Poll - Sherwood - got rid

[olaftab]

We've spent an absolute fortune on sacking and replacing Management teams under Lerner's stewardship. We've just had a summer with greater player-turnaround than ever before.  Now, more than ever, the club is crying out for some stability and patience.

No no. We had 3 seasons of stability under a wrong coach Lambert. That was more stable than the Forth bridge but all it did was waste 3 years. I don't want to waste anymore time on this so called stability and waste another season fighting relegation or worse getting relegated.

[AVH87]

The comments on this thread tell us that those unhappiest shout the loudest. As the poll shows only 32% definitely want Sherwood gone right now. He's brought in a load of new players, 90% of whom haven't played in the league before, but I do expect him to get more out of them soon. It's taking him time to realise his best team, I think once he does an element of the tactics will take care of themselves (although it is quite obvious TS is light in this area). It's very fine margins, he made a massively bad call at Leicester, and if he hadn't and we'd won that game, we'd be 16th now (whilst not great, this thread wouldn't even exist). We have to hope he learns from this, although we've lost our next 2 league games, we haven't been in winning positions, I'm confident next time we are we'll get over the line.

[RussellC]

We've spent an absolute fortune on sacking and replacing Management teams under Lerner's stewardship. We've just had a summer with greater player-turnaround than ever before.  Now, more than ever, the club is crying out for some stability and patience.

No no. We had 3 seasons of stability under a wrong coach Lambert. That was more stable than the Forth bridge but all it did was waste 3 years. I don't want to waste anymore time on this so called stability and waste another season fighting relegation or worse getting relegated.

So have we been stable for 3 seasons or fighting relegation? Because they're 2 different things in my book.

[themossman]

I agree... Tim's apparent need to employ subterfuge in his tactics and be 'different', leading to all this inconsistency, must have an effect on players' perception of their roles and ultimately of their trust in him to set the team up correctly. Ironically, he seemed to come in with a 'set things up simply and let players play to their strengths' philosophy and is now moving away from that.

[RussellC]

I agree... Tim's apparent need to employ subterfuge in his tactics and be 'different', leading to all this inconsistency, must have an effect on players' perception of their roles and ultimately of their trust in him to set the team up correctly. Ironically, he seemed to come in with a 'set things up simply and let players play to their strengths' philosophy and is now moving away from that.

I wouldn't say so. Our last 3 goals have been scored by way of crosses to the head of the 6ft 3inch centre-forward that Sherwood bought.  I don't think Sherwood's issue is in his planning, it's in his in-game management and failure to adapt and change effectively during the course of a match. A sign if his inexperience.

[SamTheMouse]

I agree... Tim's apparent need to employ subterfuge in his tactics and be 'different', leading to all this inconsistency, must have an effect on players' perception of their roles and ultimately of their trust in him to set the team up correctly. Ironically, he seemed to come in with a 'set things up simply and let players play to their strengths' philosophy and is now moving away from that.

I think that was because when he started, he had someone else's team and therefore could only think about getting what he could out of it. There was little pressure on him personally, because he wasn't responsible for the state of the squad, and he didn't have time to start reinventing the wheel.

Now it's a different matter. This is now effectively his team, and there is an expectation that comes with that. Everyone wants to see how a Tim Sherwood team looks and plays. He has to start from scratch, but is casting around for an ethos. Does he want us to play direct to the big man? Does he want us to get it down and play a short passing game? Does he want us to play with natural width? Or does he want to compress the play?

I don't think he knows.

[Clampy]

I don't mind the cockiness to be honest, that's just the way he is. It's better than having to listen to Lambert say we were excellent every week when we hardly had a shot on goal.

[Risso]

Lose to Stoke and we'll be in a world of trouble.  We'll be a minimum of three points adrift with an away match at Chelsea the next game.

[Villa in Denmark]

How anyone can accuse our fan base of being fickle after the easy ride the last two numpties have got is beyond belief.

The lack of patience with Sherwood is in part driven by coming so close to going down, partly because we'd been to accommodating and accepting of all the bullshit and lies.  There's just no appetite for it amongst a good proportion of people looking at the poll so far.

