It’s time to get behind Chris Coleman

[Coeus]

Seem's an odd time if anything.

 

[WHD]

that's fair enough but Millwall are a team who where just promoted, their squad will have been full of confidence, plus they are probably made up of players their manager brought in, where as we had just been relegated, have only won 2 games at home in something like 14 month and I don't care what anybody says you can't tell me the players brought in, in January where Coleman's first or even second choice.
Not saying Coleman hasn't made mistakes though

They finished 6th in league one - that shows the standard of their team. Any confidence they had would soon disappear after a few defeats. If it was as simple as a promoted team having "confidence" they would all do well after promotion.

 

[fyl2u]

What if you don't think they're as shite as those posters will have you believe? What if you think that despite there being an obvious lack in quality, they're still on par with a lot of players in the division. What if you think that maybe with a little better organisation and instruction, as a collective the team could and really should have been better than the sum of it's parts?

For me, O'Shea is not shite. Cattermole is not shite. Kone is not shite. Oviedo, McNair, Gibson, Matthews, Asoro, McGeady, maybe even McManaman and Gooch are not shite. They're not all of them great either but there are players in there. Then you have the likes of Honeyman, Love, Robson, Vaughan who are at least going to give you some effort.

To me, there's at least a semblance of a team there, and has been all season. On occasion it's even proven results aren't beyond us in this division. So you have to question the selections, the formations, the tactics, the substitutions, and the then training, the team talks and everything that goes with it. Grayson was not good enough, and Coleman has not been good enough. Five wins in 28 games at this level is not good enough for Sunderland AFC. Guiding Sunderland AFC to League 1 after 30 games in charge is not good enough. In fact it's fuckin' despicable. The man should be vilified and chased from the club.

I've given you a "like" for your first two paragraphs even though I disagree with the last one.

None of us know what goes on behind the scenes between matches, we can only see what happens on the pitch. It's folly to try to dissect team selections for example when we don't know what the players are doing in training. Players that some fans are crying out to be selected could be acting the goat in training, not trying, taking the piss or being disruptive, or maybe have had a mild illness or personal problems that week, whereas players that some fans want us to not select might be working their arses off, being a good influence in training, and looking like they deserve to be selected. We just don't know.

He gets a lot of stick for staying with a 5-at-the-back formation but that was the first formation that got us any results under Coleman, and the times he went 4 at the back we looked a hell of a lot worse when he first got here. We managed to get a few better performances when we changed to 4 at the back more recently but that's gone tits-up too.

I have no problems with his substitutions. Whenever I've seen them criticised it's sometimes been when the critics haven't realised that a certain player was injured, and the rest of the time we have to say again that we don't see what happens behind the scenes so it's difficult to know whether a player that has even made the bench should be brought on unless there's been an injury to the player in their position.

Yeah, but if we were really desperate and couldn't attract anyone else, why didn't we go for an out of work manager like Alex Neil? We weren't totally desperate and were able to attract an in work manager, even though that was a massive mistake.

No idea mate, you'd have to ask Martin Bain. A club in limbo over a takeover is a hard sell to a manager. Usually when a club gets a new owner, that owner wants to bring in a manager of their choosing pretty soon afterwards, which means there's no job security at all. Who knows how many managers we approached who said they weren't interested from the get-go. Neil may well have been one of them for all we know.

 

[WHD]

No idea mate, you'd have to ask Martin Bain. A club in limbo over a takeover is a hard sell to a manager. Usually when a club gets a new owner, that owner wants to bring in a manager of their choosing pretty soon afterwards, which means there's no job security at all. Who knows how many managers we approached who said they weren't interested from the get-go. Neil may well have been one of them for all we know.

I'm pretty sure he wasn't. He took Grayson's old job - the job Grayson left to take over at Sunderland. It's fairly certain that Neil wouldn't have turned us down if we'd approached him.

 

[flanny1]

that's fair enough but Millwall are a team who where just promoted, their squad will have been full of confidence, plus they are probably made up of players their manager brought in, where as we had just been relegated, have only won 2 games at home in something like 14 month and I don't care what anybody says you can't tell me the players brought in, in January where Coleman's first or even second choice.
Not saying Coleman hasn't made mistakes though

I accept there are different circumstances, that was the most extreme example I could think of. There are plenty of other teams that have have done better with equally poor players. That said, Millwall had no money and aren’t a big draw either, so I doubt all their signings were first choice, not every promoted side keeps up momentum, their manager has just done a really good getting the best out of his players, questions have to be asked why Coleman couldn’t.

