A lot of this is on Gary Monk

[Guest Kagoshimaowl]

1 hour ago, @owlstalk said:

 

It isn't though

Ok. I’m not getting involved in this again.   We’ll just beg to differ.

[matthefish2002]

I wish Monk was main person to blame and then it would easily be solved by a good managerial appointment.

[pazowl55]

Whoever does the recruitment and the contract negotiations are to blame for the predicament we are in.

[matthefish2002]

1 minute ago, pazowl55 said:

Whoever does the recruitment and the contract negotiations are to blame for the predicament we are in.

 

Along with ballsing up the sale of Hillsborough to try and get round the FFP rules.

 

[areNOTwhatTHEYseem]

Just now, matthefish2002 said:

I wish Monk was main person to blame and then it would easily be solved by a good managerial appointment.

 

When you boil it all down, it comes to this.

 

Any manager at Wednesday is swimming against the tide with one hand tied behind their back.

 

We simply don't provide an environment which is going to get anything like the best out of our managers.

 

Some might respond less catastrophically than others to the madness which surrounds them, but nobody is set up to succeed.

[pazowl55]

3 minutes ago, matthefish2002 said:

 

Along with ballsing up the sale of Hillsborough to try and get round the FFP rules.

 

Get what I said right and we don't need to worry about that bit.

[Plonk]

51 minutes ago, Andrew6666 said:

Monk set us up to play 3 at the back, we didn't need a left back. We had players that could cover the left sided midfield place. 

Pulis came in and went 4 at the back, that's when the problematic left back thing started.

 

I grant you he was playing three at the back. But what if it didn’t work and we needed to change? He left himself with no where to go. Starting the season without a left back and a striker was negligent and has caused massive prombles for us. 

[briggowl]

Hard to blame Monk when there's been years of consistently poor decision making since getting rid of our recruitment team (CC season 1).

 

I think Bruce, Monk, Pulis, Moore all have decent qualities that in the correct environment could work, as they've proven at times elsewhere.

 

At SWFC it's hard to see anyone doing well for the foreseeable future.

[Andrew6666]

9 minutes ago, Plonk said:

I grant you he was playing three at the back. But what if it didn’t work and we needed to change? He left himself with no where to go. Starting the season without a left back and a striker was negligent and has caused massive prombles for us. 

Striker, yes - but was Monk allowed to bring in a striker of his choosing?

Monk always mentioned Leko and Simmonds (he didn't get any) - did our board push to get them??????

I also think Monk wanted Rhodes out, but our Chairman wanted ridiculous cash for him. Was Monk then told - you have a striker.

I think that Monk was focussed on 3 at the back whatever happened (IMO I still prefer this set up for us, I thought 3 at the back was good).

These problems aren't always the managers fault even though it can look that way. 

 

[areNOTwhatTHEYseem]

14 minutes ago, Plonk said:

I grant you he was playing three at the back. But what if it didn’t work and we needed to change? He left himself with no where to go. Starting the season without a left back and a striker was negligent and has caused massive prombles for us. 

 

No doubt.

 

But we know that Monk wanted to keep Fletcher and Fox. It wasn't his choice for them to leave, and I seriously doubt it was his choice to go into the season with the squad that he had, either - but that's what happens when your chairman has got you a 12 point deduction and can't afford proven players due to the P&S rules he keeps breaking.

[83owl]

26 minutes ago, Plonk said:

I grant you he was playing three at the back. But what if it didn’t work and we needed to change? He left himself with no where to go. Starting the season without a left back and a striker was negligent and has caused massive prombles for us. 

Penney, Palmer, Odubajo have all played left back. Rhodes is a striker so we aren’t starting the season without a left back and striker at all. 
 

The club obviously don’t see this as a problem area given we didn’t sign a left back or a striker in January but I guess that was Monks fault as well. 

[torryowl]

replacing expensive aged players who you cant sell with cheapo's and freebies is a recipe for trouble .......jos,bruce,monk all had to handle that no doubt pulis would have as will moore ...i wouldnt be blaming any of them for our current situation ..when your on your 7th manager in 6 years and you have a mish mash squad that contains players signed by all 7 how can they be expected to build there own squad . .....

