McGhee - Who cares what NSC thinks?

[Gilliver's Travels]

Surely I'm not the only one aghast at the gnat-like attention span and totally volatile memory of so many people who post here.

Can today's NSC lynch mob be the same people who only a few games ago were applauding McGhee's new, all-out attacking style? And who, just a few months before that, were demanding that their whisky-soaked Messiah commit his future to Albion, even before knowing whether we were going to stay in the Championship or not?

Those who prefer the bigger picture can take comfort in remembering that NSC is NOT in any way representative of the Albion's true fan base. Postings come from just a handful of generally younger, reasonably well-educated but highly opinionated Albion obsessives. Only a fool would believe this somehow represented the majority view. Thankfully, Dick Knight is not that fool.

Were the club's management to be guided by the minute by minute, yo-yo opinions of this atypical, ludicrously fickle minority, the Albion would by now be in very seriously deep shit. Instead, we're in a lowly position in the league's second tier, with two thirds of the season yet to come. Get a grip, anyone?

 

[Man of Harveys]

Well said. As so often, the dull and ill-thought out posts say one thing, the polls another.

 

[Hiney]

At least we'd have Andrei Kanchelskis bombing up the wing

 

[Goring Gull]

Truth is MM doesn't give a flying fcuk what NSC thinks, lets be honest NSC is the minority of Albion fans anyway.

 

[Rougvie]

NSC is only a (admittedly growing) small percentage of Albion fans.

Its the growing groundswell of opinion amongst non-bobblers that go home and away thats indicating people have had enough of an under acheiving manager.

 

[Mr Banana]

Sorry Rooougers, i loathe this feeling of biting the bait but "under-achieving"? You have really got to be joking to even say that in jest. Getting promoted from div 2 when we barely merited finishing in the top half of the table and then staying up last year must rang among the greatest over-achievements in the league of all time.

Compare the amount McGhee has spent with any other club in this division.

 

[The Large One]

NSC is only a (admittedly growing) small percentage of Albion fans.

Its the growing groundswell of opinion amongst non-bobblers that go home and away thats indicating people have had enough of an under acheiving manager.

I think you mean over-achieving. I'll happily correct that clearly inadvertent slip for you, Paul.

 

[Silent Bob]

NSC is only a (admittedly growing) small percentage of Albion fans.

Its the growing groundswell of opinion amongst non-bobblers that go home and away thats indicating people have had enough of an under acheiving manager.

I like how everyone who disagrees with you is a "bobbler" and doesn't go home and away.

 

[Seagull73]

NSC is only a (admittedly growing) small percentage of Albion fans.

Its the growing groundswell of opinion amongst non-bobblers that go home and away thats indicating people have had enough of an under acheiving manager.

That's absolute crap. It might be your opinion, but I have not heard one mention of this around the seats I sit in, and that is in the highly critical South Stand, who aren't afraid to let their feelings be known.

Frustration maybe, but not an underachieving manager, that's an almost laughable statement.

 

[The Large One]

Edited. Shit.

 

[magoo]

Truth is MM doesn't give a flying fcuk what NSC thinks, lets be honest NSC is the minority of Albion fans anyway.

that's what he just said innit??

Make this thread a sticky lest we forget.

 

[Seagull73]

I just find it really f*cking sad that all the people that were having a go at Dick Knight have suddenly gone quiet for obvious reason, so the whingers need somebody else to pick on, so they go for the manager instead.

Just a quick note for those who walk around with their eyes half open: We aren't at Falmer yet, and won't be for another 2.5 years. Just because we have a yes, doesn't suddenly mean that we can turn from expected relegation strugglers into play-off contenders. Right at this point in time, nothing has changed other than we have planning permission for a new stadium.

McGhee does have a habit of making a few strange choices I grant you, but he is still over achieving with us!!

**Steps down off of soap-box**

 

[Silent Bob]

Edited. Shit.

I wondered what you were on about.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

That's absolute crap. It might be your opinion, but I have not heard one mention of this around the seats I sit in, and that is in the highly critical South Stand, who aren't afraid to let their feelings be known.

Frustration maybe, but not an underachieving manager, that's an almost laughable statement.

There has been - Wolves and stoke you would have to be pretty deaf not to hear it

 

[Seagull73]

There has been - Wolves and stoke you would have to be pretty deaf not to hear it

Well I'm not deaf, and I didn't hear it. So where are these apparently growing masses that are calling for the manager to be sacked? Are you sure they're not noises in your head?

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Im pretty sure the calls will come sooner rather than later - it starts with questioning selections and subs - then choices(like the knight one and the signings) then comes the calls for his head.

Soon my friend soon

 

[Finchley Seagull]

Funny most real fans accept our position and do not complain. I have heard no complaints about McGhee and if I do it would be tempting to tell those 'so called fans' to take a reality check. It is probably the same people who boo Coppell, Taylor etc for their lack of loyalty who want to sack McGhee (who has been loyal).

