The Martin O'Neill thread (with added sacking #2188)

[oldtimernow]

On the guidance of someone who was supposed to know better.....

[QBVILLA]

On the guidance of someone who was supposed to know better.....

Guidance is one thing, but come on that's blaming for blames sake.

[oldtimernow]

I think if I took over a business I would go with the advice of someone who was supposed to be one of the 'best in the game'.

I wonder if Lerner really knew who he was getting in with when he purchased the club?

Didn't MON come with Doug's recommendation at the time?

[LeeB]

I think if I took over a business I would go with the advice of someone who was supposed to be one of the 'best in the game'.

I wonder if Lerner really knew who he was getting in with when he purchased the club?

Didn't MON come with Doug's recommendation at the time?

I like the idea that we can still pin the root of our ills on Doug.

The shadowy hand, as gregnash might say.

[QBVILLA]

I think if I took over a business I would go with the advice of someone who was supposed to be one of the 'best in the game'.

I wonder if Lerner really knew who he was getting in with when he purchased the club?

Didn't MON come with Doug's recommendation at the time?

Taking advice is one thing, but I a mere working class bloke wouldn't simply take one man's word when it came to handing out £50k a week contracts. Would you?

[oldtimernow]

Doug, the Media and those in the know would have all said  great bloke...should have been England manager...you're lucky to get him   oh and a lot of us thought 'Top Man' too.

Now if RL had taken a closer interest we might have said 'What's he know about football?.Stop meddling and let the bloke get on with it , he knows what he's doing.'

Hindsight is a wonderful thing for sure, just wish it had been around earlier.

[not3bad]

I'm not sure why everyone's picking on Percy all of a sudden. Plenty of people were convinced that O'Neill knew what he was doing. And enjoyed the feeling that we could win any game we played. I was one of them.

At the end of the 09/10 season I was getting impatient with MON's failure to rotate the squad resulting in our weakness from March onwards, but at the same time I noted that our league points total was still improving year on year, as was our performance in the cup competitions.  So to claim there was some sort of general 'feeling' that no more progress was going to be made is untrue as far as I'm concerned.

Then he walked out on us 5 days before the season began and the true damage inflicted by the wage bill was revealed.

[pauliewalnuts]

Something else worthy of note is that whilst it is true, there was hardly a clamour from here to stop signing players and do something about the wage bill, we didn't know what the overall picture was.

Lerner did (one hopes), and he'd let it get so bad and go on for so long, that the need to claw back so much, so quickly, very nearly got us relegated.

Letting things get that dangerously bad was not a good idea.

[QBVILLA]

Something else worthy of note is that whilst it is true, there was hardly a clamour from here to stop signing players and do something about the wage bill, we didn't know what the overall picture was.

Lerner did (one hopes), and he'd let it get so bad and go on for so long, that the need to claw back so much, so quickly, very nearly got us relegated.

Letting things get that dangerously bad was not a good idea.

Which is why I believe that was mismanagement of the club at boardroom level rather than simply just the manager overspending.

[Broughty-Villian]

well it took me all morning to go through the 12 pages of this very good thread. I was and still am a fan of MoN, but could at the time recognise the faults of MON at VP. I wish he'd stayed, but I also wish we had a stronger Lerner in control. now after the MoN time came to an end, i think we will have greater financial stability from the boardroom.
b
Glad he's doing shit at sland as i hate the makams team ever since a bald headed forward for sland hit me with a wayward shot in the late 70's. bastard but i did get kudos at school the next day, as my face still had the panel marks

[QBVILLA]

Glad he's doing shit at sland as i hate the makams team ever since a bald headed forward for sland hit me with a wayward shot in the late 70's. bastard but i did get kudos at school the next day, as my face still had the panel marks

  Class

[Dave]

Something else worthy of note is that whilst it is true, there was hardly a clamour from here to stop signing players and do something about the wage bill, we didn't know what the overall picture was.

Does anyone remember those first two years or so when we were desperate for him to spend money?

The accusation then was that he was being too cautious and treating the money as if it were his own.

[rob_bridge]

well it took me all morning to go through the 12 pages of this very good thread. I was and still am a fan of MoN, but could at the time recognise the faults of MON at VP. I wish he'd stayed, but I also wish we had a stronger Lerner in control. now after the MoN time came to an end, i think we will have greater financial stability from the boardroom.
b
Glad he's doing shit at sland as i hate the makams team ever since a bald headed forward for sland hit me with a wayward shot in the late 70's. bastard but i did get kudos at school the next day, as my face still had the panel marks

Brian 'Pop' Robson?

[rob_bridge]

Something else worthy of note is that whilst it is true, there was hardly a clamour from here to stop signing players and do something about the wage bill, we didn't know what the overall picture was.

Does anyone remember those first two years or so when we were desperate for him to spend money?

The accusation then was that he was being too cautious and treating the money as if it were his own.

Yep there were many comments along those lines. The problem is the modern fan sees the transfer fee which is not the overall outlay.

E.g Cuellar, Heskey and Beye cost us £40m for a combined total of 10.5 seasons with if we are being kind probably less than 30 good games between them.

[Percy McCarthy]

Something else worthy of note is that whilst it is true, there was hardly a clamour from here to stop signing players and do something about the wage bill, we didn't know what the overall picture was.

Does anyone remember those first two years or so when we were desperate for him to spend money?

The accusation then was that he was being too cautious and treating the money as if it were his own.

Indeed, I thought that myself. Everything that went wrong stemmed from Laursen and Bouma getting such terrible injuries. Look how much we spent on replacements, and not one of them was in the same class.