[Guest]

1 hour ago, areNOTwhatTHEYseem said:

 

I know you say, 'before anyone starts about Chansiri', but it's him more than Monk who's responsible for the state of our squad.

 

Monk was on record as wanting to keep Fletcher and Fox, but we seemingly couldn't match Stoke's offer, so they left.

 

There's no way Monk wanted to lose Fletcher - he was our most important player last season, and Monk was getting more out of him than any of his previous Wednesday managers. Unfortunately, our points deduction and the P&S issues meant that we were a pretty unattractive proposition compared to Stoke City.

 

As for the recruitment - the chairman's previous actions had created godawful circumstances for our recruitment team to try and operate within - we had to jettison proven quality in order to cut costs, and replace them with cheap signings who'd be willing to join a club starting on minus twelve.

 

There's no way that Windass, Paterson, Marriott and Kachunga were all Monk's top choices - we were clearly after the likes of Leko and Zahore (among others, I'm sure), but they went elsewhere and our pool of options reduced further still. The notion that he was flicking through a catalogue of strikers and happily picked that bunch out is laughable.

 

Thanks to our previous overspending and the resultant points deduction, we were in no position to attract higher quality players and must have been among the least attractive Championship teams to join this pre-season.

 

The old adage 'beggars can't be choosers' rings true here, I'm afraid.

 

The ultimate responsibility for the make up of the squad lies with the owner and whoever he has been tasking to 'advise' us on that front but Monk played a part, he said as much himself.

 

As you say, it was fairly obvious we were going to be in a beggars position last summer with the points deduction - and also the fact that the manager had presided over a collapse for the entire 2nd half of the season which hardly helped us become a more attractive proposition. He also showed little sign of wanting to keep Nuhiu, speaking regularly of others like Fletcher who were never likely to sign. When Fletcher wasn't available and Wickham was half fit during the last 9 games, Monk turned to Da Cruz before Nuhiu. Bearing in mind the transfer position we were in, keeping him would have been a good move.

 

Also Kachunga was a Monk signing, he spoke of being attracted to Hillsborough and talked into the move by members of Monk's chosen coaching team with whom he had worked previously. Windass was also a Monk signing following on from his loan spell. 

[areNOTwhatTHEYseem]

1 minute ago, hirstyboywonder said:

The ultimate responsibility for the make up of the squad lies with the owner and whoever he has been tasking to 'advise' us on that front

 

Agreed.

 

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, 83owl said:

Penney, Palmer, Odubajo have all played left back. Rhodes is a striker so we aren’t starting the season without a left back and striker at all. 
 

The club obviously don’t see this as a problem area given we didn’t sign a left back or a striker in January but I guess that was Monks fault as well. 

 

They may have all played left-back but none of them were particularly good at it or would have it as their preferred position. Monk never played them in that position either so it was clear he didn't trust them to do that job long-term.

 

Rhodes is a busted flush, useless as a loan striker and another that Monk rarely trusted. 

 

The club are more to blame for the overall recruitment but Monk was far from blameless. 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, areNOTwhatTHEYseem said:

 

Agreed.

 

 

I take it you don't agree with the rest of the post then? Care to debate it at all? 

[areNOTwhatTHEYseem]

@hirstyboywonder: I'm being unfairly facetious.

 

We apparently offered Nuhiu a contract but he chose to leave for Cyprus. I can only imagine the terms weren't great, in that case.

 

As for Kachunga and Windass, I can see that they were Monk signings to a certain extent, but it's not as if he had free rein, is it? He had to choose from a pool of players determined by the position Chansiri put us in last summer, which was only ever going to be lower-end Championship players who would come cheap.

 

I don't think Monk got everything right here - far from it - but he was operating within a basket-case of a club which was lurching from crisis to crisis with seemingly no long-term planning in place.

 

As I said earlier in the thread: we simply don't provide an environment which is going to get anything like the best out of our managers.

