Magpie wrote:
I havent used the voting function as none of the options are viable or the isolated problem for me.
So who do I think is responsible
1) Winkelman - Hes the owner, the buck stops with him. This applies when or if the good times come back as well.
2) Alexander - I still dont know if things could have worked out or not but I think he got himself in no mans land in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In high level sport, thats about the worst possible place to be.
3) The players - For all the ' they are are too good for this league' and 'its a strong squad' the facts just dont support that. You can talk systems and instruction all day long but nobody can take account of any player who cant do the basics that they have been taught since the age of 5 and practiced every working day of their professional career. Thats firmly and squarely on individuals for me.
4) The fans - or more accurately the expectations of the fans. I cant get my head around the notion that we are somehow considered one of the big clubs at this level. We are minnows, 20 years old, no training ground, tiny turnover, no history. I think there is a huge confusion over what we are because of the stadium we play in and the facilities around that stadium. Those do not make us a big club. we are merely a tenant in somebody elses dream. That wont be changing anytime soon either.
Fair.
1) Winkelman is the owner and he is the ultimate custodian of everything, so he has to carry the can. However I will say he did enter into this with the best intentions and with the idea that we would come straight back up. I think GA was a one-season project for immediate promotion in his eyes. He also did give the club a decent playing budget, and we recruited mostly mid-career professionals with higher wage demands.
2) Alexander found out quite quickly he was a square peg in a round hole. He mentioned having adapted his playing style in response to feedback, but at the same time we had recruited for his original style, which some will call hoofball. After this point the team actually performed more poorly and got worse results, and if he reflects on what happened if he goes for another position, I hope he would cite that as his major mistake here. He's stubborn and rigid "my way or the highway" and that is fine if you have a fan base that will back that, but he did not get that here and was forced to confront his limitations very early on - a weak tactician and less adaptive than he thought he was. In my opinion he also failed to deal with the softer personalities in the squad. Burns, Devoy, come to mind. Couple of young guys away from home who both strike me as needing a bit of 1-on-1 time and a warmer presence in the manager's office than Alexander offered. Alexander probably deserves the most actual blame for how the season has turned out and should hopefully admit in the future he performed below his own expectations. Take his "well I took all the penalties" stuff when he talks about taking responsibility. Yes, he does love the pressure and that is a good quality, and his penalty success record is outstanding. But he also took penalties with a goofy straight run up and a style which was difficult for even a technically competent professional to master. Almost nobody does that. It's a style which worked for him, but I bet he didn't coach penalty takers at his clubs to do is his way. I bet he understood that penalty taking was as much a matter of settling into a comfort zone physically and mentally as anything else, and it is disappointing he always seemed less adaptable in his approach to man management and tactics.
3) Players. They're good enough to be promoted on paper. It's a good squad with depth and a range of options available to a flexible and learned coach. Some of them are however performing well below their potential. Tucker, O'Hora, Leko, are hangovers from last season and Harvie to a certain extent too. These are better players than they are letting on and unlocking them is partly on them but also partly on the head coach. Alexander just came out and admitted he could not get the players to do what he wanted - very basic things like shoring up a 2-0 lead (!) - and hopefully a new coach will have better success.
4) Fans. They are what they are. We have a very weird and segmented fan base. There's the old guard who were around at the time of the FA Commission, there are new fans (see DonsAction) who are less invested in the split and more so in being a "normal" football league club, there are semi-casuals like me who like their football but support the local team on principle and local pride, and there are the pure casuals who come once or twice a season if we are playing well. Part of me can't decide if Alexander would have got longer or shorter at another club. We aren't a militant lot but there is also a wider expectation of "style" in the fanbase, which I am ambivalent about but respect that is just how it is. We aren't a "big club" but there is still great potential - imagine we'd clung on and stayed in the Championship for two seasons. A lot can change in a few years, as we have found out - not always for the better, but football still does continue to surprise me.
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