- Jul 7, 2003
- 47,645
OK (deep breath) here goes.
(1) Yes, Saturday wasn't a great performance, but taking the "glass half full" approach, at least we didn't lose. Oldham looked far more capable of scoring than some teams we've seen at Withdean so thank your lucky stars we didn't concede a daft breakaway goal. We won't win every game at Withdean.
(2) Some people seem to think we have a divine right to be amongst the promotion chasers. The last few seasons have seen promotion, promotion, relegation, and people have perhaps forgotten that there are actually a hell of a lot of teams in every division that to finish with neither. We spent plenty of seasons in the past in comfortable/dull mid table and not much to play for, and while it's not the most exciting thing in the world, that's what most teams have to settle for. I want promotion as much as the next person, but I don't think it's our automatic right, and if we did finish, say, 8th, it won't be the absolute end of the world.
To suggest that McGhee should be fired if we don't go up is daft, who's to say Coppell would have taken us up? Fine, if we were threatened by relegation, I'd be more inclined to question McGhee, but we're not (fingers crossed). He took a couple of seasons to get Millwall right, can we not afford to give him the same backing here? A thorough assessment of the squad is long overdue anyway, why not say ok, we'll see what happens re promotion this season, and if it's not to be, at least we can have a complete review of the players, get rid of some of the deadwood from the wage bill and start planning for a real assault next season. If every club sacked their manager now because they weren't likely to get promotion, there'd only be about 8 guys in the whole league with jobs.
(3) Even if you did sack McGhee now (which I think is just stupid), what would the next guy do? There are very few great managers around, and not many clubs lucky enough to have them, so the next incumbent, unless he happened to be an absolute genius at motivation, will still have to work with exactly the same playing staff. Even Wenger or Taggart would struggle to get anything useful out of someone like David Lee.
*sits back and awaits onslaught from "sack him now" brigade.*
(1) Yes, Saturday wasn't a great performance, but taking the "glass half full" approach, at least we didn't lose. Oldham looked far more capable of scoring than some teams we've seen at Withdean so thank your lucky stars we didn't concede a daft breakaway goal. We won't win every game at Withdean.
(2) Some people seem to think we have a divine right to be amongst the promotion chasers. The last few seasons have seen promotion, promotion, relegation, and people have perhaps forgotten that there are actually a hell of a lot of teams in every division that to finish with neither. We spent plenty of seasons in the past in comfortable/dull mid table and not much to play for, and while it's not the most exciting thing in the world, that's what most teams have to settle for. I want promotion as much as the next person, but I don't think it's our automatic right, and if we did finish, say, 8th, it won't be the absolute end of the world.
To suggest that McGhee should be fired if we don't go up is daft, who's to say Coppell would have taken us up? Fine, if we were threatened by relegation, I'd be more inclined to question McGhee, but we're not (fingers crossed). He took a couple of seasons to get Millwall right, can we not afford to give him the same backing here? A thorough assessment of the squad is long overdue anyway, why not say ok, we'll see what happens re promotion this season, and if it's not to be, at least we can have a complete review of the players, get rid of some of the deadwood from the wage bill and start planning for a real assault next season. If every club sacked their manager now because they weren't likely to get promotion, there'd only be about 8 guys in the whole league with jobs.
(3) Even if you did sack McGhee now (which I think is just stupid), what would the next guy do? There are very few great managers around, and not many clubs lucky enough to have them, so the next incumbent, unless he happened to be an absolute genius at motivation, will still have to work with exactly the same playing staff. Even Wenger or Taggart would struggle to get anything useful out of someone like David Lee.
*sits back and awaits onslaught from "sack him now" brigade.*
) and if we have a couple of 'boring' midtable finishes or somewhere around the play offs then that isn't a bad result in my books after all three or four years ago we would have all happily accepted that. I know we have moved on to better things but we have lost the heart of our team (the attacking one anyway) and, I think anyway, that we are in an iffy financial position at present.
