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yogi bear up the cagire

Life President⭐
Joined
May 8, 2008
Messages
16,279
Location
St Gaudens France
I'm not a great believer in chopping and changing managers and I was willing to give Paul Sturrock another season, even though I accepted that his brand and style of football was not universally appreciated. In the end players and managers come and go, Southend United is, hopefully, eternal and I simply want what is best for the club.
I was slow in warming to Phil Brown but the positives started to build. He began to get results from Freddy at the start of the season, he appeared to bring on Leonard in leaps and bounds. He developed Prosser from a liability to someone who was the backbone of the side, bringing in Kiernan as an effective partner for him in our unbeaten run and also recreated Straker as a player. The football we were playing in 2013 was a pleasure to watch, even in defeat I enjoyed our first trip to Chesterfield and I was then wowed by our sprited come back at Portsmouth. I was hooked.........I was on tangoed!
Come February and the tide completely turned. Was it injuries? was it the heavy pitches? was our winning style of play sussed out by the other sides? Or was it more a failure to adapt and adjust to all these circumstances? Some will say that the embargo has buggered us again this season, yet problems and results started to rear their ugly head at the start of February, when we were reportedly out of the embargo.
For me, our problems started in central defence with the loss of Kiernan, which was covered briefly and reasonably effectively by the partnership of Prosser and Thompson. Prosser left the scene on the 28th of January, yet we had to wait four games (two defeats) before we realised how much we were missing Luke and how shakey the defence had become without two reliable central defenders. Bolger arrived, all to briefly, to partner Thompson at York before both disappeared with injuries, which left us in the farcical situation at Northampton, where the central defence was a mix and match, whilst another three points went out of the window. Egan was the sole arrival to plug two huge holes in central defence and two more matches drifted by before Sokolik was brought in. FINALLY, in mid-March, with Egan and Sokolik we start to hear reports that our defence was looking solid! Yes, we have had bad luck with injuries but for me, the failure to bring in effective cover urgently enough has cost us dear.
Unfortunately, our problems were not only restricted to defence, we appeared to have one or two problems scoring and this situation wasn't helped by the withdrawal of Woodrow, our only player with any pace. Some would say he wasn't that effective, yet a couple of months after returning to Fulham, he's playing (well) in the Premiership. This loss was soon forgotten with the announcement that the embargo was no more and January had been a time for strengthening the side; on the 6th of February PB proudly announced,

"In January we were able to bring in Bedsente Gomis, Luke O'Neill and Lee Barnard to the football club,
who I'm sure will play a big part in helping us achieve what we want this season - and that's promotion."

If there ever words that come back and bite you in the bum! Luke shone brightly for a few minutes, Gomis hasn't yet exactly proved an important addition and it soon became apparent that Lee wasn't going to hit the ground running and certainly wasnt going to provide the pace missed by Woodrow's absence. Since then there have been contradictory statements coming from PB. One day he announces that we need to strengthen the squad and that anything up to four players could arrive, then the next day, he states his belief that the present squad can turn things around!
The thing is, at the start of the season, if we had sauntered along in mid table most of us, including myself,, would have accepted that this season was one for settling in and rebuilding, before launching a promotion bid for 2014/5. Perhaps in some ways, unfortunately for PB, we got well established in a promotion position and thus the present fall from grace has been so dramatic, alarming and catastrophic, has it exposed weaknesses in PB's decision making and management skills? In the end, if we don't make the play-offs, will Phil Brown's reputation be irretrievably flawed? Will there be a shadow hanging over him, as the guy who blew it and lost the plot? What if we get in a similar position next year, will there not be the slightest fear that he could blow it again?




 
Wrong team selection, wrong tactics, played tired players when we could all see they needed resting, playing One up front on their own at home, playing Fred as a lone striker, 30% win ratio do I need to go on?
 
Wrong team selection, wrong tactics, played tired players when we could all see they needed resting, playing One up front on their own at home, playing Fred as a lone striker, 30% win ratio do I need to go on?


This and this again,

Phil had maintained his 451 stance and he appears not to care who plays the lone role!,Managers and their win ratios never ever seem to change that's why Phil's has always been 30% or lower.

Phil can add glory to his CV but needs to attack attack attack and bloody go for it.
 
Bloke was already in the last chance saloon when he signed for us. The rest of the footballing world doesn't really know what he's doing but the mention of his name always gets a chuckle from people at work.

If he can't turn around a L2 sleeping giant then that's his managerial career done for. Do you think anyone would touch him with a bargepole if he can't get us working?
 
In my opinion we need Martin Allen as our boss. He knows league 2 inside out and knows hot to get club out of league 2, where Sturrock and Brown both failed for us.
 
Win ratios never seemed to affect the ability of Steve Bruce to keep getting employment. The key points are covered above. We had a stable squad until January. Fitness issues or not we would have been better off blooding the squad we had. I could have accepted the form falling away for this reason.
 
Give the bloke time, we are still somehow 7th and he knows what he's talking about. I still like him and think he's the right man for the job.
 
PB is as good as we are going to get and he has done well under immense pressure off the field to get us as far up the table as he has under a transfer embargo. Would the likes of Pelligrini, Moyes, Jose, Wenger etc be able to better his achievements (especially earlier in the season) had they been manager here and not able to strengthen a somewhat threadbare & knackered squad?

