Looking at the results, and especially yesterday's, and our current league position, i can see why people might want to replace RDM, especially after the last 5 years we have endured, but do people really think that another change will benefit us in the long run. There's not exactly a long list of stand out candidates...
There's a lot of comments that RDM is a chancer, doesn't know what he's doing etc., yet the guy has won promotion from the championship and a Champions League trophy as manager, accolades i would suggest that indicate given the right circumstances, he must know how to do something right.
The thing is, whenever managers are mentioned, there's always people (not necessarily the same people) that say, 'yeah, but but he didn't too well at x, or y, club, and he was sacked from so and so club', but then again barring a very select few, every manager, even ones that have been successful at some clubs, have a list of failures and sackings on their CV, that's just the nature of football, every club wants to be successful and only a few in each league can be.
One of the key things about managers being successful seems to be time, and whilst being given time isn't a guarantor of success, it would seem to be an essential element in most manager's success. I'm not sure how people think that 10 games is adequate to build and mould a team, essentially from scratch, but tbh it's a fairly ludicrous and fanciful expectation. It can take a fair whilst for a manager to take a lot of new players, implement and refine his ideas in training, and tinker with his best combinations of players. Ultimately the players are the ones that have to take this onboard, gel together and form an understanding, and then... actually implement it on the pitch when there is another team on the pitch who have their own ideas about how a game will be played.
It's a kind of arrogance to expect that just because we've spent a lot of money on a team, that they will suddenly be a great team, and should be beating a lot of the teams we play. Many of these teams have been built up over a sustained period of time, with a consistent managerial approach over seasons, and have a core group of players that know each other well and have that team intuition and organisation that can only come through playing together for several seasons. This is just as important as having a great set of players. In my opinion, changing a manager now would just take away the one thing we really needs to progress, and that is stability of coaching and management. If the Dr does decide to get rid of RDM, then for the sake of consistency, i'd say promote Steve Clarke to the managers position and see how that goes.
Ultimately though (and this is the bit where i don my tin hat) i think it's a bit fickle to be asking for a change after only 10 games or so, how is Moyes doing at Sunderland, Pearson at Derby? I could go on, neither bad managers IMO, but need the right circumstances and time to succeed. I'm not sure if anyone has any stats about manager's first 10 games in charge of various clubs, but i'm sure it'd make interesting reading.
