Very true, and IMO a big factor in why this season has turned to shit. We have to many players which can’t take criticism. A manager who continued to support the players publicly (in that I include to the media as well as in the open changing room) while challenging them to improve privately, MAY have done better in keeping them from downing tools as they have done this last couple of months. Imagine the comments on this forum though, if the manager had continued to spout generic meaningless post match interviews. So we mostly agree we NEED a new squad, but we can’t have one next year. So do we change the manager and hope the next one can stay friends with them all, or do we back the manager for another whole season and probably starting the next season (with his own players)? A dilemma!

The truth is I agree that we need big changes. The players stopped playing for Mellon, some weeks ago. A quite similar squad stopped playing for Unsworth. Until last week I was hoping they would sort it out and start playing again. Clearly the fault lies with Mellon’s man management. It also lies with a group of players who have twice, arguably, three times got managers sacked. I don’t know where we start. By the way the name for someone who hates everyone is Misanthrope. ( I looked it up.)

If I’m an “apologist”, let’s give you a name, erm , I’m struggling to find a word for “I hate everyone”. How many players did you want to retain? You don’t fancy Mellon and now everyone with anything to do with recruitment have performed “piss poor”: Kind of loosing credibility isn’t it?

My apologies, so you were critical of the Unsworth regime. Fair enough. I thought the inquest was about the more recent failure to stay in the playoffs.

So you are the manager, what approach do you take. You have a contracted player who you know you will not pick in your match day squad.

No, I think you will find we are just honouring the contracts which have been signed.

Actually I used to complain it was bullying. The old regime used to try to make life hell so people would leave or behave in a way which could be used to sack them.

You are completely ignoring the fact that most recruitment occurs in the off-season. During the season you will be lucky if teams release their “good and physically reliable” players. Why don’t you reserve your criticism of the club in this regard until we see how they perform this summer.

Exactly. I’m sure it was the change from nice new manager, to one demanding more from the players. This group are allergic to criticism. Instead of pulling up their big boy pants, they just start pretending to play. A few on here have criticised MM’s team selection, and really selections have been strange. My instinct is that he is picking the few players he feels have pride and will try. McGahey being an example as well as Gardner. ( unfortunately they really just doesn’t have it anymore)

Where do you suggest funding comes from? Academies have to be self funding. A good few years ago I remember it being £400,000 to fund the academy for a year. It will be considerably more now. The youngsters can be poached by other clubs. So the whole philosophy of the club has to be that young players will be integrated and trusted to play in the first team early on, or else the good ones will sign somewhere else. We as a club don’t tend to be able to bring many through. Hence there are no transfer fees adding up to the running costs, let alone profits. It’s a business decision.

Winners need to react quicker, move quicker and maintain your effort longer then the opposition. If players want to play for their team mates, manager, club organisation, trophies and fans, then motivation to winning effort levels is easier for players to achieve. I’m hope most of us would agree the inconsistent team performances suggest this is a more important issue right now them the fact we haven’t signed a right back and have to many centre backs. So, taking all that onboard, it is ease to see that all these factors are important. Those of us who blame the booing fans for the players lack of effort are correct. Those of us who blame the manager are correct etc etc. So is it useful for us on the forum to argue which of the factors is the only one that matters? So my main point is that the one and only of those many factors that we as fans can influence directly is the matchday experience for players. Will those players be more likely to find the motivation to up effort levels if we boo them or cheer them?

Who do you think AndyB2 is? Surely he is a renaming of someone who has been on before. Someone who talks/posts so much would not just have 157 posts. Any ideas?

Were there Away fans in the home crowd like people were worried about?

The problem is that the players are needing and getting more bollockings. There comes a point where players don’t want to be here anymore and are trapped because they are showing to poorly on the pitch for other teams to be interested. We can’t get rid because they are contracted. Managers usually come in to the club being personally supportive, encouraging and publicly supportive too. With successive poor performances, criticism in the dressing room becomes necessary, however much the manager knows he is taking a risk that performances may actually get worse because you may piss off modern players. Then when players don’t respond, the manager starts going public. It’s a sign that the manager is loosing the dressing room. Very worrying that we are getting to this point at such a critical point in the season.

Depends if I had identified that the reason the food dished up was poor was simple because the chef was scared of what I may say about his food. Giving him some love may get some worldy football, sorry food (I forgot what we were talking about! )

How can a clean sheet 0:0 performance be “horrific”. Wow some of our fans still expect NL players to be as good as those worth 50 million.

So you have decided poor performances occur because the players are scared at home. I think you will find it is more complicated then that! BTW BP, if you do believe what you say, you could start by giving them some love rather then criticism.

So you would be happier if he quickly gets rid of the ball hoofball style? We have to many of those don’t we. He is young and learning his trade, but he has ability. I would rather he tries things and sometimes looses the ball then he just passes back or boots it.

I think he is trying to put out a team that will compete for the ball. Apart from Green, they are the players most likely to show some fight and pride. Hopefully Green will make something happen going forward.

But when you weren’t playing Leeds—

They had time to control and play back then. Now if a player does a step over and looses the ball they get roasted.

I think you will find that the introduction of GPS was not to discipline players for being lazy. The main reason it is used is to track the work load muscles have done and try to predict a player at risk of injury, so their training can be altered. I can assure you the average player is much fitter in a cardiovascular sense now then back in the 80s and 90s. That includes the teams we are playing who are much further down the league. That’s why we are not simply fitter then other teams and actually need to be more switched on (react to second balls first) and physically aggressive to get to the ball ahead in a 50:50.

I’m beginning to understand McFluff a little better. I thought we were discussing why the players looked leggy (your word). you seemed BP, to be suggesting extra training without time to recover would help. I hope you are not suggesting playing 3 times a week will give them even more energy. Often in Big Joe’s day, if we were playing twice a week he wouldn’t have the players train in between except to work on shape and game plan. I’m guessing that was so the players wouldn’t look leggy.