Firstly, good post. I would like to know why you believe MM is the right man for the job though. It’s easy to come on here and say “MM in” or “out’ but very few actually give reasons as to why they belong to those sides of the argument.
Thanks for the kind words ? It’s a very fair question and completely agree, lots of people seem to be pro or anti MM without going into too much detail as to specifically why.
The truth be told, I try to judge any manager against how I would judge myself in the same position, and I tend to be quite self critical of myself and set high standards.
Whilst I acknowledge it’s not exactly a crucial part of the job, I like the way he puts himself across. I like his philosophy to self-improvement both of himself and the team. I do feel he has improved the culture of the club, I feel that he’d made us hard to beat and overall given the club some much needed stability.
I don’t think he’s completely blameless - far from it. In fact anyone who is pro MM who thinks that isn’t being objective about it. But what I would say is most weeks, when I see the line up and formation, I think ‘fair play, I would have done the same’. I don’t necessarily think the same with subs - he often leaves it too late to inject some attacking impetus for me.
I suppose the point I was making today was today is the first time I’ve thought ‘ I’m sold on the way he conducts himself in the press, I’m sold on his team selection for the most part, and I think his signings have been fairly good too. However, yes we’ve made strides, yes we’ve improved the culture/pride/integrity of the club, yes we can defend now... but ultimately we’ve plateaued in our improvements.’
The next thing to fix once we’d sorted the leaky defence was to find a way to utilise that strong anchor to give our attacking players the freedom to take more risks and score some much needed goals. Not many either - with the 9 clean sheets in 19 games, we didn’t need to be free-scoring like Man United in tgrWe simply haven’t done that. ‘There’s no hiding from it’, as MM rightly says.
So my next thought is well, whose fault is that? After all we were all getting upset that Akinola couldn’t play because of the embargo etc. But the lad, for all his obvious talent and trickery on the ball, has only managed 2 goals (I think!?). Same for Reeco, except it’s 1 goal. Same for ANG, I think it’s 3 goals for him, 1 penalty. Nothing against these lads btw, good players. I like them. But I don’t see them beating a player and whipping a decent cross in very often. I don’t see them stinging the keepers palms from range and I don’t see them getting in behind defenders. Well, ultimately that’s down to MM. He signed the chaps, and he’s the manager so the buck stops with him ultimately.
I know our reputation precedes us and we probably didn’t have a plethora of players desperate to play for us (before we get into that). But that’s the professional game isn’t it? Maybe, I’m conflicted on that one. The signings he’s brought in certainly look better than waft we had, but ultimately haven’t produced the goods in front of goal.
What I will say however, is that no can get away from the fact HE HAS improved us and we are more competitive. The improvement I’ve seen defensively from the start of the season to now is exceptional. Therefore, I’m confident that MM will eventually get us scoring goals too and if we do, it will change the psychology teams will deploy against us. They will have to play more defensively, and in turn our midfield will see more of the ball, and our defenders will be able to play from the back as opposed to the pressured clearance, which will in turn mean the strikers aren’t just living off scraps... so on and so forth.
So to summarise, it’s small incremental improvements compounded over time that deliver the foundation for big results. It’s a philosophy I subscribe to in my own life and career and it’s a philosophy MM subscribes to too.
So yes, I’m behind MM because I believe in the long term he’ll get the sinking ship floating, even if in the short term we are sinking.
The big problem we have right now is if we want to retain our football league status, we need to hope those small incremental improvements are finally going to pay dividends very, very quickly.
