Question Was Molesley the wrong choice?

[Barling Magna]

I remember my first poem I read in Primary School too

"Ah yes, that great poem If. Do you enjoy Kipling, Madam?"

"Well sir, to the best of my knowledge I have never kippled..... but I'm willing to try with a nice man like you...."

 

[mfurok]

Just how many experienced pros does a team need?

For the level we are at, we already ha :-

John White
Mark Oxley
Tim Dieng
Jason Demetriou
Harry Lennon
Nathan Ralph

Mark Molesley then brought in :-

Alan McCormack
Jordan Green
Sim Akinola

Who all had good experience of FL or at least senior football (Akinola - Conference)

The loan signings of Olyinka, ANG, Taylor all looked, on paper, like good business, so overal it was arguable that we were in pretty decent shape overall.

What MM could never account for was John White playing on game 1 of the season and then missing 11 games on the spin!! Dieng played on game 1 then went missing for 5 games, signing McCormack and then not seeing him for 8 games (and counting!), Akinola signed and while letting Kelman and Humphrys leave we then haven’t seen the fella put his boots on once!

On top of that Harry Lennon is clearly carrying a problem, Demetriou missed 3/4 games with his knee issue, Green looked the part and ends up going back to Barnsley injured, now we have Ralph out for the season......

So from that list of 9 players that arguably all provided some nous / experience we’ve only seen 4 on a semi regular basis and currently only Oxley as the fully fit one who’s been ever present!!

If all those 9 are fully fit and you keep Hutchinson, Kelman and Humphrys then I’m not sure we see Sterling or possibly Olyinka but it’s arguable the squad would be in pretty good shape.

What we are missing is a forward, no question. But did anyone envisage Akinola having these problems? Most on here backed the decision to let Humph leave and again most on here decided that Kelman had downed tools, blamed him for the loss at home to Morecambe and were pleased to see the back of him!!!

So what do we do? Well those suggesting getting rid of the manager are mental!!! When you make a long term commitment to someone like we have with Mark, how on earth does it make sense to get rid and pay off 6 members of staff who are on 3/4 year contracts? How does a club - any club - let alone this one, finance that? Even if you can, what is a new manager going to inherit and how’s he going to improve things?

MM and his staff are here to stay. You’ll be foolish to think otherwise and to try and wish him away. Save yourself the stress and the worry of it and accept he’s here, accept he’s staying and accept he’s working within some pretty serious restraints.

The performances aren’t directionless like I’ve seen before. There are signs of improvement every week. Players will gradually come back to fitness and when they do, you’ll see a very different spine to the side than the one you’ve seen so far and with that a more resilient style to provide a backbone to some of the better football we’ve played in patches and with that will come some more consistency.

Performances v Crawley and Exeter showed promise and some very fine lines in referee decisions and Lady Luck in those games and the ones v Morecambe, Tranmere and Oldham would realistically see us on 5/6 even 7/8 points and we’d all be optimistic about the platform we were building.

The alternative is to scream for his head, pay him and his staff off, as we did with Powell (Matthews and Keen), Bond, Waddock (Toderov), Campbell (HH and Cole) and start over again with a six week wait for a replacement, a few hundred grand lighter, the same players, the same stadium, the same or worse finances, the same owner......what’s that going to achieve?

On the contrary we are getting worse and worse.

 

[Barling Magna]

On the contrary we are getting worse and worse.

I don't agree but our improvement is certainly painfully slow. 442 is the way forward.

 

[OllieSteph44]

On the contrary we are getting worse and worse.

Well my subjective opinion is that we are improving and you are of course welcome to your own subjective opinion that we aren’t.

Thanks for your well thought out response though.

 

[blueblueblue]

I don't agree but our improvement is certainly painfully slow. 442 is the way forward.

Do you honestly believe we're improving or is this a tongue in cheek comment?

 

[mfurok]

Well my subjective opinion is that we are improving and you are of course welcome to your own subjective opinion that we aren’t.

Thanks for your well thought out response though.

All on another thread.

Given your ‘signs of improvement every week’, how many points do you anticipate us amassing in the next six games?

