bigmick wrote:I agree with pretty much most of what everyone is saying regarding the manager. In modern days of transfer windows, it would seem to be daft to be giving the manager 20-30 million quid to spunk on players if either he clearly isn't up to the job, or you've got a replacement in the back of your mind. That said, I don't FWIW think we will spend big in January, I think the owners are much more likely to keep their powder dry until next Summer.
Clearly what Roy has given so far hasn't been good enough. Yes we've had an unbelieveably difficult start (even todays game is hardly a gimme under any circumstances), but we haven't played well enough by a long chalk. I do think some of the reactions have been totally over the top, but there's no point in pretending that we have come anywhere close to being good enough.
I do still though think that it's mad to consider sacking a manager at this point. Even those die-hards who want a Rafa return are campaigning for it, but he is hardly going to walk away from his job in October, and neither are any of the managers employed at decent clubs.
By the end of the season, everything will have panned out and we'll know exactly where we are. Mereiles will either have made it or not which will give us a good idea of Roy int he transfer market, ditto Konchesky and Poulsen. His playing style will either have taken shape or not, and we'll have played the Blackburns, the Boltons and the West Hams and had a chance to get some points.
On the subject of exactly how hard our start has been, it seems to get harder the longer you look at it. Even our scrappy 1-0 win at Home to West Brom which was much derided now looks like a decent result since they won at Arsenal and drew with the Mancs.
Step one is that we win a match. Today would be a fine place to start, then we move on.
Talk about difficult starts though, look at who West Brom has played so far...
Chelsea
Us
Spurs
Man City
Arsenal
Mancs
That's all top 6 hopefuls and they have got 6 points more than us.
