Pragmatism and Patience: We are in Transition

[NaggerPagger]

Its just about getting the right manager.

A good manager is not bad if he's only been in the job 6 weeks and a bad manager does not become good just because he's had the job 2 years.

The thing is do we think Wilder is good enough to be given more time. IMO id say yes.
 

[John]

Marvo...we had two bad seasons under Carr. After we finished 6th, we just stayed up the following season and were sitting in 11th place when we beat Coventry in January the year after before we went into free fall and were relegated.
We spent that last 3 months or so hitting long balls to Bobby Barnes with a failing off side trap and then he was sacked.
Not many people at the time wanted him to stay on either. Of course he was still popular after he left because of his earlier achievements, like Atkins remains fairly popular who took over in a similar situation.
He managed to get himself a job at another division 4 club and that didn't work out at all for him... His last job as a manager of a football league team.
He did great things for us for a while but my point remains that stability over a period of time didn't do us any favours in the end.

One of your "bad" seasons saw us keep our place in the third tier of English football, Christ what we'd give for that now. I also told you the names of the other clubs relegated with us the following year but just to give you some insight it what Carr was up against, this was the bottom third of the division in their finishing positions.

SWANSEA CITY
WIGAN ATHLETIC
PRESTON NORTH END
FULHAM
CARDIFF CITY
NORTHAMPTON TOWN
BLACKPOOL
WALSALL

You then have to add the fact that Carr would have been on probably the lowest budget of ALL the clubs in that division, their was no money bags Cardoza to keep digging in his pocket to bring in players at the drop of a hat. You regard Car as a failure for NTFC and in his football career both before and after? Well I'm not going to say you're alone in that view but you're works party is going to be a pretty small affair.

[Ralap]

I would say yes too. He hasn't had enough time with a full/nearly full squad to be judged fairly. However I would say these last couple of months have shown he doesn't cope too well when things aren't going right.

[clarkeysntfc]

I think that the next 3 games are absolutely critical.

If we lose them we could end 2014 nearly where we began it.

[DrillingCobbler]

Ralph...just making the point that stability with the manager doesn't have much of an impact either way. You get stability when a manager continues to do well, not for the sake of it. Would I sack Wilder now? No. Would I sack him in a months time? It depends what happens in the next month on a number of fronts. I just don't buy into this 'got to get out of sacking managers because it doesn't get us anywhere' malarkey. If we hadn't of changed managers so often recently we'd most likely be non league so it's arguable that it's been the right thing to do, albeit not the ideal thing to do.

Marvo..I'm not saying Carr wasn't successful with us, he was for a few years. But despite his best efforts it didn't ultimately get us anywhere. I'm not having a go at Carr, just trying to force my point home that long term managerial stability doesn't in any way give you a better chance of sustained success which we all crave for.

I've illustrated with my table that there is no link between success and how long a manager has been in place. With no spin whatsoever to suit my argument, the two clubs in our division which have had that stability are 7th and 10th. Generally speaking, the struggling teams have recently changed managers which is to be expected.

It's all about getting the right man at the right time. With Wilder we achieved that in January and we stayed up. Currently he clearly isn't the right man at the right time but that may change again soon. Or it may not. We shall see!

[sxcobbler]

It's painful to watch but he deserves more time and a chance to see the return of the injured players, which has been a colossal hindrance.

Losing is habit forming though and we must snap out of this death spiral before it is too late.

People say there doesn't look like unrest in the dressing room / on the pitch........... It doesn't look that way to me, but that could be down to our recent form.

Oh for a few weeks with a settled team  (that is not full of loanees).

[Ralap]

That's all well and good Shane, and I mean no offence here as I love your passion for our club it's just my opinion from reading your posts on here, but you are one of the worst types of fan to have with any sort of influencing voice as your mood swings are so erratic. It wasn't that long since you were boasting you knew we would score 80 goals this season. Now you are on the verge of boasting you were the first to start the 'Wilder out' campaign!
Calm heads are needed right now in terms of the manager and team.

And anyway, the people on the verge of the get him out campaign need to think hard on what the alternative is to Wilder. Do you honestly think Grandad Tony Cardoza's just going to put his hand in his pocket again and pull out another half million (Random high number  ) to reboot the club what with all the money we are losing with the debacle on the other side of the pitch. I reckon they'll get Sammo back on £10K a season... Hang on!!!!

WILDER OUT!

[guest1269]

Good leading thread from Bungle who rarely gets involved in the more argumentative discussions.

