Relegation inevitable due to our terrible record in 'six pointers' under Ole

Sorry Gloves, can't agree with everything you say there.

City were well on the slide before Malky was sacked. The early 2014 programme would have seen us in the relegation places regardless of who was in charge.

I have argued that we had flattered to deceive for most of the 2012 -2013 season and finished top of a very poor Championship. I didn't feel that we were at all convincing and voiced my concerns about our ability to compete at PL level well before the season started.

It's all coming home to roost now, but homing in on OGS is unfair. He may well not have been the right man for the job, but whoever had taken over would have had a difficult job making us into a competitive PL squad during a January transfer window.

All power to the club for having the balls to make the change at that time. It hasn't worked, but at least they tried.

So do we start a fresh with new management?

OGS's signings have been unimpressive but with the benefit of a full season to judge them, some of Malky's have been shocking. We know about Cornelius and Brayford but Medel is now looking ridiculously overpriced at £11m. He started the season with the Pitbull tag but has looked more and more limited as the season has gone on, rarely leaving the final third of the pitch or producing a psss of note. Caulker has looked a decent centre back on times but is not experienced enough to take charge of some of the chaos around him. As for KTC - how many goals have his poor defending cost us.
Frankly, the Club has been a shambles on and off the pitch for much of the season with blame liberally apportioned throughout the place.

How people view Ole's stint here will no doubt be tinged by their own views on Malky and how they thought he was doing. Although i have criticised Malky i thought it would be touch and go for us staying up if he had remained in charge - certainly not a forgone conclusion either way.

To me the decision to get rid of Malky just to be replaced by Ole was not brave but stupid. For someone like TDA convinced we were getting relegated under Malky it makes sense. To others like myself the appointment of Ole perhaps felt like the main chance of survival being thrown away. That the decision had more to do with backroom politics than results made the bullet harder to bite for myself.

We will never all agree on which shoulders should bare most of the burden of blame. Hopefully we can agree that both managers, players and Tan (alongside others) are responsible for the mess we are in at the moment. All we can hope is that whoever remains at the club, on and off the pitch, going into next season, has learned something from the experience.

I think the last paragraphs of our posts show that we are in broad agreement.

This argument could run for all of time and we could never reach a consensus. I still personally feel that anyone who thinks Malky was sacked because of poor results is kidding themselves, and there's also a complete disregard of the effect having a complete control freak sat on your shoulder and watching over every move might do to your preparations.

When it comes down to it OGS has got us relegated while Malky didn't. To still be blaming him and assuming he would of done worse than OGS is completely unfair.

My feeling is the blame for all of this is Tan. Money or not, he destabilised the club by sacking key staff and replacing them with family friends. He sacked Malky at genuinely the worst time possible since fans had rallied completely around him, and then he hired someone with too little experience and didn't give then enough of a budget to get things working how they wanted. And that's just on the pitch. Never mind his attitude infuriating fans left right and centre and his constant bidding for the spotlight.

All good responses, and as mentioned it comes down to personal opinion at the end of the day. However, I don't think there's any denying OGS has done a bad job. We've had about 11 'must win games' under his reign, and won only a couple of them!

*** G L O V E S *** wrote:All good responses, and as mentioned it comes down to personal opinion at the end of the day. However, I don't think there's any denying OGS has done a bad job. We've had about 11 'must win games' under his reign, and won only a couple of them!

Yes, it's not a black and white argument but, personally, I have to agree with Gloves' last sentiment here. Not only did we lose the vast majority of these type of games, we were actually very heavily beaten in most of them. Against Hull, Palace and Sunderland we conceded 11 goals without a single reply.

You could argue that Ole had so many 'must win' games because Malky did so poorly. Had he done better and left in a decent position, we wouldn't have had to win so many games.

But really, if you look at their records, there's not much to choose between them -
Malky - 18 games, 17 points. 0.944 points per game.
Ole - 19 games, 18 points. 0.947 points per game.

I would argue that Ole has done better because he has had to use Malky's team, he came in when our form was poor, morale was low, he didn't get a s**t load of money to spend, and he didn't have a pre-season to get the players set up how he wants them.

I think that the players Ole has brought in have generally done well. I'd be confident in giving him a few million to spend in the summer.
Zaha and Jones have been dodgy, but I don't think anyone disagreed with them coming in at the time?

Actually, I believe Ole's league record reads - 18 games, 13 points. 0.722 points per game. He also won one and lost one in the cup.

I was suspicious of Fabio and Zaha but less so of Jones. Fabio has had his moments but if he gains some composure might actually be worth it. Zaha is terrible though.

Ahh, I got lazy and took Ole's stats straight from Wikipedia, sorry. I'll go though the results on the BBC page....

....So his league record is 16 games, 12 points. 0.75 points per game.
He'd have to win both of the next 2 games to have a better point per game ratio than Malky.

(I know we've played 36 games, and that 18+16 only equals 34. There were two games where we were managerless, the Sunderland and Arsenal games.)

SteWells wrote:Ahh, I got lazy and took Ole's stats straight from Wikipedia, sorry. I'll go though the results on the BBC page....

....So his league record is 16 games, 12 points. 0.75 points per game.
He'd have to win both of the next 2 games to have a better point per game ratio than Malky.

Oh yes, my bad. I forgot about the two games Kerslake was in charge    

As for that last statement, we can but dream Mr Wells...  

We did all want Zaha and Jones, but the difference is we didn't have world class scouts watching them at training and at matches - we have Wikipedia, YouTube and match of the day.