RicoS321

Aye, it appears I misread the BBC article yesterday! I did wonder why we were still being linked with Kerr. Personally, I think a January window should remain in January.

A disgraceful window like, and shows that nobody at the club has learned anything. The whole point in our supposed recruitment setup is that much/most of the responsibility is taken away from the manager. The idea being that we have a large degree (as much as you can have in the transfer market) of certainty over signings, regardless of who the manager is. The window is about keeping things ticking over, getting rid of a few players and experimenting with new ones. January doesn't have to be a big one, but two players in would have been the minimum I'd have expected regardless of the manager. By not getting a winger, we've completely limited the options of the new manager, and by not keeping things ticking over, it's basically like being one or two short already in the summer. As we've seen since McInnes left, that makes the new manager a window behind at the outset, but we won't give him a window leeway to get it right (I'm not necessarily saying that the others should have got another window, just that they were very hard done by). The last three summers have seen a 10+ turnover over players because of this. We have a slightly more settled team this season, but we're probably still going to be looking at 8+ signings, which means at least 12 in to get 8 worthwhile players. That includes the likely loss of Miovski and Duk (or Duk just continuing to be like having a player missing). Players who won't, or shouldn't, be here next season: Roos Gartenmann (he might sign) MacDonald McGarry Morris Barron Besuijen Richardson Gueye Miovski Duk Phillips That's anything from 8-12 above that will be leaving. Anything between 3-5 of those who'd start. That's a massive turnover, and if you're looking at that as a person coming in, you'd probably pass. Of course, the board will tell us that they'll back the manager, but that's utterly meaningless unless it occurs over at least two windows, as the margin for error in the transfer window is huge and largely has nothing to do with the manager. Unless that manager has strong experience of Scottish football, and bringing players into our game, it's unlikely that they'll get higher than 50% success rate. That's why I thought we had the model that transcended the manager and our recruitment team could ably tide things over where the manager was on a shoogly peg. Just one first team recruit (a fucking winger for fuck sake!) could have saved the manager a world of hassle in the summer.

Aye, I know what you mean. His form didn't really leave them with much choice. You don't need to take tactics away from the manager, you just need to play devil's advocate and challenge those tactics and get him to explain himself. The idea being that he questions himself and what he's doing, which is vital for a young manager, to avoid the sort of cognitive dissonance that effected Glass, Goodwin and Robson. All three went through long periods of making the same mistake over and over, with apparently nobody to hold them to account or make them questions themselves. It was like they were paralysed, and just couldn't see that what they were doing was wrong. It just needs consistent messaging and questioning: "Barry, your setting us up to play with Ramadani despite the fact Ylber left in the summer, and none of the replacements are in any way similar to him. Explain that to me as a layman". It's not about taking responsibility from him, rather about shaking him out of a rut when there's a prolonged period of poor results from making the same mistakes. He'd still get to set up as he saw fit, nobody could tell him that three at the back wasn't allowed or anything like that. Robson himself said that he needed someone at the club who would challenge him, and I don't think that ever happened (or if it did, they weren't actually challenging him).

The board got in an inexperienced manager for our heaviest scheduled season this century and didn't get anyone with experience above him, all after the two previous inexperienced guys failed in similar circumstances. It's entirely their fault. If Robson had succeeded, it would have been pure luck. Obviously, you can always pick up a bad manager, or one who just doesn't fit for whatever reason, but you have to mitigate that in any way possible. Suffice to say, it's clear that there's nobody at the club capable of holding a manager to account and so any good appointment we might make will be down to luck.

I saw thon first lad at the fitba last night. Actually held the door open for him as I was leaving the chunty and he was going in. Would have belted it off his coupon if he'd suggested Lennon to me. I'd rather have yogi. At least it'd be funny.

This sounds like a story released to the P&J by a Mr Warnock, from England. It fucking better be.

Would I get to keep my seat in the RDL for when it goes tits up? If so, I'm in. In all seriousness, you could imagine Cormack giving a fan the job after an altercation on Twitter, where he challenges some minker to see if they could do a better job.

I think they'd make a great team. When can we get them in?

McKenna to Copenhagen

With Robson going, it might be worth holding onto him. It's a big might, he's been poor for longer than he's been good and I'm not sure he's a luxury we can afford, and not sure he's the type of guy we need in the battle we face until the end of the season. Anyway, the timing is an absolute disaster for sacking the manager. Last day of the fucking window when we desperately need at least one player and when at least one might be leaving. Either keep him another day and pretend he's got the job until summer and sign a player (the recruitment team do the majority of the work there anyway, and any new manager will need players), or ditch him before the window opens. This is another window where we've allowed ourselves to get behind again. You can't afford to miss any. The new manager is now already on a handicap. It's fucking disastrous. How the fuck Cormack can't learn these basic things after so many attempts is unbelievable.

Shame, but the right call. Christ knows what we do next.

Also, if Barron is still here tomorrow then Phillips has to go down as the most inappropriate signing I've ever seen. I just assumed that he was a midfielder that could maybe play wide with a bit of minor coaching. No, he's a central midfielder who won't be good enough to do what Ramadani did, but Robson will force him to anyway, just like every midfielder so far this season (all the while burning out Clarkson and Shinnie). Might have just been because it was his debut and he didn't know the players around him, but he appeared very raw, and the type of player that we'd have to spend a lot of time on to get playing to a decent standard. Very much like a lot of our loanees from EPL teams really, with Clarkson and Maddison the exceptions rather than the rule. I think the admin team will be preparing a space in the cabinet between Jenks and Walker (Josh), maybe just after Marshall (Paul) to drop this lad's file into.