Argue with this. Mark McGhee has had two seasons with the club. Both seasons he has achieved his aim. We had bad runs last season and survived and could well still survive this season.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Funny most real fans accept our position and do not complain. I have heard no complaints about McGhee and if I do it would be tempting to tell those 'so called fans' to take a reality check. It is probably the same people who boo Coppell, Taylor etc for their lack of loyalty who want to sack McGhee (who has been loyal).

Argue with this. Mark McGhee has had two seasons with the club. Both seasons he has achieved his aim. We had bad runs last season and survived and could well still survive this season.

I do not boo coppell or taylor.

 

[Lokki 7]

I like how everyone who disagrees with you is a "bobbler" and doesn't go home and away.

I on the other hand do not like it and am frankly getting very irritated with Rougvie's reactionist huffing and puffing. He thinks he speaks for the "mid Sussex" majority? Please.
I notice his avatar is no longer himself with MM. How quickly they turn..

 

[Ex Shelton Seagull]

I'm just going to post my opinions from yesterdays McGhee thread. Made some changes (you may need to go for a cup of tea halfway through) but it sets out my thoughts and feelings on the whole matter. :egotripping:

Let's face it, there are people who have never had much time for McGhee since the day he took over and have never warmed to him. All the success that he has led us too has been celebrated through gritted teeth and now we've had a bad performance the knives have been gleefully unleashed. Whether this was down to his acrimonious departures from Reading & Leicester, or his (deserved in my eyes) reputation for making strange team selections, I don't know. I would use as exhibit A the post by Goring Gull in early 2004 that was resurrected by Albion Dan. That was a call for McGhee’s head in a season where we won promotion, so he sure as shit isn’t going to get praise in a relegation battle from those quarters.

On reflection I think that the 2003/2004 season may be the source of disgruntlement with McGhee. Yes, we won promotion that season in spectacular fashion, but only after some pretty dire stuff at times in the league. McGhee himself admitted that the tactics used to gain promotion weren’t pretty, but they were what he considered to be the best ones to use with the players at his disposal. Given the position that Coppell left us in, some fans have never really accepted that explanation, instead believing that we would have walked the division with a more adventurous manager. Maybe there’s also the issue of his sometimes public criticisms of players, coupled with his team selections and sticking with tactics that don’t seem to be working, that add to his unpopularity.

I get the feeling that the most enthusiastic support for McGhee comes from those derided as “scarfers”, “shirts” or “bobblers”. Something, or someone, who is a favorite of the supporting “establishment” is never going to be too popular with those who consider themselves to be the more independent supporter. I can’t imagine that the “drinking pints of whiskey” song is too popular in these quarters. It is strange that McGhee has never really recovered the popularity he had when he was Reading manager. His messy departure from Elm Park saw him labelled as a “judas” and his subsequent stints at Leicester and Wolves did nothing to turn around that reputation. Even at Millwall, where he won Division 2 and took the ‘Wall to the play-offs to enter the Premiership, I doubt he was ever truly accepted by the whole support. They turned on him pretty quickly when they were in better form than we are now.

3 wins out of 30 ain't good, that's for damn sure, but neither is say 5 wins out of 30. Yet if we had turned 2 draws this season (Leeds and Leicester away for example) or we win 2 games over the next 4 weeks, we would have 20 points and currently be 16th in the table. Would there be so much "McGhee OUT" stuff then? What is an acceptable win/draw/lose ratio for a small club like ours in this division? What standards had people set for us at this stage of the season? I’m asking this as a genuine question here. I set a target of 16th or 17th that I’d like to see us achieve this season, a target that is still very much achievable. Could we attain that target without having any bumpy bits along the way? I think it’s highly unlikely, so therefore I expected there to be rough patches this season. Were others expecting/demanding a much higher finish than mine? Did people not anticipate that we would very probably be involved in the relegation scrap at various points this season?

I think there's also a fair amount of NSP-style "let's wind up the geeks and nerds on NSC" japery behind the current upsurge in anti Mark McGhee stuff on here of late. There certainly wasn't this amount of stuff after we put in two shit performances vs Norwich and Cardiff at home. I don't really see how a standard shit Stoke performance can be viewed as a camel breaking straw. People know that they can wind up the more "excitable" members of this board by slagging off McGhee, who's often held in awe by certain posters as an untouchable subject, beyond reproach. By dropping these grenades you can gain a lot of amusing OTT reactions. The only other subject that is guaranteed to generate such emotional responses is slagging off Dick Knight. Given recent events I think that he is currently not a viable target even for a wind-up, give it a few months though and I’m sure he’ll be “back on the menu”.