So the lack of patience afforded to Sherwood is due to the performances of his predecessors? And that seems fair to you?

As for fickleness, I re-iterate my point; I lost count of the number of "We've signed the wrong Ayew" comments I've read and heard this season. Skip forward a week and Sherwood's being criticised for leaving him on the bench!

It's September. We're nearly 25 pages into a thread about sacking the Manager and I've not seen one realistic suggestion of a emplacement who would justify the cost and upheaval. If that's not knee-jerk then I don't know what is.

To the first half yet.  When you've been been royally shafted twice, you're bound to be jumping at every sign that suggests "this isn't going to work out".  And fair? Whoever said life was fair?

We're so desperate to make progress there's very little patience and given where we've been for the last 4 years, seeing us get off to a shiter than usual start under guy who's got no real experience or track record anywhere in the game is bound to set alarm bells ringing.

The comments about Ayew and Gestede, well that's just another manifestation of the above.

As for alternatives?

My choice when Lambert was finally put out of all our miseries was Cesare Prandeli who's still available.

Otherwise there's

Frank de Boer at Ajax is reportedly looking for new challenges after winning the league 4 years on the trot and looking like having a fifth sown up by Christmas

Dieter Hecking at Wolfsburg has probably done as much there as he can and is probably about to lose a huge chunk of his funding thanks to VW's test protocols.
I quite like the look of Roger Schmidt at Leverkusen, but he might be a bit of challenge to get.

Claude Puel at Nice has a decent track record of getting teams to overperform and has the added bonus of having pissed off Fergie and Giggs in a CL game.  Into the last year of his contract and Nice look like having a bit of "mid-table obscurity kind of season."

There's plenty of people out there who could be a good fit.

[kippaxvilla2]

The one thing I would say is never underestimate the propensity for crapness in this league.  I mean who would have given us a prayer of staying up when he took over?   22 points was it with 12 games left?  So I still think you can give him until Christmas, knowing that there are still plenty of games left to get out of it and knowing of course that in essence we only have to finish above Bournemouth (assuming Watford and Sunderland go) to survive.  It sounds simplistic I know but any team is capable of stringing a few wins together even the largely average ones like us.

[RussellC]

There's plenty of people out there who could be a good fit.

So you're not prepared to allow the current Manager a reasonable amount of patience but want to spend a fortune to bring in a Foreign Manager with no Premiership experience at all? Following the pattern, we'd then give that Manager what, 20 games, before going through the process again if it wasn't working?

What was it that Tom Fox said about flipping a coin again...?

[kippaxvilla2]

Tim strikes me as essentially having an idea of what he wants but just lacks that crucial attention to detail when it comes to tactics and fine tuning corrections to errors on the training pitch.  The frustrating thing is amongst his many coaching staff, there doesn't seem to be anyone who can help him either.

[RussellC]

The thing that grates me about this thread is that so few are prepared to entertain the idea that Sherwood might learn from his mistakes. Against Leicester he was rightfully criticised for his substitutions. Our excellent first-half performance has largely been forgotten because of the result. Against the Blose he made 2 game-changing ones that won us the game. Yet much of the focus is still on our poor first-half performance, rather than the result. See where I’m coming from?

[Risso]

There's plenty of people out there who could be a good fit.

So you're not prepared to allow the current Manager a reasonable amount of patience but want to spend a fortune to bring in a Foreign Manager with no Premiership experience at all? Following the pattern, we'd then give that Manager what, 20 games, before going through the process again if it wasn't working?

What was it that Tom Fox said about flipping a coin again...?

It all depends what you term a reasonable amount of patience. Say we pick up one point from the next three games, what then? I can't imagine many teams have stayed up after taking 5 points from their first ten games, so at what point do you call it quits?  Of course, we might do much better than that and of course I hope he rams my words down my throat with at least 7 points.  But my question is at what point if this poor run continues do you let him go?  In my doomsday scenario above, it would still be mid October.

[kippaxvilla2]

Pretty sure Middlesbrough had only two points at a fairly early stage of the season and survived.