I'm OK with Pragmatism & Patience but I struggle with the Transition word - CW has had a close season to assemble a squad - no its not a lifetime and he has had a significant injury problem - but can anyone honestly see a tactical plan on the pitch developing here? - the players out of position, the picked ahead inferior loan players all disscussed at length & whilst I shudder at the though of yet another change two points (that have spoilt my weekend) are -

(1) I see absolutely no game plan or indeed long term playing plan.
(2) When I hear a manager blaming pretty much everyone else - (in football or life in general) I know they are very unlikely to be successful.

[TbananaG]

To be fair, I think the plan from before the start of the season has always been to play 4-4-1-1 as Plan A, with JJ in the 'number 10' role, and that's the shape we started with on Saturday. The problem was that CW had lost faith in both wingers by half-time and seemed then to go to 4-3-3....but that's the problem as it was really hard to tell what the shape was supposed to be with Plan B so understandable if the players were confused. And that Plan B was different from some other Plan Bs we've seen this season - we're probably up to about Plan Q by now.

What I would like to see from CW is less panic and more calm, fewer loan players and a smaller squad, more tactical consistency....more LEADERSHIP.

[Ralap]

I may be wrong Shane, looks like Cobblerwatch might beat you to the 'Wilder out' crown.

[Iest_ntfc]

He won't get sacked unless DC has any holidays planned for January? 

[guest1269]

I may be wrong Shane, looks like Cobblerwatch might beat you to the 'Wilder out' crown.

It's not a Wilder out campaign - I've been watching underachievement for too many years to think there is an easy route to quick success - I just see nothing from Wilders's tactic, team selection, signings and increasingly weak excuses that suggests he is going to turn things round - I sincerely hope I'm wrong but Saturday's shocking performance & Wilder's very poor post match commentary for me adds to a sad inevitability - probably around October 2015 and another couple of years wasted.

[DrillingCobbler]

Ralph...we still may well get 80 goals, we are on track for 67! Which is kind of hard to believe. Maybe if he had of played the right players in their right positions we would still be on track for 80 plus, how was I too know he was about to lose the plot! 

Anyway. Im not about to start a Wilder out campaign. Im really not. Despite me making my Boothroyd feelings known after 1 game last season, I would say I was mid table in terms of actually wanting him sacked.

I just want Wilder to sort it out himself and stop dicking around playing the wrong players in their wrong positions, favouring loanees over decent contracted players. The question Im asking is, how long will people put up with it though if he keeps doing it? And we keep losing...

Cant say I disagree with you on your assessment of me though!  I've said it time and time again, I have no agenda...I say it how I see it at the time...and never try and gain points for being right when I have been. Unlike some posters on here   

[guest1269]

The question Im asking is, how long will people put up with it though if he keeps doing it? And we keep losing...

I think this is the crux of the debate - as Drilling states, no agenda, no axe to grind and no belief there is a short term fix - and it's patently obvious to me unless form slips to an actual relegation position he will still be here at the start of next season.

We have to be honest this season is now a write off & I have no great hopes for season 15/16 with the current set up - am I just a miserable negative halfwit?
 
I just wonder when we employ a manager does the chairman go through a proper footballing business plan with the candidates or is it based on a bit of past form & reputation, balanced by some footballing bulls!te from candidate & agent. 

[NaggerPagger]

Myself I'd be more than prepared to give CW the remainder of this season and the beginning of next. If we can begin to see improvement this season while hanging around mid table I'd have no problem with that now. Oh how expectations can change.
The spanner in the works (and I'm not referring to any posters on here) is if we slide further down the table and begin to seriously flirt with relegation.

[MCHammer]

To me it's as much about stability of a club and a long term footballing strategy than it is on who is the manager.

I'm guessing here but I reckon I would be about right in thinking that the target for every manager we have had in the last 5 seasons would be play offs with an outside chance of automatic promotion.  Now on paper that sounds great but what is the reality of trying to achieve that in your first full season in charge.  You are immediately putting yourself in a position that will lead you to make short term decisions chasing success rather than planning for the long term.  You have a manager who is simply trying to put a promotion on his CV with no care about what happens to the club after that.  There is no planning on what you will do when you actually get promoted.

For instance even when Boothroyd got us to the play offs what really would have happened if we had somehow fluked our way in to the 1st division.  There was no plan or foundation for the future.  The team wasn't one that would have been capable of competing in that league and we would probably have thrown money at trying to stay up signing on knackered old pros or loan players.

Swansea have been shown as an example of success despite not always having a stable manager.  They have achieved this because things got so bad they couldn't have got much worse.  They came up with a footballing strategy, partly through luck as much as judgement, and decided to play their football a certain way that would transfer throughout the club at all levels.  To do this they had to be brave as it isn't a quick fix solution and comes with the likelehood that things will get worse before they get better.  When they employ new managers it's not been just about getting the best manager available it's also about getting someone in that agrees with their ethos and can hopefully add something new to it.