 

[fyl2u]

I'm pretty sure he wasn't. He took Grayson's old job - the job Grayson left to take over at Sunderland. It's fairly certain that Neil wouldn't have turned us down if we'd approached him.

Grayson's appointment was a weird one for me. On paper, he looked a decent bet - he'd done pretty well at his old job on a very limited budget. As a bloke to steady the ship for a season while we waited for the club to be sold, it didn't look like too bad an appointment going by his CV alone.

I'm just astounded he made it past the interview stage.

 

[chriswallace85]

A number of reasons:

- Out of all the managers we've ever had in my lifetime, he comes across as the most intelligent and therefore in my opinion likely to be able to turn things around given time.

- With Wales he was widely praised for his man-management skills. Their players and fans were gutted he left because he had them overperforming.

- The January window is notorious for being more difficult than the Summer window to try to bring players in, so getting replacements for Grabban/Vaughan and a better keeper was always going to be tricky, and they're the positions in which we most needed some quality. Grayson had already wasted the little budget we had on dross.

- A new manager would need time to get to know the squad to determine who should stay and who should go, and decide which positions to strengthen. This would effectively give our League 1 rivals a head-start on the transfer market and may see us sticking with certain players for the first half of the season that a lot of us would like to see gone.

- A new manager will bring his own on-field tactics to the club. While granted some might see this as a good thing, our team has finally looked like they have been gelling together for large portions of the last 6 matches or so, aware of what they're supposed to be doing for large portions of the games. New tactics means relearning all this, which again would likely mean we were playing catchup compared to teams in League 1 that have the same manager as last year.

- He genuinely seems to want to be here and seems passionate about it. There may well be other managers who would fit this description too, granted.

- I would worry about who we might be able to attract to the job if we got rid of him. Last year Aberdeen's manager wouldn't touch us with a barge pole and we had to settle for Simple Simon. This year we're in a similar situation with not knowing what's going on with regards to a takeover but now we're a division below as well. I just can't see a queue of better managers beating down the door.

- I would like to see what a manager could do if he was given more than a season to achieve his goals. Again there's an argument for getting someone else in and giving them time, but I think at least some of the problems we've had over the past 10 years have stemmed from chopping and changing managers too often. Certainly a large amount of the debt has come from managers arriving with the attitude of "spend as much as possible to get us out of the shit without any regard to the future financial situation, because let's face it I probably won't be here by the time the finances bite me on the arse anyway".

- The club has a reputation of getting through managers willy-nilly and not letting them have time to turn things around. This reputation makes us a less attractive club for new managers and players alike. The manager side of this is obvious, but also players won't want to come to a club to be with a manager they already know if they think he'll likely be out of a job in 6 months and they'll be left playing for a different manager instead.

Ahead of Sam Allardyce, the bloke who pioneered the use of sports science in this country? I think not.

I don't care what he did at Wales. Motivating lads to play for their country is a different kettle of fish and he was gifted some quality in the likes of Bale, Ramsey, Williams, Davies, Allen etc. And all those man management and motivational skills counted for frig all when they couldn't beat Ireland and failed to make the play-offs for the World Cup. Yes, failed. Chris Coleman ultimately failed at international level.

Getting to know the squad and introducing a style of play is not going to make a whole lot of difference considering the massive changes that are inevitable this summer. O'Shea, Kone, (hopefully) Jones, Oviedo and possibly even Cattermole will all be gone. The loanees will all be gone. We will literally be starting from scratch.

I don't care if he wants to be here or not, he hasn't been good enough.

Someone will take the job, there's always someone.

Stability's a lovely idea, but this clown has gotten us relegated despite having 30 games to pick up the required results. Why should we afford him any more time to turn it round. What manager in the history of the game has ever turned it round after such a shocking opening act.

New manager, new ideas, new players. That's what's required.

 

[WHD]

Grayson's appointment was a weird one for me. On paper, he looked a decent bet - he'd done pretty well at his old job on a very limited budget. As a bloke to steady the ship for a season while we waited for the club to be sold, it didn't look like too bad an appointment going by his CV alone.

