(13-12-2017, 01:31)bluepooch Wrote: I refuse to tell Jack what areas and players he needs and I advise you do the same Dev,he knows what he wants and I have faith in him to achieve it .I have criticised players just like you and Dancing and he has proved us all wrong .He has done wonders with the players and I will sit back and admire from now on .Maybe the performances now and the way we are playing was why I predicted play offs at the start of the season.If Jack had been here from day one with this squad we probably would be in the play offs but like the saying goes ,hindsight is a wonderful thing .
I'll always say what "I" think we need, surely that's why we talk about the game, but in a way that is exactly my point, that although we seem to lack all sorts of things when you examine our squad (and I never even saw a Holmewood side as lacking real pace and power as our current team) we are winning matches and mostly outplaying the opposition. It isn't a run of luck. But I'd be more than interested to know what everyone else thinks we need / or not, that's why I offered my opinions and ideas.
I don't understand what happens when I click a switch and a light comes on in the lounge either. I can imagine a new lighting arrangement I might like, I'd have no idea how to get it to work or whether it would require massive work to avoid fuses blowing everywhere ............ I'm telling you what I'd like to see fitted into the squad that's all. Rumour is, I understand, Jack thinks he needs five players. The two problems are finding the right ones and fitting them together seamlessly with lads who have been both a disaster and now a revelation.
You see I'd happily tell Jack my ideas and I'd buy him a drink and a good meal whilst he demolished me and explained in detail why I was an idiot and what I was missing. I'd love it, and I'd think at least as much, if not more, of him afterwards. Experience has taught me pros think in a different way and see things differently. I don't always think that is a good thing ..... but you do see quite good results coming from strange-looking teams to more amateur eyes right up to the Premier League.
My slight worry is that unless we bring in several new players Jack's magic on the current squad might have a Best Before date. On the other hand Eddie Howe kept a limited squad at Bournemouth on the winning trail at this level and they certainly weren't the most talented bunch and the entire squad often did even not fill the bench.
I've met lots of incurable optimists Blue, but you're the first whose optimism extends into the past. You could turn Lenny Carter into a ball-playing No 10 who was a victim of thuggery and brutal tackling every time he graced the field. You were wrong at almost every turn from Danny's dismissal to GC's final departure. Dancing was mostly right throughout that period. I'm wrong all the time too, it's part of being a fan. It's part of the fun! Dancing might have appointed Ronnie Moore. That's was up there with the daftest things I'd ever heard, but if Ronnie had done a Jack Lester then that would have been one of the many instances in life in which I turned out to be the goat. Re-writing history worked well in 1984, but I don't see you as a Blue George Orwell.
I was in favour of keeping GC on at the end of last season because we had given him an impossible job. With ZERO experience of anything similar he was supposed to come in during the transfer window, assess the club, the playing staff, the back room, the way we were playing, decide on who to recruit, recruit them and fit them into a team with a new regime he had to devise .......... which would save the club from relegation without significant investment. His response was abyssmal, but we were taking a kid who'd just mastered joined-up writing and sticking him into an A-level English class discussing Hamlet ...........
BUT it became clear to me once we started the summer's recruitment that we had found a man who was determined to repeat his mistakes. Sacking somebody during friendlies looks harsh, but as players came in it surely became obvious to everyone how unbalanced our squad actually was. I find it very difficult to be harsh on people face to face, but even I would have had to harden myself and say, "it's time to go!" before the season started.
The thing we don't know though is would Jack have come had we sacked GC at a different time? Even though we got into dire straits before we acted, did we choose the right time for Jack, the moment when he would say yes?