At a slightly lower level Brentford are doing a similar thing.  At the very top level Barcelona did the same.  That way when a manager does leave you are not replacing a whole structure and core base of players.  Of course it's also probably easier for a manager to take over a successful team than relegation fodder.  It also doesn't mean everyone has to try and play the same type of football and there are clearly many ways to play the game but it's about having a long term strategy with realistic goals along the way that you will stick to even when things don't always go to plan.  It's also about open and adapting to change along the way learning from mistakes.  I wonder how many mistakes the Cobblers have learnt from over the last ten years?  

Back to the Cobblers.  I don't think we could have done much worse than we have over the last 5 years if we had taken this approach.  The constant use of loan players is such short term thinking based on a desperate chase for success.  We've offered 3 year contracts to players not to build for the future but to get them in the door.  We've turned over complete squads every season.

I have my doubts about Wilder for several reasons however much of what he's doing strikes me as someone who has desperately chasing a promised promotion push as opposed to laying down a long term strategy.  Now that might not be his fault entirely as let's face it if you are under pressure to meet short term targets you start making desperate decisions.  A prime example again is the seeming urgency to try and sell our prize asset rather than play the long game.

The stupidity as well is that actually we've got a pretty good set of supporters that would probably be ok with things if they could see what we were trying to do and what the long term plan was.

When you see a manager playing four central midfielders or chopping and changing the side/formation every week or slating the players/making excuses publicly you just know there isn't a long term plan.  I look at our current squad and we've got more than enough quality to comfortably be mid table with no risk of relegation.  So what better time than now to try and instill a long term plan that might take a couple of seasons to come to fruition but ultimately would pay off and supported by the eventual redevelopment lead us to actually having some sustained success.  

[Iest_ntfc]

Without turning this into an Anti DC post but the lack of a plan for the club is down to him. He keeps hiring and fireing without looking more than a few months ahead. He's far too interested in off the pitch activities to give the on the field the time it needs.

We all know he's not a football man and the fact that he backs his managers with allowing them to sign all these players without taking an active interest is obviouse for all to see and I'm sure this has had a negative effect. We need constancy on the pitch as well as with the manager. I appreciate injuries have forced certain signings but we Still seem to just sign players rather than working on improving what we have and making it work.

The most succesfull reign of DCs time here was when we had CC and JD as DoF, I personally think this is something we should look at doing again

[John]

It's all Cardoza's fault. For years we just bumped along the bottom, no money, no hope, no ambition, no concern for the future. A good season would be when we win more than we lose and not get drawn into a relegation fight. Then up pops our Chairman with his millions, tell us we have a 5 year plan to get into the Championship and suddenly we're all filled with hope, aspiration and a general sense of well being. Now scraping along the bottom is no longer good enough, we expect, no demand to be involved at the top end of the table and if we're not, woe betide the man responsible.

Things would have been so much better if Cardoza had never rolled up in the first place. We'd be happily collecting money in buckets again and if we were still in the football league, we'd be content enough with that.

Anybody got McRichies phone number?

[Terryfenwickatemyhamster]

It's all Cardoza's fault. For years we just bumped along the bottom, no money, no hope, no ambition, no concern for the future. A good season would be when we win more than we lose and not get drawn into a relegation fight. Then up pops our Chairman with his millions, tell us we have a 5 year plan to get into the Championship and suddenly we're all filled with hope, aspiration and a general sense of well being. Now scraping along the bottom is no longer good enough, we expect, no demand to be involved at the top end of the table and if we're not, woe betide the man responsible.

Things would have been so much better if Cardoza had never rolled up in the first place. We'd be happily collecting money in buckets again and if we were still in the football league, we'd be content enough with that.

Anybody got McRichies phone number?

Whilst the sarcasm of your post is clear to see, none the less it misses the point by a mile. Expectation is not the preserve of the average Cobblers supporter, it is a given for most people who pay for something and want something in return these days. Cobblers supporters are far from unique.. We used to live in a boot and shoe town, where the vast majority of folk aspired to a good holiday once a year in Hunstanton and accepted a shyte british car to drive round in, yearning for their own terrace house to boast about. It's all changed. People want more. Couple that with a very successful Rugby team and the heads start to turn.

Also... Where does your point tie in with Cardozas perspective? I've never said I expect championship football. He's stated it's an expectation of his since the day he arrived. Hardly an exercise in expectation management. Perhaps when building teams and stands he should temper his enthusiasm to fit his ability to what he can deliver, rather than what he can promise. 

[guest49]

Who thinks it has been Wilders lack to success to manage in the face of adversity?

In other words, where do people think we'd be in the table without the injuries? Still top 3 material or are the players not as good as many thought they were? O'Toole aside who is obviously gash.