The case to go now
My reasons are quite honestly simple. I do NOT blame Dougie for the state of the club's finances. That responsibility lies in the hands of our chairman and the board but that is a topic for another day so I'll leave it at that for now. I appreciate the awful constraints Dougie faces in terms of the transfer market and like any Trotter fan of over thirty five I well remember days when things were just as bad if not even worse. But while I don't hold him to blame for OFF field problems I do feel he is responsible for what is happening on the field just as any manager at any club should be.
In short Dougie has had two years to stamp his own vision and authority on the team and he has failed. We look disjointed, disorganised and frankly we play football so dire it beggars belief that we are allegedly a professional football club at all. The team lacks spirit as well as skill and that is down to the manager and his coaching team and methods. No one expects us to win every game, no one believes we should play like Bayern or Barca every week BUT we should at least look like we're giving our all and working to a unified plan in an attempt to win the games we play.
We don't and added to that problem is a negative mindset that sets us up in a way that screams fear. Dougie is so afraid of losing he doesn't dare risk going for the throat even against teams where we SHOULD be winning comfortably. What's truly sad is he CAN set out a team that way and last season when he was under so much pressure he HAD to do it we went out and scored twelve goals in three matches while conceding just the one. Yes we had Juke and Mason and some other loanees who did well but that actually brings me to my next and possibly most damning point.
For two seasons we've been pulled away from the drop zone by loanees performing well. I personally credit Dougie with bringing them in but his job is to get the best out of ALL our players for the WHOLE season not just a few of them for the last three months of the campaign. He just isn't capable of doing that. While I appreciate that some might call it a knee jerk to call for his sacking after one league game of the season I believe it isn't. I'm responding to a pattern that has been visible now for the last two years. I think with Dougie at the helm that downward spiral will continue and while I don't doubt for one moment that many of our problems will still be here for a new manager, particularly the financial woes, there is no doubt in my mind that Dougie simply is NOT up to the task in terms of motivating and getting the best out of the players we have here now and that simply compounds the other problems we have.
Dire football played by men who don't seem to know what's expected of them and don't seem to have the stomach for the fight something we've seen too much of in the last two years and the blame for that MUST land on the manager's desk. The fact we lost to Watford didn't really concern me anywhere near as much as HOW we lost. It was blatantly obvious that Dougie has learned nothing in his tenure and will not learn anything no matter how long we give him because he's too stubborn, too convinced he's right and no matter what the evidence in front of him says he won't change his mind. In fact he reminds me a great deal of Gary Megson but he has even less justification for that worldview than Megson did. And like Megson his very presence is now creating an ever wider rift between the club and fans. That alone would be enough in my view to send him on his way but added to the results and the way we've played since he came aboard I think it's now become imperative that action is taken now not ten or twenty games in because in my humble opinion he's had too long already and it's clear from both pre-season and the Watford match we aren't going forward under Dougie, we're going backwards and down.
Freedman - What do you think?, let us know.
Author: LuckyPeterPiper
My reasons are quite honestly simple. I do NOT blame Dougie for the state of the club's finances. That responsibility lies in the hands of our chairman and the board but that is a topic for another day so I'll leave it at that for now. I appreciate the awful constraints Dougie faces in terms of the transfer market and like any Trotter fan of over thirty five I well remember days when things were just as bad if not even worse. But while I don't hold him to blame for OFF field problems I do feel he is responsible for what is happening on the field just as any manager at any club should be.
In short Dougie has had two years to stamp his own vision and authority on the team and he has failed. We look disjointed, disorganised and frankly we play football so dire it beggars belief that we are allegedly a professional football club at all. The team lacks spirit as well as skill and that is down to the manager and his coaching team and methods. No one expects us to win every game, no one believes we should play like Bayern or Barca every week BUT we should at least look like we're giving our all and working to a unified plan in an attempt to win the games we play.
We don't and added to that problem is a negative mindset that sets us up in a way that screams fear. Dougie is so afraid of losing he doesn't dare risk going for the throat even against teams where we SHOULD be winning comfortably. What's truly sad is he CAN set out a team that way and last season when he was under so much pressure he HAD to do it we went out and scored twelve goals in three matches while conceding just the one. Yes we had Juke and Mason and some other loanees who did well but that actually brings me to my next and possibly most damning point.
For two seasons we've been pulled away from the drop zone by loanees performing well. I personally credit Dougie with bringing them in but his job is to get the best out of ALL our players for the WHOLE season not just a few of them for the last three months of the campaign. He just isn't capable of doing that. While I appreciate that some might call it a knee jerk to call for his sacking after one league game of the season I believe it isn't. I'm responding to a pattern that has been visible now for the last two years. I think with Dougie at the helm that downward spiral will continue and while I don't doubt for one moment that many of our problems will still be here for a new manager, particularly the financial woes, there is no doubt in my mind that Dougie simply is NOT up to the task in terms of motivating and getting the best out of the players we have here now and that simply compounds the other problems we have.
Dire football played by men who don't seem to know what's expected of them and don't seem to have the stomach for the fight something we've seen too much of in the last two years and the blame for that MUST land on the manager's desk. The fact we lost to Watford didn't really concern me anywhere near as much as HOW we lost. It was blatantly obvious that Dougie has learned nothing in his tenure and will not learn anything no matter how long we give him because he's too stubborn, too convinced he's right and no matter what the evidence in front of him says he won't change his mind. In fact he reminds me a great deal of Gary Megson but he has even less justification for that worldview than Megson did. And like Megson his very presence is now creating an ever wider rift between the club and fans. That alone would be enough in my view to send him on his way but added to the results and the way we've played since he came aboard I think it's now become imperative that action is taken now not ten or twenty games in because in my humble opinion he's had too long already and it's clear from both pre-season and the Watford match we aren't going forward under Dougie, we're going backwards and down.
Freedman - What do you think?, let us know.
Author: LuckyPeterPiper
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