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Dick Advocaat first spell

  • Thread starter Thread starter DaveAngel
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His heart wasn't in it when he came back.

He had a look of not being arsed about the situation before he left. I don't think he realised the difficulty of the task he had and thought bollocks to it.
 

sproates33 said:
Cant have a bad word said about Dicky like, That Arsenal performance away was legendary :cool: Crying at the end bless him.

Shouldn't have returned though - His transfers didn't really live up to the expectation but he brought the calibre of player (at the time) we were crying out for.

Yedlin, M'Vila, Lens, Borini, all on paper good signings.

To think Allardyce then brought in Kirchoff, Khazri & Kone, got the best out of Defoe (nearer the end) and we literally had a very decent side.

Makes the David Moyes appointment even worse, how on earth did he screw that up so badly. Now all the above aside from Kone have left and we are scraping the barrel with James Vaughan & Lewis Grabban, dear me what a mess. David Moyes should literally never get another job in football. :neutral:
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That team that beat Chelsea and Everton would have finished mid table the next season if we had kept big sam, just 2-3 signings and m villa and a decent squad.......and then the "domino effect"........
 
Lanchesterredandwhite said:
With hindsight, the real missed opportunity was Poyet. He did loads of good stuff that needed doing, but a mix of shite signings by a DoF, Poyet’s inability to change, and the impact the Southampton 8-0 seemed to have on him, seemed to leave him totally lost.
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sure it was Poyet who was striving to sign Virgil van Dijk (who visited the Academy at least once). Congerton ignored him and went with some other numpty (Coates possibly?) and the rest is history.

He took us to Wembley, pumped the mags twice (3 times?), won at the Bridge and signed Defoe amongst other things.

the beginning of the end when his tenure went down the drain at break-neck speed.
 
Doberman said:
sure it was Poyet who was striving to sign Virgil van Dijk (who visited the Academy at least once). Congerton ignored him and went with some other numpty (Coates possibly?) and the rest is history.

He took us to Wembley, pumped the mags twice (3 times?), won at the Bridge and signed Defoe amongst other things.

the beginning of the end when his tenure went down the drain at break-neck speed.
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Other way around wasn't it? Or just a lazy assumption based on Coates and Poyet's nationality perhaps.
 
Fact is - he wasn't up to the task. He came in, was likeable and relaxed after a difficult end to the Poyet era. We got a bit of momentum (and luck) and it scraped us over the line. A wondergoal against the Mags in a fairly awful game, two scruffy and very fortunate goals at Everton and two pens to beat Southampton.

I was one of very few at the time that didn't want him permanently. Unfortunately the fanfare, flowers, begging etc ultimately twisted his arm.

He's just past whatever talent he had as a manager.
 
I liked and still like him. I hate the term 'the club got under his skin' but I think he enjoyed his first spell and felt obliged to come back and steer the ship, but (rightly or wrongly) lost interest after promised transfers didn't materialise.

Our signings that summer were:

Coates - £2m
Matthews - £2m
Lens - £8m
Kaboul - £3m
Borini - £9m
M'Vila - Loan
Toivonen - Loan
Yedlin - Loan

Lens looked half decent under Dick until Sam bombed him out for his work rate. Toivonen turned out to be shite but played ok behind the striker at times.

However, only Lens and Toivonen were his signings. Coates had been signed by Congerton on loan then brought in as cheap filler, Matthews was a Congerton signing bombed out by Dick after 1 sub appearance, Kaboul was signed after Dick's first choice target Lombaerts (sp?) fell through. Yedlin was signed on loan to replace Matthews, nobody really knows either way about M'Vila and the Borini signing was shocking in hindsight - we'd already signed Lens in his position, the manager had specifically asked for a target man and was lied to (was promised he could play as a target man by Congerton), and he was only signed to appease the fans after chanting against Short in the Norwich game.

I have no idea why he set us up so open. Maybe he overestimated our attacking players or thought we had some winnable games at the start of the season and wanted to push for the wins? We played Leicester (a), Norwich (h), Swansea (h), Villa (a), Spurs (h), Bournemouth (h), Man United (a) and West Ham (h). Nobody predicted how good Leicester were. Norwich and Villa finished 19th and 20th, Swansea struggled and Bournemouth were newly promoted and had won 1, drawn 1 and lost 3 of their 5 games when we played them. We actually played quite well against Spurs and West Ham.

Not defending him as the tactics were still mental looking back, just adding some context
 
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