I'm just astounded he made it past the interview stage.

It's a weird one when you consider a manager with a better CV was out of work.

 

[marco is god]

What if you don't think they're as shite as those posters will have you believe? What if you think that despite there being an obvious lack in quality, they're still on par with a lot of players in the division. What if you think that maybe with a little better organisation and instruction, as a collective the team could and really should have been better than the sum of it's parts?

For me, O'Shea is not shite. Cattermole is not shite. Kone is not shite. Oviedo, McNair, Gibson, Matthews, Asoro, McGeady, maybe even McManaman and Gooch are not shite. They're not all of them great either but there are players in there. Then you have the likes of Honeyman, Love, Robson, Vaughan who are at least going to give you some effort.

To me, there's at least a semblance of a team there, and has been all season. On occasion it's even proven results aren't beyond us in this division. So you have to question the selections, the formations, the tactics, the substitutions, and the then training, the team talks and everything that goes with it. Grayson was not good enough, and Coleman has not been good enough. Five

They finished 6th in league one - that shows the standard of their team. Any confidence they had would soon disappear after a few defeats. If it was as simple as a promoted team having "confidence" they would all do well after promotion.

not saying that obviously you need other aspects of the team to be right but if as some say we are not even good enough to survive in league 1 or at best equal standard as Millwall ( that's not my opinion) then out of two teams of equal ability the one with confidence should win. For the record I think we are better than Millwall and should finish above them, guess I was just playing devils advocate in my first post!

 

[fyl2u]

Ahead of Sam Allardyce, the bloke who pioneered the use of sports science in this country? I think not.

I don't care what he did at Wales. Motivating lads to play for their country is a different kettle of fish and he was gifted some quality in the likes of Bale, Ramsey, Williams, Davies, Allen etc. And all those man management and motivational skills counted for frig all when they couldn't beat Ireland and failed to make the play-offs for the World Cup. Yes, failed. Chris Coleman ultimately failed at international level.

Getting to know the squad and introducing a style of play is not going to make a whole lot of difference considering the massive changes that are inevitable this summer. O'Shea, Kone, (hopefully) Jones, Oviedo and possibly even Cattermole will all be gone. The loanees will all be gone. We will literally be starting from scratch.

I don't care if he wants to be here or not, he hasn't been good enough.

Someone will take the job, there's always someone.

Stability's a lovely idea, but this clown has gotten us relegated despite having 30 games to pick up the required results. Why should we afford him any more time to turn it round. What manager in the history of the game has ever turned it round after such a shocking opening act.

New manager, new ideas, new players. That's what's required.

Yep, Sam never seemed particularly intelligent to me. He certainly wasn't a dimwit and I agree he liked to use modern technologies and training techniques, but that doesn't necessarily indicate high intelligence, it just says he's not a luddite.

 

[chriswallace85]

Yep, Sam never seemed particularly intelligent to me. He certainly wasn't a dimwit and I agree he liked to use modern technologies and training techniques, but that doesn't necessarily indicate high intelligence, it just says he's not a luddite.

I've seen nothing to suggest Coleman is any more intelligent than any manger we've had. I'm not saying he's thick neither, I just don't think he's very good at his job.

 

[fyl2u]

I've seen nothing to suggest Coleman is any more intelligent than any manger we've had. I'm not saying he's thick neither, I just don't think he's very good at his job.

Well, that's a different matter. It is entirely possible for someone to be both intelligent and bad at their job. I just think that someone intelligent is more likely to be able to see where they're going wrong and do something about it, whereas someone less intelligent might not have the capacity to do so.

 

[chriswallace85]

Well, that's a different matter. It is entirely possible for someone to be both intelligent and bad at their job. I just think that someone intelligent is more likely to be able to see where they're going wrong and do something about it, whereas someone less intelligent might not have the capacity to do so.

Well he couldn't when we stuck with five at the back for so long.

 

[flanny1]

I've given you a "like" for your first two paragraphs even though I disagree with the last one.

None of us know what goes on behind the scenes between matches, we can only see what happens on the pitch. It's folly to try to dissect team selections for example when we don't know what the players are doing in training. Players that some fans are crying out to be selected could be acting the goat in training, not trying, taking the piss or being disruptive, or maybe have had a mild illness or personal problems that week, whereas players that some fans want us to not select might be working their arses off, being a good influence in training, and looking like they deserve to be selected. We just don't know.