I think if PB had been manager of Manchester City, with their squad and unlimited budget he would (at least) have matched Pellegrini this season.
 
Win ratios never seemed to affect the ability of Steve Bruce to keep getting employment. The key points are covered above. We had a stable squad until January. Fitness issues or not we would have been better off blooding the squad we had. I could have accepted the form falling away for this reason.


In fairness to Bruce who has always managed unfashionable clubs in the prem so under those circumstances any ratio of 30% is very good IMO.

Just in case anyone on here has the wrong end of the stick I think Phil should stay here for next season as well.
 
Phil isnt that bad, it could of been worse we could of got Moyes
 
In my opinion we need Martin Allen as our boss. He knows league 2 inside out and knows hot to get club out of league 2, where Sturrock and Brown both failed for us.

Amazing.

I wrote this as a **** take in October:

With no end to the embargo in sight, the festive period will put paid to any hopes of a play-off tilt we might've had as injuries, suspensions and fatigue force the younger members of the squad into the starting line-ups.

We'll be indifferent and largely inconsistent, struggling to piece together results as we're unable to field a familiar line-up. Brown will come under increasing pressure and, with us lying comfortably outside the play-offs, Brown will either leave citing off-field differences with the chairman, or he'll be sacked with Martin citing a lack of passion from the squad in saving what is almost certainly a lost season. Shaw will follow, but Penney will stay to take over the squad for the rest of the season, with both Penney and Coughlan standing down at the end of the season.

Martin Allen will be appointed in the summer, tasked with rebuilding a squad funded predominately by the sales of Bentley and Leonard. Allen will get us on Sky Sports News by asking for a local to come and help in learn how to sign, before claiming the squad to not be fit enough.
 
Its strange , very strange. Sturrock was sacked mainly due to the fact that he persisted with a far too defensive 1 up front at home tactics.

Earlier this season Brown had won most people over with our free flowing , attacking + pressing high game with our midfield streaming forward to make it seem we had 5 or 6 in the box every move. So what happened ? Whats changed ? Why the sudden timid scaredness to attack and instead leave one isolated forward with no chance to create chances and no options when our defenders have the ball?

The ironic thing is that the 2 players who were winning us matches ( Lenny + Hursty ) won their new long term contracts and have since played so poorly they dont deserve to start . I like Brown + i think he's close to big things here , but someone needs to open his eyes to the fact that our negative play will not lead to promotion.

The defence actually looks excellent now. So we have a foundation. What we desperately need is a midfield busting a gut to get into good attacking positions + start looking like we want to win games , not grind out scrappy bore draws.
 
Unfortunately I think the team spirit and harmony that we had pre-Hull has vanished. After a win, the players would be all over Twitter praising each other and saying how much they love the club. It's been quiter than the East Stand watching a bore draw against....say Bury lately.

We could do with hiring a sports psychologist IMHO.
 
Unfortunately I think the team spirit and harmony that we had pre-Hull has vanished. After a win, the players would be all over Twitter praising each other and saying how much they love the club. It's been quiter than the East Stand watching a bore draw against....say Bury lately.

We could do with hiring a sports psychologist IMHO.

One of the things that concerns me is the temperament of both Phil Brown and the squad. Everyone talks about that elusive win that would suddenly put our play-off aspirations back on track. From what I heard we were pretty terrible in the first-half at Scunthorpe and then suddenly we fought back brilliantly to get the draw. OK, it wasn't a win but it must have felt almost as good as one. I believed, mistakenly, that we would carry on that second-half spirit into the start of the Bury game but everything just dropped back flat again. You just feel that something is not quite right when you can get such extremes in a teams performances and from what I heard, PB's touchline activity last Saturday didn't present itself as someone who is in control of events.
It is interesting to compare the management approach of both Sturrock and Brown. With the former there was a calm calculated approach, if we didn't achieve our objective, you just pick up the pieces and calmly set about the task for the following season. With PB the whole thing seems far more frenetic. IIRC he was brought in last year by Ron, who still believed that the season could be turned around..........we were 8th in the league when he arrived. The season slipped away with 1 win, 3 draws and 3 defeats in the last seven game (plus the JPT Final disaster). No one really blamed PB for not getting us to the play-offs and we all believed that he would put his own mark on the squad he would build the following season. I'm not going to enter into the 'embargo' problems but just to state it was clearly underlined that the ambition was, at the very least, a top seven finish, notwithstanding all other problems. Rather like a bright star PB has been intense and passionate about his objective, it's almost as though he is puting Sturrock's 'near' three seaons into, just over one. I just wonder whether he has burnt himself out with the intensity of his efforts and should he fail, is he the type of charactor who will calmly consider how it went wrong and what can be done to remedy the situation next season, or is he more likely that he will turn his back on the situation (regardless of what Ron may do)?
 
If he walks away he will never manage a club again.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Brown's a master at PR and has ensured that he's stayed on TV and radio despite holding a job here. If he walks, he can use those connections to put it out there that his impressive start was derailed by the embargo and financial constraints of a club pursuing a stadium relocation project.
 
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