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Bolton 6-0 SAFC


The Situation said:
One of the darkest days in the history of the club, yet only 1 year ago this week.

Within 12 months we've gone from that, to 1 point off the playoffs and 3 points off 3rd place in the Championship after 28 games, reducing the average age of the squad with what seems like every signing, and playing some of the best football in the division.

It's no mean feat. The days of clubs going straight from L1 to challenging for promotion are long gone and the highest any promoted L1 side has finished in the last 4 season was last year's Blackpool in 16th.

If anyone still doubts the credentials of Speakman and co, that should be all the evidence you need to realise he is doing a fantastic job.
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Sacking Lee Johnson, and hiring Alex Neil of course had a lot to do with it.
 
djilobodjiitist said:
This was the match that convinced me that my 10 year old was crackers. At 4-0 down I said right that's it, he said no I want to stay until the end. Got back to the car after the match and I was raging "I'll never go to Bolton again", he was like "why not? I will". He's clearly one of us.
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Hes right…one day we will go back there and give Bolton a right good hiding
 
safccfas said:
It’s the reason we are where we are today ….. mind it didn’t f***ing feel like it driving home afterwards
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I booked my Wembley play off hotel the Sunday after that demoralising defeat. Awful day. We would have gone top with a win too IRC
 
john h said:
This thread is on the Hibs Main Forum...Hibs fans consoling themselves that once LJ departs, they will go in an upwards trajectory...as we have.
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I hope they get that, he's a buzz-word bullshitter out of his depth, and he probably got interviews and positions on the back of his father's career.
 
Definitely Maybe said:
I still think Johnson had a part to play (hear me out). He arrived at the bleakest point in our history when we had an aged squad full of knackers like Graham, Grigg, Dobson, Scowen etc playing eye-wateringly bad football under a dinosaur in Parkinson. In conjunction with Speakman he oversaw the transition towards youth, blooding in the likes of Neil and Cirkin and putting faith in Stewart and Embleton. You could also argue (possibly tenuously) that he aided Patterson's development - I believe he wanted to start last season with him as number 1 but Speakman identified Hoffman just before the start of the season so they went with Burge until the deal was done rather than start Patterson then drop him and kill his confidence, and also allowing him to go out on loan where he thrived.

Now, obviously he failed and results speak for themselves, but I don't think any other manager who we could have realistically appointed at the time would have went along with that. Alex Neil certainly didn't - the first thing he did was drop Dan Neil and Doyle and go with experience. We needed a manager who would see the bigger picture rather than go with League One battlers to grind our way out of the division otherwise the project would have failed. Mowbray is benefiting from some of the work Johnson did.

But he was fatally flawed. He believed he was some sort of football genius and I really think he completely neglected coaching them the basics. We looked great at home but panicked against anyone who pressed us, particularly away where if we couldn't play out from the back against big, physical opponents we would wilt, drop deeper and deeper, leave Stewart completely isolated and put ourselves under more pressure. He had to go, but I think Neil benefited from taking over a talented but disorganised squad and steering them in the right direction but would have failed if he'd inherited the post-Parky shitshow.
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Neil had watched a lot of football while he was not working and came to the same conclusion as plenty of opposing managers namely that we were (to paraphrase Reidy) weak as piss when we came up against sides who knew how exploit our inexperience.

Johnson should have cottoned on to that earlier but persisted with the same naive tactics that saw us destroyed on several occasions and his persistence with the young uns could have done some real damage to their confidence and their careers.

When we were on the front foot we were a joy to watch at times but he didn’t know how to make us solid when the team were up against it.
 
What a difference a year can make. Now we have the youngest squad in England that plays the best football in Europe.
 
It certainly didn't feel like it at the time but what a blessing in disguise.

Was listening on the radio and turned it off at 3-0 and couldn't believe it when the notifications kept coming through on my phone. I just felt numb, thinking where on earth do we go from here just having been tanned six-nowt in the third tier.

What a year we've had.
 
We've came a long way, to think this was the start of it all.

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Says it all that team, not even that bad, Johnson was such a chancer. 3 of them stiill play for us in the PL now man.
 
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