McGhee is not some a genius nor is he the worst manager we've ever had. He's a competent football manager who led us to promotion and maintained that improved standing last season. For me personally, his credit is good. I think that the team is more attractive (not that way ducky) than it was last season and that we create more opportunities than we did last season. This change was something that was begun last year with the purchase of Darren Currie and has only come back with the acquisition of Carole and Frutos. This was part of the gradual evolution of the team and the way we play that has been set out by McGhee in many interviews. Now we need to work on taking those opportunities up. This can be done by trying to encourage the front players to get into the opposition penalty box more, rather than drift out wide as Knight and CKR do. Either our current players do this, or we get someone in on loan or in the transfer window who can. It's not an impossible task. I don't know if Turienzo (or Richards for that matter) will come good but I do think that dismissing both of them after about 3 months of the season is a little premature in my opinion.

He does make strange tactical choices. Some of them don't work (Mayo in midfield anyone?" but some of them do. One of the strangest tactical moves i've ever seen watching the Albion was putting a right back/central defender who couldn't distribute the ball well up front. What a success that was though. He was turned into our top scorer and we got 1.5 million quid for him in one of the biggest transfer coups we've ever had. I say that we miss Virgo's physical strength up front and we currently only MacCammon could perform that role, though it remains to be seen if Turienzo could do that role.

I don't think he properly replaced Dan Harding this summer. It's my opinion that Harding would have made a big difference this season if he had stayed. He's starting to fit in up at Leeds and I do think that he was improving with every game at the back end of last season. That said, we probably needed the money from his and Virgo's sale this summer more than we needed the players. That's another indication of the restrictions that McGhee, or any potential replacement, would have to operate under.

To some extent I believe that some of the critics are expressing genuine concerns that need to be dealt with. Where I, and some others, deviate from the critics is that I believe that McGhee will sort out some of these weaknesses. Some people don't think that he will, well that's fine by me. This internet message board exisists to give a voice to ALL fans, there's always going to be people posting stuff that you think is bullshit but I wouldn't say that it's "treacherous".
I hope that this bickering and the gradual replacement of decent discussions over team matters with insults on here isn't replicated in the real world. Sadly, if reports from Stoke are correct, it appears that they are. Getting right up into someones face and "offering them out" just because they have a different opinion on team selection ain't on. There's a bloke who sits behind me at Withdean who always slags off Oatway, but I wouldn't dream of threatening him because I don't share that opinion. If someone wants to shout something out about McGhee, f*** it let 'em.

Let it go is what I say, i'm sure McGhee and the players are big enough and ugly enough to shrug it off. They've probably heard similar stuff everywhere they've been. It happens at every club that's in our position. Coventry fans slag off Mickey Adams, Hull fans are none too pleased with Peter Taylor, Phil Brown at Derby doesn't have much support. Christ, look at Nigel Worthington at Norwich. Last year he was the hero, hell he still was in September, yet now there's Norwich fans calling for his head. It's all part of a natural process, these things come and go. If we win a couple of games out of the next 4 this will all die down until the next bad defeat and then off we go again. All part of that, you know, circle of something isn't it? You’re absolutely right that NSC is not a true indication of the feelings of the whole Albion support, but then again neither is the feelings of the specific group of people you go to games with. None of the people who sit round me in the South Stand have voiced opposition to McGhee, so I could quite easily claim that therefore there is a large amount of people who DON’T want McGhee to go.

You tend to know when a manager is unpopular by the feelings of the majority of people in the ground. You didn’t need the internet to know that Barry Lloyd wasn’t popular figure in 1993. You didn’t need to read NSC to get the idea that Jeff Wood was seen as a terrible manager by the majority of Albion supporters in 1998. If there’s going to be a “revolt” against the manager it won’t come from this message board, it’ll be something that grows and grows at a steady pace until you start hearing “McGhee out” chants at Withdean. That’s a natural process that will only come if we start losing a lot of games on the spin. It’s hard to get particularly wound up by score draws, 1-1 draws with Wolves and Ipswich are not the kind of combustible material that can spark off large scale chants for the managers head. I say that it is only at Withdean, where McGhee has a lot more support than that from the travelling crowd, that you will be able to judge if McGhee has lost the support of the majority of the crowd. I say again that the majority of people will not turn against McGhee until we have a run of bad defeats and performances. Rougvie is of the opinion that this has already started based on “rumblings in the pubs of Mid-Sussex”, I don’t think there will be any groundswell of opposition to McGhee until we start losing a lot of games. Maybe that’s me putting my eye to the telescope and declaring “I see no ships” but it is a position that I believe.

My position is, I as I said before, that McGhee's credit with me is still good and it would take a really bad run of defeats to erode that. Some people have exhausted the amount of credit they're prepared to give him, fine that's their decision. One thing is for sure: We are all Albion fans together, Managers come and go but the biggest win we've ever had was on the 28th of October. I don't care who's in the dugout for that first game in 2008, I just want to be in that stadium (unless it's Graham Rix or Terry Fenwick!). I think that's something we all agree on surely?

Defence rests your honour.