MarcoG
Striker
I don't actually think he's very good. He's probably decent but we give him a lot of praise for getting us out of league one. I reckon that's more down to the fact the previous managers were f***ing shit. I mean, look at the squad he had man. By the end we had Patterson, Roberts, Clarke, Stewart, Neil, batth, Evans, onien, pritchard. All of these have proven themselves perfectly capable of playing at the upper end of the championship. Wright as well, easily a top L1 player. I think what time has shown is that we had the kind of side that should have walked league one. The fact they didn't is more a negative reflection on previous managers, rather than a sign that the one who finally did it was anything more than decent
If you look at our squad now then yeah I don't think it's a stretch to say we should have got promoted out of that league but it completely removes any context of the situation we were in.
Dan Neil barely played a game second half of the season because he was badly burnt out seemingly and performing poor for a month or so before he was dropped, Patterson hadn't played a single second of pro football until last season and spent the first part of the year out on loan in non league, Roberts had barely played for football for the best part of two year and was sat on the bench twiddling his thumbs at some shite French team, Clarke had barely played football for years and had struggled when he'd been out on loan (and wasn't exactly getting a load of praise on here from a fair few), Corry Evans was in minging form and was public enemy number one on here when Neil came in, Luke O'Nien spent most of last season popping his f***ing shoulder back into place
We'd been rattled all over at Portsmouth, Rotherham and Sheffield Wednesday earlier in the year, we'd just lost 6-0 at Bolton and 2-1 against two shite relegation battling teams in the days before he got the job. He completely flipped everything on it's head. Every single person supporting or connected to the club wanted to see subs made towards the end of the Sheffield Wednesday second leg when it was 1-1 on aggregate, Alex Neil kept both Roberts and Clarke on the pitch and look what happened.
He can get fucked now of course and I get the negativity towards him but I feel like it's disingenuous to play down what Alex Neil did here or say he isn't very good, it was the perfect appointment.