 

[OllieSteph44]

All on another thread.

Given your ‘signs of improvement every week’, how many points do you anticipate us amassing in the next six games?

Well of course that could depend very much on how you measure improvement surely?

We’ve played 10 competitive games (not inc EFL Trophy) and accrued 1 point in the first five and 1 in the second five so we could suggest that anything other than 2+ can’t be considered an improvement?

Personally I know from experience that in football, improvement is very subjective and can be seen in a multitude of ways that aren’t always agreeable.

Of course it’s perfectly reasonable that we could easily play worse than the previous five games, get lucky with an official, or a set piece on any given day that the opposition play poorly and we pick up 3pts. Would that be improvement? Even if the other 5 games we are battered 5-0?!

Of course we could just as easily play much much better with an all round improvement individually and as a team, show far better structure and team shape, work harder as a unit and be competitive throughout all five games, but fall foul of bad decisions and / or play teams who play out of their skins on the day, lose all 5 games and no doubt we will have got worse and worse again.....

 

[mfurok]

Well of course that could depend very much on how you measure improvement surely?

We’ve played 10 competitive games (not inc EFL Trophy) and accrued 1 point in the first five and 1 in the second five so we could suggest that anything other than 2+ can’t be considered an improvement?

Personally I know from experience that in football, improvement is very subjective and can be seen in a multitude of ways that aren’t always agreeable.

Of course it’s perfectly reasonable that we could easily play worse than the previous five games, get lucky with an official, or a set piece on any given day that the opposition play poorly and we pick up 3pts. Would that be improvement? Even if the other 5 games we are battered 5-0?!

Of course we could just as easily play much much better with an all round improvement individually and as a team, show far better structure and team shape, work harder as a unit and be competitive throughout all five games, but fall foul of bad decisions and / or play teams who play out of their skins on the day, lose all 5 games and no doubt we will have got worse and worse again.....

That’s a lot of words but none of them answered the question.

Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

 

[OllieSteph44]

That’s a lot of words but none of them answered the question.

Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

So now you want me to predict a points total for the next few games? Do you want any lottery nos while I’m at it?

I’m flattered that you think I have such knowledge to correctly forecast ?

 

[SeaSideDoughnut]

It's funny, the threads go from whose hands were more tied behind their back, Sturrock or Molesley to debating if he was the right choice to begin with.

Personally I don't think any one manager would be able to do any better. That's just the situation we're in and the squad we have available.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Nobody has the elusive crystal ball, do they folks? All we can offer is considered opinions from the outside which carry a lot of caveats due to the lack of thorough insight into all the various internal situations and relationships at the club.

All we can say for certain is that it is all a bit **** at the moment with Winter arriving, covid not leaving and Southend still not winning at all, ever. At least the court date went well, and perhaps that can be a catalyst to help turn the corner. I guess we will find out soon enough.

Molesley has had a totally thankless task, so we should cut him a lot of slack. He has studiously toed the corporate line and I reckon he has his eyes open to the overall situation at the club. He has made a couple of unforced errors which haven’t helped, in my opinion - such as changing the formation after a really promising performance against Exeter. We, and he, need a result on Saturday.

 

[Strykr]

It's funny, the threads go from whose hands were more tied behind their back, Sturrock or Molesley to debating if he was the right choice to begin with.

Personally I don't think any one manager would be able to do any better. That's just the situation we're in and the squad we have available.

One manager i can think of is Sturrock, i think he would be doing better, but yeah, a near impossible job with this squad.

Are we going to forever regret not getting a manager with actual league experience? As alluded to by others perhaps MM is the right man but at the wrong time.

 

[Rayleigh boy]

i have been promisd a coaching vidoe by a zone contributor ....

I am absoluteoy dying to see it

 

[KiwiRob]

I'm still 100% behind MM and I'm convinced he's the right man.
That's not to say he hasn't made a mistake or two in terms of his recruitment.
Sterling certainly wasn't what we needed at this time. In fact I'd be surprised if he wasn't looking to rectify that as we speak.

