Fray Bentos is God! wrote:chestersaddler wrote:There seems to be an urban myth growing on here that "people" are calling for Smith's head. Maybe someone (as I don't know how to) could start a poll, which I am sure would show that the vast majority of fans are behind him (unless Cully votes multiple times)
Yeah, I didn't see that either.
I think there are people who want members of the squad or management to fail for their own opinions, though.
Westcarr especially.
I have seen one ore two posts I think, but really very few, that have actually called for Deano to go. He's made mistakes and too often seems to want to blame officials and bad luck for the team's shortcomings, but on balance I think most of us know that we'd be hard-pressed to find a better man to take his place.
It seems he still has much to learn and from comments I read it is, perhaps, how to assess a game in progress and change it, that is his major issue - in short a Plan B. This obviously means him trying to out-think his opposite number during games, a skill that a few managers seem to have in abundance, but I guess for most it's something that is only acquired over a long period of management, and for some never. I have no idea what category Deano falls into, maybe he's not got it yet, maybe he never will, or maybe he just doesn't feel he has the players at his disposal that can change a game effectively.
I have personally witnessed only a very few games this season, but those I did impressed me a lot in terms of possession football, but I think we can be easily taken in by that. Even as far back as the Coventry game at the Banks's, sexy football was the description being talked about, but our lack of forward movement had already been exposed. Although we did some nice things with the ball out there on the pitch that day, it was largely sideways and backwards and we created very little going forward. We lost the game because while we created pretty patterns, Coventry's tactic was to go straight through us and should have won by more than the one goal, but that was all it took. That happened so many times over the season, because with our poor record of creating chances, coupled with so many games where we got more shots in but failed to put the ball in the net, it has only taken one goal to beat us.
We scored 49 goals and conceded 49. Only 5 teams in League One bettered our defensive record, all finished in the top 7, the lowest being Sheffield United. Coincidentally, only 5 teams scored fewer goals, 3 were relegated, 1 (Crawley) finished immediately below us, and 1 (Sheff Utd) somehow finished 7th! I guess that proves that you can get close when scoring few goals, but I'd think that's rare. They won 4 more and drew 3 fewer games, so presumably turned more 1 goal games into wins than we did, while we were getting draws and dropping 2 points too many times. Added to that, in 3 games (Notts C, Swindon and Crewe) we scored 11 of our goals, so that leaves only 38 goals in the other 43 games, so the source of our problem is clear to see.
Deano has to solve the goal-scoring problem, but that is never cheap. Mr Bonser needs to understand that and show some ambition by making some meaningful money available, but I fear he won't go that extra mile and if so, on the basis of the last few months, we'll struggle.