 

Some might respond less catastrophically than others to the madness which surrounds them, but nobody is set up to succeed.

[OWL1969]

I have to say, I wanted Monk out after the run from Christmas until the league was cut short. 

That run from being third in the league (admittedly overperforming) was atrocious.

I also thought he should have gone at the end of the season and somebody else should have been given the chance to rebuild the squad for the start of the season.

The problem was, once Monk was sacked the next appointment needed to be the right one, yet again the Chairman got it so wrong it beggars belief.

Then compounded it by not getting in another Manager and relying on Thompson.

 

Although it was plain to see Pulis was the wrong choice (a disaster) some of the noises he was making were much more worrying than the error in his appointment.

 

With hindsight you have question IF Monk was responsible for the recruitment pre season, I know we were -12 and probably only offering (relatively) poor wages, but surely we could have brought in better than we did.

You can't get rid of players and either not replace them at all or worse still replace them with even worse players it's a recipe for disaster.

As much as I don't rate Monk as a manager even I question if he was responsible, IF he was then he's got a lot to answer for, but I genuinely would be astounded if he was. 

I know he said he was, but as a Manager with a well paid job, he's hardly likely to come out and say anything else.

 

I just hope Moore gets full control of who we sign (even with limited or no resources) someone has to stop the rot, unfortunately with our current chairman, it will be extremely difficult as he just never seems to learn from his previous errors. 

Good luck Darren you're going to bloody well need it!! 

 

[83owl]

15 minutes ago, hirstyboywonder said:

 

They may have all played left-back but none of them were particularly good at it or would have it as their preferred position. Monk never played them in that position either so it was clear he didn't trust them to do that job long-term.

 

Rhodes is a busted flush, useless as a loan striker and another that Monk rarely trusted. 

 

The club are more to blame for the overall recruitment but Monk was far from blameless. 

It doesn’t matter if you, Monk or anyone else thinks Rhodes or the fullbacks are any good. We signed 2 players in January, neither of which were a striker or a left back and we signed these players without a permanent manager in place.
That means somebody is making the decisions somewhere and whoever that is obviously doesn’t see the full back or striker positions as a priority.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, areNOTwhatTHEYseem said:

@hirstyboywonder: I'm being unfairly facetious.

 

We apparently offered Nuhiu a contract but he chose to leave for Cyprus. I can only imagine the terms weren't great, in that case.

 

As for Kachunga and Windass, I can see that they were Monk signings to a certain extent, but it's not as if he had free rein, is it? He had to choose from a pool of players determined by the position Chansiri put us in last summer, which was only ever going to be lower-end Championship players who would come cheap.

 

I don't think Monk got everything right here - far from it - but he was operating within a basket-case of a club which was lurching from crisis to crisis with seemingly no long-term planning in place.

 

As I said earlier in the thread: we simply don't provide an environment which is going to get anything like the best out of our managers.

 

Some might respond less catastrophically than others to the madness which surrounds them, but nobody is set up to succeed.

 

Fair enough, as I said and as we agree on, the ultimately responsibility can't lie with the managers.

 

In terms of Nuhiu, I just don't feel it is one that Monk pushed for. As you said previously, Monk made a lot of noise publicly about trying to keep Fox and especially Fletcher but 99% of us felt that Fletcher was never likely to stay. He was understandably not going to get anything like his previous contract and he could see how the club was crumbling. He had a good season prior to getting injured and would likely get more attractive offers.

With that in mind, plus the impending points deduction which hit early and the clear lack of resources, more focus should have been put on keeping Nuhiu but it was clear that Monk didn't really fancy him going forward from the way he used him after lock down. If he had shown more faith in him and pushed for him to stay then perhaps he would have. 

Once that had been decided literally any walking striker with a bit of mobility and presence should have been a priority. Instead we turned to Kachunga, who is probably on a wage at least comparable to what Nuhiu was getting, Paterson and Marriott, who are both thought to be on a higher salary, none of which truly fit the role which is pivotal to us having any kind of chance of being competitive.