That was so bad I couldn't even be arsed commenting when I got in. Terrible stuff. Despite our poor result at Tynecastle, we had a great first half, with the makings of a team and setup that could play in this type of fixture. It was something we could have built on. He decides that he can't trust MacDonald in a back four (maybe with reason, but you have to risk it in my opinion), so moves to a back three, with the centre half at right wing back and the right wing back at centre half. The formation (3-4-1-2) last night worked really well against the Huns here when they cheated to get a draw, but he genuinely doesn't see the differences between the fixtures and the teams we're playing against. His changes come late, and then he crams them into the space of twenty minutes, as always, so that all the subs get is five minutes to settle before changing shape and having to settle again. They never get the chance to show what they can do. McInnes would do the same too, it was frustrating, but the game was usually won by the time he did it. Clarkson had just started to play again with the move further forward, some of his link up play against hearts was excellent, so he gets shunted back and Barron gets dropped. He was clearly knackered when he came off, and Shinnie again had to cover 8 marathons in a single game. I can only assume Barron won't be here tomorrow, it's inexplicable otherwise. Injuries were an issue at the back in fairness. Jensen and MacDonald are a terrible pairing as they're both ponderous and miss the opportunity for the quick pass. Roos was really, really bad - the worst I've seen him - he just looked off the whole night, really panicked and drained of any remaining confidence. Looked to me like he was at fault for the goal, but difficult to tell from the RDL. Otherwise, nobody played exceptionally bad, we were just terrible as a team. It's a terrible place to be trying to bring through young guys like Duncan and Milne, it does them no favours. It's horrible to watch Robson go through such a slow and painful managerial death, being allowed to drown with seemingly no assistance from anyone at the club. If the strategy is to develop young managers, then 0/3 is a fucking awful statistic. It's brutal for Robson, as it was Glass and a lesser extent Goodwin. There is only one way this is going, and everyone can see it.

I'm assuming Robson is reverting to a three and Clarkson sitting once again. Christ. I should maybe turn round and go home.

Jesus. Tombola rolled.

It's just with the injuries to Gartenmann and Rubi. Personally I'd be comfortable with MacDonald and Milne as cover. However, someone like Kerr would make sense on loan until the summer to give us time to weigh up our options. He's a known quantity.

Very few people know that Colin Montgomery was an above average golfer before joining Hibs as manager.

Don't stick up for those life-endangering maniacs that could have killed millions with their soft, fluffy, white weapons.

You could be right, but it's very important to note that this is not what the club think. They've intentionally gone down a route that takes a lot of the role an experienced manager would take on (Scottish managers anyway, not the case in Europe) in-house to provide a support base for the manager. That's why we got rid of McInnes (who wanted to retain control of transfers, sport's science etc) and employed three inexperienced managers in a row. It's going to take a lot for the club to admit defeat on that (in my opinion they shouldn't), and I suspect that the type of experienced manager that you or I might think are a good fit for us may not want to give up complete control of key functions. For me, the obvious route is to get a good football director in first and let them try to get the best out of Robson (he does have some good attributes, I think he can motivate the players, and there's no question of them not playing for them like what happened under Goodwin). If/when that fails, then we let him go, but retain the structure in place for the new manager. We then go to the market to find a manager willing to work to our structure, and not one who will rip it all up. I believe that there's a real danger that we get the next guy in and hand him the keys and we're up shit creek again when his shelf-life is reached. We've taken a long time to recover from McInnes leaving, and I would expect the same again. I'd like to see us sticking to our guns and getting the right strategy in place and let the young managers fail on fair terms, when we can really say that we've done all we can to make them a success. That hasn't been the case for the last three.

Excellent. Good that we injured him first.

Good post. I actually agree. I also believe that the first step should be increasing the support to the manager, which has the dual effect of providing for the next guy too, if the need arise.

I think people are giving Glass credit where none is really due. Mainly because he once got a draw at the Huns as far as I can tell. He was completely wedded to playing Bates out of position, despite it being obvious for months that he was struggling, and continually tried to play out from the back when the opposition could see it a mile off, so the similarities with Robson (and Goodwin) are fairly clear. If we had the right backroom staff, I suspect we'd be getting more from Robson, and would have Goodwin too. Pretty much any club where you hear the "manager X is doing the same thing every week, even though everyone can see it isn't working" is missing managerial accountability. Someone to stop the manager and make them explain themselves, and question themselves continually. I'd actually argue that Glass had the most accountability, as he had a team of tactics and specialist people who likely questioned him regularly (and I think that showed on the pitch in some respects and is probably why Glass seems to be the guy we think we might have missed something with), but it wasn't at the right level, in my opinion, to have an effect.

That's because you're not a Hibs fan. My mate described it as a ridiculous obsession with a 4-4-2, that he refuses to change even when it's clear it's not working and doesn't suit many of the players. Which, sounds familiar.

If the fmb had been honest with supporters, told us that they were giving a young manager a chance to learn improve and asked the fans for a bit of patience. Perhaps if they'd said that this season would be largely a free hit to bed in some players and a system, because the turnover in the past few windows has meant an imbalanced squad with a lottery in the window that would likely result in a squad a little below par. If they'd said that they wanted to design a structure around inexperienced managers with a strong background team that would hold that manager to account, whilst giving him a sounding board for advice. They didn't say, or do, any of those things. They got us an inexperienced manager and asked him to do the role of an experienced manager in a season that saw us have our largest number of fixtures in a long time. The fmb should be aware that the fans aren't happy with the fmb.

Anthony Stewart was a stand out for Wycombe. It's a very high standard, and we should be looking to pick up their scraps. They're up there with Morecambe.