[themaclad]

Preston North End Football Club are delighted to announce the appointment of Ryan Lowe as first team manager. Ryan will take over with immediate effect, joining from Plymouth Argyle, a club he guided to promotion from League Two to League One in the 2019/20 season, and they currently sit fourth in the third tier. That was the second promotion on Ryan’s managerial CV, having previously led Bury FC into League One. We would like to place on record our thanks to Plymouth Argyle for the professional way in which they have handled this matter.

Gone down well with the Green Army

[St Charles Owl]

Fair to say they are not too happy with his decision!!!

[themaclad]

Shame

[Devongone]

I have a terrible feeling Preston (who I'm fond of) are making a big mistake here.

Plymouth fans are shocked by his decision, but I think one of the reasons for it was that Lowe has been forced to take a realistic view of his squad at Home Park in the last couple of weeks and has realised the only way was down from their earlier brilliant run. They'll do well to sustain a play-off place with or without him ........... and Plymouth is a very big city to sit mid-table in Division One.

Unfortunately I think Lowe will prove to be a good lower-league manager, a scouse Steve Evans. Wasn't impressed with the way he stripped Bury of everything bar the light-fittings when he upped in a hurry for Plymouth. He might persuade local products Jephcott and Cooper to join him in January. They're good young players. But I think Preston are worth more than a Ryan Lowe. I hope I'm wrong. Good news is, I often am.

[themaclad]

We’ll see what happens I just want to watch entertaining football not seen it for years

[Devongone]

Clubs rarely take a chance on managers who are proving themselves at a much lower level, yet they will chance their arm on a Gerrard or a Rooney, because they were very good players. Equally Championship sides with a limited budget tend to make a desperate grab for a manager who has a Div 1 or 2 promotion on his CV and is still quite young. In 18 months time, when he is just getting to grips with the new level and finally has a team beginning to do what he wants, he finds himself sacked, because he's mid-table or below. He wasn't fulfilling the secret Premier League dream. I'm afraid my bet would be, one year from now PNE will be about sixth from the bottom of the Championship.

Luckily for my own club, very few clubs secretly harbouring Premiership ambitions and lacking the money to spend their way there, have the creativity to imagine whether and how their managerial choice would fare if faced with the many demands of the Premiership. Would you throw Ryan Lowe in against a Guardiola or a Rangnick or a Bielsa? Bizarrely I can imagine at least two managers at National League level, who might not look as though they had arrived on the wrong planet at that level. Certainly given charge of a Championship club they'd be looking at the promotion race and re-modelling their new club so that it became involved. They might do an Icarus and fly too close to the sun, but they wouldn't be looking at their budget as a determinant of their future league position.

If you wanted a lower-league manager with promotions on his CV, if you'd waited a day you could have got Paul Cook. Ipswich used to give their managers years. They let him sign 19 new players, they didn't gel and were bottom, now that they are trying to join the promotion race, they sack the manager. Perhaps he had one drink too many ....? Anyway I hope I'm wrong, and you get the good football and begin to challenge for promotion. Football fans don't actually need success. They need hope - just a genuine reason to turn up each Saturday feeling hopeful. You deserve that. Preston deserves that much at least.

[themaclad]

Apparently with Cook behind the scenes issues may have played a point, in regard to us Marsh is an interesting appoitment was at Swansea under Cooper

[Devongone]

But then Cooper himself has the hang-dog look of a long-term offender in the the American Penal System - apart from being white that is.

As for Cookie, if you appoint someone who everyone knows would smell out a pub if the Taliban appointed him to manage the Afghan National Team, you surely weigh the background issues against the position achieved at the end of the season, don't you? Ditching the manager now surely ensures another season in Division One? And let's see, when Ipswich won the League under Alf Ramsey and remained successful at the top level ...... where did their money come from? Paul Cook would have been one of their best customers.

[themaclad]

American penal system love it