Marcus's Bicycle wrote:
I agree with all of this apart from replacing Smith. He's a proven first team coach who has improved every team he's been in charge of. We've been crying out for someone like him for years.
It's his team now and he needs to be given time to sort out the mess we've had to endure for years. Even in the unlikely event he is sacked I cannot think of anyone else to replace him so early in the season.
The biggest problem for me is the quality of the squad. Without doubt it's the weakest we have for years. Just about all of the new signings are cast offs. Yes, you can say Smith is partly responsible for recruitment but his hands are tied behind his back due to financial constraints.
All I'm asking for is a steady improvement but if Smith cannot achieve that then yes he has to go but only at the end of the season. God knows who will replace him.
Agree with this. To sack Smith at this point would simply be counter-productive. Who would be his replacement for starters, there's hardly a long list of potential candidates out there and I suspect if someone was appointed short-term it would likely have zero effect on the situation.
For various reasons, in a lot of differing areas, we have dug ourselves into an almighty hole since around 2018. Sacking Smith is unlikely to make a difference. Think we honestly have no choice but to batten down the hatches and hope that, from somewhere, Smith can somehow get a tune out of this unbalanced squad and give us at least the odd game here and there where we see a least a chink of light.
Obviously, we cannot go on and on losing week after week (sacking him may become unavoidable in that case), but right now I think we simply have no choice but to go on and hope we see at least a modicum of improvement as the year progresses.
It's not going to be very pretty, but we are where we are right now and I'm afraid we are going to have to find some way of battling through, because there isn't an easy fix to the mess the club has engineered all on its own.
(To think this time yesterday I was desperately trying to instil some positivity into myself. Talk about 24 hours making all the difference!!).