Lincoln Shrimp, any update on your interesting comment that MM might be searching at present for more firepower up front? Any new developments in that area?

 

[Leigh_Seasider]

i have been promisd a coaching vidoe by a zone contributor ....

I am absoluteoy dying to see it

Can we not just leave Sol in the past now? I know you rated him but he’s gone.

 

[SeaSideDoughnut]

One manager i can think of is Sturrock, i think he would be doing better, but yeah, a near impossible job with this squad.

Are we going to forever regret not getting a manager with actual league experience? As alluded to by others perhaps MM is the right man but at the wrong time.

The general consensus from that thread was that Sturrock didn't have as hard a job as Molesley and Sturrock probably isn't applying for many jobs at this stage in his life either, with that he mind it's hard to say Sturrock could've done better because it's just not a possibility.

If its not one thing its the other. If we brought in an experienced manager we'd be saying we need an up and coming manager. I think we'd be having the same conversation just from a different perspective.

 

[mfurok]

So now you want me to predict a points total for the next few games? Do you want any lottery nos while I’m at it?

I’m flattered that you think I have such knowledge to correctly forecast ?

Please don’t be flattered. It would be the wrong reaction.

So we’ve won two points from the first six of our nine League games but we’ve lost the last three. Over a season that would give us a total of ten points so it seems some improvement may be badly needed.....but hey, we’re showing signs of improvement each week.

Pretty invisible signs if you ask me - hence my ‘well thought out’, subjective opinion, to which you kindly allowed me to be welcome.

Reckon my subjective opinion holds more water than yours - particularly given your understandable refusal to provide a ‘well thought out‘ estimate of the quantum of the improvement.

Probably be better if you went back to banging on about Hutchinson.

 

[OllieSteph44]

Please don’t be flattered. It would be the wrong reaction.

So we’ve won two points from the first six of our nine League games but we’ve lost the last three. Over a season that would give us a total of ten points so it seems some improvement may be badly needed.....but hey, we’re showing signs of improvement each week.

Pretty invisible signs if you ask me - hence my ‘well thought out’, subjective opinion, to which you kindly allowed me to be welcome.

Reckon my subjective opinion holds more water than yours - particularly given your understandable refusal to provide a ‘well thought out‘ estimate of the quantum of the improvement.

Probably be better if you went back to banging on about Hutchinson.

Of course your subjective opinion holds more water than mine. I never considered for a second that it wouldn’t....or hold more water than anyone else’s ?

I just think there are signs of improvement. Each week shows some improvement no matter how small or in which department. It’s not always obviously evident or making a difference to a scoreline...just yet.

I didn’t specify any quantum of improvement. In fact I deliberately tried to demonstrate that there were many different quantum’s of measurement and I wasn’t sure which one you wanted me to use when demonstrating to you my well thought out estimate.

I was quite clear that you were as entitled to consider that we were getting worse as I was to think we were showing signs of improvement. Evidently you can’t seem to comprehend how I may think we are improving which is fine, I wasn’t asking for you to agree with me and I definitely don’t need your approval of my opinions.

I guess we won’t see any real improvement until we find a manager who’ll try and play to our undoubted physical prowess and batter teams into the middle of next week.

Hutchinson? Well I guess there’s someone who has seen an improvement in the whole situation. Many will feel that’s improved us also.....which is also fine and not something I’d disagree with.

FWIW I predict that we will win at least one of the next 5 league games. So by almost any quantum you choose that will be an improvement.

 

[Lincoln Shrimp]

Lincoln Shrimp, any update on your interesting comment that MM might be searching at present for more firepower up front? Any new developments in that area?

That was just me speculating, trying to remain positive. I just can't see Ron or MM letting the current situation drag on with no goal threat, or a player capable of holding the ball up. Time will tell.

 

[Barling Magna]

Do you honestly believe we're improving or is this a tongue in cheek comment?

I honestly believe that we are improving, but painfully slowly. For example we have cut down on the passing backwards and have clearly been told to try more shots. Egbri isn't falling over all the time now and appears more robust. Oxley does venture off his line on occasions. ANG is a good addition to the team.