We Love Sammo!

[Macc Cobbler]

I actually think it was correct for Sammo to take off Harris before half-time .......... he was having a nightmare and was being sorely exposed and we could not afford to go a second goal down. I felt sorry for Harris as he looked a forlorn figure sitting on his own on the bench at half-time, but it was just not working.
Re the original team selection, I thought Sammo got it massively wrong however. This perseverance with Gilligan could be the downfall of him. He should have started with Osman and Wedderburn in the middle, and whilst Jacobs has been disappointing in his last couple of games I would have persevered with him on the left.

[nathan r]

i wasn't sure slatting Thornton publicly was the right thing to do, but to be fair he's got a reaction from as Thornton came on
and changed the game against Southend and scored yesterday.

As for Harris, i wasn't at the game but could this have waited until half time?  Although they were both playing s*** i felt for Rodgers and Hinton when they were subbed just before half time last year at Burton.

[pattcobb]

My personal view on Sammo is starting to change somewhat. He came in last year, when things were going sh*te, managed to change our fourtunes completly and nearly pulled off a miracle in getting us to the play offs. But this season has been nothing short of bog-standard at best. If it had not been for us getting a miracle at Reading, I think Sammo may have found himself under a bit moee pressure, but instead the distraction of the Liverpool game, which people have been talking about for weeks appears to have clouded over some serious issues.

I find myself disagreeing with his team selection every single week. I'm not a football manager, only a fan, but I can never say I have disagreed with a team so many times and so constantly, even when we were doing sh*t under previous managers I've thought, yeah thats proberly our best team. How on earth he is not playing a midfield 4/5 with Jacobs, Thornton, Osman (now injured) and Wedderburn, every game when all of these players are fit is beyond me.

Equally, in my opinion, Sammo had a poor transfer window. I understand there were budget cuts which limited him significantly and made his already difficult job much harder in terms of trying to build a squad. But we left ourselves woefully short of cover in central defence, as I do not beleive that Sammo would not have known to some sort of degree the extent of Hinton's injury, and lacking completely in any sort of strikeforce having let our best striker by a countrymile go, without replacing him, until recently with Mckenzie.

I still beleive we can turn this season around, just, but to do it, Sammo is going to need the players who can win games, such as Jacobs, Thornton and Davis on his side and his handling of the player so far seems to have been a bit wayward, but equally I do understand you can't just let players walk over you as a manager.

I must say i agree with all this. Sammo has made some pretty strange decisions lately. Yesterday we had a converted striker playing alongside a converted left midfileder at centre half. I also do not agree with the way Sammo seems so dismissive of the Liverpool game, not sure this is inexperience but I reckon Sammo should give it the big one. "Nothing to lose, they're the ones under pressure, give a right good go" Instead our (boring?) manager bleats something about Bradford being more important. We all know that is probabably true, but come on Sammo lighten up we are likely not to win at Anfield but lets give it a good go please.

[Marvo]

I'm not so sure Bradford is so important now, any points gained will probably mean that we finish 15th this season instead of 16th.

[Welly Cobb]

Weren't we two points off the play-offs before the start? We lost in what was probably going to be the hardest fixture in the calender this year. We shouldn't be ruling ourselves out at this stage - it's a s*** league and pretty much anything can happen.

[Macc Cobbler]

I am looking at the table today ........ and we are only two points off the bottom of the table.

[Marvo]

It's not about how many points we are behind, or in front for that matter, it's about how good we are and at the moment it is obvious that we are nowhere near good enough. What makes matters worse, I seriously doubt our manager has the nous to change things, at least not for the better! I've seen NOTHING this season that suggests we can get promoted this term.

[The Hask]

Weren't we two points off the play-offs before the start? We lost in what was probably going to be the hardest fixture in the calender this year. We shouldn't be ruling ourselves out at this stage - it's a sh*t league and pretty much anything can happen.

Far too early and Shrewsbury played well and looked a very good side, in my opinion the true test will be Home to Hereford - if we don't get three points it will be then I will join the doom and gloom bandwagon

[The Hask]

i wasn't sure slatting Thornton publicly was the right thing to do, but to be fair he's got a reaction from as Thornton came on
and changed the game against Southend and scored yesterday.

As for Harris, i wasn't at the game but could this have waited until half time?  Although they were both playing sh*t i felt for Rodgers and Hinton when they were subbed just before half time last year at Burton.

Better to sub early than concede more goals

[The Hask]

Or Stuart Gray's fondness of Leon Constantine?