He gets a lot of stick for staying with a 5-at-the-back formation but that was the first formation that got us any results under Coleman, and the times he went 4 at the back we looked a hell of a lot worse when he first got here. We managed to get a few better performances when we changed to 4 at the back more recently but that's gone tits-up too.

I have no problems with his substitutions. Whenever I've seen them criticised it's sometimes been when the critics haven't realised that a certain player was injured, and the rest of the time we have to say again that we don't see what happens behind the scenes so it's difficult to know whether a player that has even made the bench should be brought on unless there's been an injury to the player in their position.



No idea mate, you'd have to ask Martin Bain. A club in limbo over a takeover is a hard sell to a manager. Usually when a club gets a new owner, that owner wants to bring in a manager of their choosing pretty soon afterwards, which means there's no job security at all. Who knows how many managers we approached who said they weren't interested from the get-go. Neil may well have been one of them for all we know.

Did it though? He only managed 3 1-0 wins with it and 2 of those involved us playing 2 strikers, something he later stopped doing. I don't think there was any justification for his continued use of that formation, it seemed to be more a case of him not wanting to concede he was wrong, you can often see the same thing from his substitutions, he doesn't seem to like having to change his initial game plan regardless of the situation.

 

[marco is god]

I accept there are different circumstances, that was the most extreme example I could think of. There are plenty of other teams that have have done better with equally poor players. That said, Millwall had no money and aren’t a big draw either, so I doubt all their signings were first choice, not every promoted side keeps up momentum, their manager has just done a really good getting the best out of his players, questions have to be asked why Coleman couldn’t.

I hovering towards givin

I accept there are different circumstances, that was the most extreme example I could think of. There are plenty of other teams that have have done better with equally poor players. That said, Millwall had no money and aren’t a big draw either, so I doubt all their signings were first choice, not every promoted side keeps up momentum, their manager has just done a really good getting the best out of his players, questions have to be asked why Coleman couldn’t.

I'm on the fence at the minute about Coleman but can't argue with that, good post!

 

[Northumberland Rocks]

Well, that's a different matter. It is entirely possible for someone to be both intelligent and bad at their job. I just think that someone intelligent is more likely to be able to see where they're going wrong and do something about it, whereas someone less intelligent might not have the capacity to do so.

When Coleman and Symons were at Wales by all accounts he had a great backroom team with sports psychologists, fitness coaches etc. At sunderland he has Rob Stockdale.

We need to invest in a decent backroom as we move forward.

 

[fyl2u]

Well he couldn't when we stuck with five at the back for so long.

5-at-the-back was the first formation he tried that actually won us points. When we'd played a flat back 4 prior to that we'd been getting walked all over. I have no problem with him sticking with that formation. Yes we picked up a few results after we were forced to go 4 at the back afterwards, but to suggest that was the sole reason for picking up those results is a logical fallacy that debaters and philosophers call post hoc ergo propter hoc - literally translated "after this therefore because of this" - it doesn't take into account that other factors were also in play.

 

[flanny1]

When Coleman and Symons were at Wales by all accounts he had a great backroom team with sports psychologists, fitness coaches etc. At sunderland he has Rob Stockdale.

We need to invest in a decent backroom as we move forward.

I suppose we don't really don't know the ins and outs of the backroom staff but at this point they are looking like a common denominator. Unfortunately I doubt we have the money to pay them off and replace them with anyone better. If there is a take over I certainly wouldn't mind the manager having a clear out.

 

[Mackemjmc]

He hasn’t done a very good job but his hands were tied. I don’t think he’s going anywhere, so despite what you want, bitching and moaning won’t achieve anything. Suppport him and see where we are come October time.

Fully agree. New season new slate. Last chance saloon. If we get rid of the Yank etc...........
Lets be positive, Keep The Faith . It aint the end of the world , our time will come, look (and hope) to the future.

 

[marco is god]

I hovering towards givin


I'm on the fence at the minute about Coleman but can't argue with that, good post!

You can tell I don't post much, keep typing something, then deciding it doesn't sound right so retype and it posts the original as well as the edit