Bless Mr C - he scored for York again yesterday

[DustCobb]

Better to sub early than concede more goals

We only conceeded 1 goal with Harris on the pitch.

We lost 3-1.

[wazzacobbler]

Far too early and Shrewsbury played well and looked a very good side, in my opinion the true test will be Home to Hereford - if we don't get three points it will be then I will join the doom and gloom bandwagon

Why wait that long? We are s***

[The Hask]

We only conceeded 1 goal with Harris on the pitch.

We lost 3-1.

I know but at the time of the sub we were 1-0 down so the decision to sub would have taken the fact - sub or concede more goals - no-one had the benefit of this hindsight at that point

[DustCobb]

I know but at the time of the sub we were 1-0 down so the decision to sub would have taken the fact - sub or concede more goals - no-one had the benefit of this hindsight at that point

I know, i was just being a wanker 

[The Hask]

I know, i was just being a wanker 

I will let you off then 

[bungle]

I think we've reached the point where serious questions have to be asked about Sammo's ability to take us forward.

He was handed an extremely tough group of opening fixtures and he's had some nasty injuries to contend with, but these factors, whilst mitigating, should not obscure the fact that he has made some truly shocking decisions.  

He blew the striker budget on Tadgh Purcell only to decide that transfer-listed geriatric, Steve Guinan, was a better option up front. He has constantly tinkered with the team from the start, never giving the impression that he knows our best 11. He's made questionable man-management decisions concerning Thornton and Harris. Now he's lavishing praise on a half-fit Ryan Gilligan for playing through the pain barrier, as if the guy is the indispensible fulcrum of our side, when everybody else would tell you he's way down the midfield pecking order behind Thornton, Osman, Wedderburn and Jacobs, all of whom, with the exception of Osman, have the virtue of being fully bloody fit. How must Wedderburn feel when a 60-70% fit Gilligan is preferred to him in centre midfield? I don't care if he's only 18, the lad should be starting in his proper positon.

I'm starting to question again, as I did during the early days of his reign, whether Sammo has the tactical nous, the transfer acumen and the man management skills to be a succesful manager. There's no doubting his integrity and his passion, and I'd dearly love him to succeed; he just needs to be a little more circumspect, a little less heart-on-sleeve and to use his brain a bit more.  When the sideshow of the Liverpool game is out the way and we've played a few of our easier fixtures, we should have a clearer idea of how things stand.

[clarkeysntfc]

In 5 games time we'll have completed a quarter of our league campaign, which in my view is a fair time to make a judgement.

[Sid]

The panic button should be being pressed if we start falling away and are in danger of relegation. The severe lack of a big striker and a decent centre back will be the thorn in
Sammo's tactics until he sorts these positions out - and from what I can see, the club have pretty much exhausted all avenues on this front and are getting nowhere fast.

For a bit of perspective, we lost our second league game of the season, away from home, to a better team. Torquay away on the opening day was also similar. We have lost 2 from 7 games so far 2010/011, having faced 3 decent sides on our travels. Last season we lost 1 in 3 matches, including 10 away from home.

Last season's good run of form came because the club managed to blood a good confident side week in week out. That confidence is lacking partly because Sammo is struggling to find that first 11, and the right tactics to fit the players. I'd wait until end of October - another 7 games (including 4 home games) before seeing if changes have paid off.

Personally, I'm preferring the fact we are getting the ball down, passing it about a la Shrewsbury instead of lumping it around. - imagine the level of negativity on the board is we were in this position and we were incapable of playing a pass to feet (cue the ridiculous comments...) 

[bungle]

Anything is better than dealing with the real issues.....

By which I suppose you mean Cardoza's management of the finances.

Perhaps I'm naiive, but I still think that the central issue is the management of the team. I still believe that a decent manager with tactical nous, transfer acumen and the ability to improve players would get us promoted out of this division, even with the slender resources currently at our disposal. I'm getting increasingly concerned that Sammo is not the man to do this.  

 

[NTFC Nut]

When you consider that our playing budget was reduced by 25% from last year's budget (which I seem to recall DC saying in his Q&A was around the £1.2m mark?), and then you take out the wages of Purcell (who will contribute nothing on the field of play this season) and the transfer-listed duo (who were brought in on League One wages by Gray and are assumably on the same terms as last season), the rest of the playing budget cannot be more than about £800k. That is not one of the higher budgets in the division and in fact, puts us at about where we look likely to finish this season, lower mid-table. The likes of Macclesfield and Barnet aren't operating on much less than £800k. I'm not really sure what some of you expect Sammo to do.