Valérien Ismaël: Blackburn Rovers Head Coach

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Kean is in a class of his own. Nobody else comes near.

[Tomphil2]

They nearly dropped last season and have recruited smartly this summer on a low budget to prevent a repeat.

They have though a manager who knows what he's doing and people running the club who also care beyond their paychecks.

They also seem to manage fine without a Cat1 academy AND did impressive early bird adult ST's a few years ago which took their home turnouts up several thousand.

Everything we should be doing but with added bonus of billionaire owners and academy.

Everything we aren't.

[Upside Down]

I reached the point of not giving a fuck a while back so I'm actually finding a lot of this quite funny.

What else can one do? It's so completely absurd. For anyone to say that the squad we have now is in any way equal or better than the already poor squad we had last year is completely and utterly ridiculous. 

As I said when he was appointed, this guy is totally irrelevant. 

The sheer level of ineptitude of the people who run this club just keeps reaching hilarious new levels week after week.  

Seriously, if you support or defend them in any way you are not, nor have you ever been a fan of Blackburn Rovers. Just go away and fuck your sister like all your other inbred Dingle mates/cousins/parents/lovers.

Edited 12 hours ago by Upside Down

[Jimmy612]

Ismael clearly very prickly, but what does he expect? He has the lowest win % of any Rovers manager in decades. Okay, it’s a smaller sample size than Kean, but if he’s scrabbling round for excuses after 23 games and 6 wins, then it’s not a good look.

The comments about the squad not regressing are incredibly stupid and shows complete disregard for the fans intellect.  He did in a roundabout way allude to it being a difficult season due to all of the upheaval, but that was never once acknowledged in summer when they were telling us all what an exciting transformation it was. The fans knew the  potential cost of this strategy, and at the moment, those fears are being realised. 
I’ve not felt this disconnect with a manager since Coyle. 

I can’t see him being sacked, I can’t see him walking away, so we just have to hope they can turn this form around.  If he did leave his post (applies tin hat), I probably would be speaking to Mowbray about coming in for the rest of the season. He knows the league, knows the club, is a very good man manager and might just be able to scrabble enough points to keep us up.  Those of you who oppose this (and I understand totally there will be a few), would you have any other recommendations or thoughts about a replacement? Don’t forget, Rovers don’t pay compensation, so likely would have to be a free agent. 

[Tom]

Kean can never be used as a comparator, like Godwins Law where in theory if you compare someone to Hitler you lose the argument by default.

I would have called it Gladwin’s Law but he came far too late!

Every manager since has had various flaws to different degrees but Kean is far beyond; he was actively complicit in our downfall whereas the others are all symptomatic of it

[Hasta]

1 hour ago, B16Rover said:

The 'xG' suggests we should be 7th.  Im admittedly a stat guy, but I'd suggest this matches what I've seen so far this season

The XG suggest we’ve built a shit squad of footballers who are incapable of scoring goals even when they get good chances, hence why we are in deep shit.  It’s not ‘bad luck’.

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Hasta

[B16Rover]

18 minutes ago, Hasta said:

The XG suggest we’ve built a shit squad of footballers who are incapable of scoring goals even when they get good chances, hence why we are in deep shit.  It’s not ‘bad luck’.

 

I did warn you to say I was being hyper optimistic 

 

The more realistic view to take is that much like the crap upfront, the rest of the team who create chances will tail off as the season draws on and the depth reduces 

[DE.]

From how much the results differ from reality, it would probably be more reasonable to conclude the model is just extremely poor when it comes to accurate predictive ability. 

[G Somerset Rover]

2 hours ago, arbitro said:

Seeing Nobbers come back to win impressively last night I had a quick look at their loan players. They have Jebbison, Dobbin, Devine and Armstrong. They all started last night, played really well and have all contributed to Nobbers good start.

Our fella doesn't like loans (and he's never wrong).

And how are we doing with Gestede's 3000 minutes for Academy players?

 

Oh but he does if the agents get the right cut. Just look at our pal Baradji who may get to finally pull on a jersey in December.

[Hasta]

Listened to the full 7 minute interview this morning. What a nobhead. His body language showed his discomfort, almost anger, at Bayes questioning which , whilst not being harsh, was just direct.

His ‘can we just talk about football or end this now’ was telling. He could have said he just wanted to talk about the game, but he had to put the threat in there. Ismael and Rudy come across as two peas in the same pod. 
 

All the talk with Travis was he was just being honest when he threw him under the bus. He’s done it with Big Mak  now and publically says Tyjon isnt good enough. All very well people saying at least he’s honest, but not when he clearly lies about the squad not having lost any quality. 

 

[dallydally]

So Ismael now thinks the fans are stupid suggesting the quality of the squad has been diluted

The man is behaving like an arrogant prat

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Still needs to go,a bad Manager and a poor personality.

[RevidgeBlue]

20 minutes ago, SIMON GARNERS 194 said:

Still needs to go,a bad Manager and a poor personality.

They might give him another 3.5 years after that.

[Lancaster Rover]

9 hours ago, B16Rover said:

I did warn you to say I was being hyper optimistic 

 

The more realistic view to take is that much like the crap upfront, the rest of the team who create chances will tail off as the season draws on and the depth reduces 

I’m also an analyst at heart, one of the major flaws I see in xG is that it doesn’t take in to account situational context of the shooting opportunity i.e. who is the forward, who is the keeper, etc 

[Lancaster Rover]

7 hours ago, Hasta said:

Listened to the full 7 minute interview this morning. What a nobhead. His body language showed his discomfort, almost anger, at Bayes questioning which , whilst not being harsh, was just direct.

His ‘can we just talk about football or end this now’ was telling. He could have said he just wanted to talk about the game, but he had to put the threat in there. Ismael and Rudy come across as two peas in the same pod. 
 

All the talk with Travis was he was just being honest when he threw him under the bus. He’s done it with Big Mak  now and publically says Tyjon isnt good enough. All very well people saying at least he’s honest, but not when he clearly lies about the squad not having lost any quality. 

 

My issue is he’s only ‘honest’ when it suits Gestede’s narrative. Re the Travis thing, he may have been ‘honest’ about his desire to leave/push a move but without the context and ‘honesty’ about why he wanted to leave its a half truth 

[OnionBalaji]

Incredibly grateful that we got a much needed 3 points and a win, but I hope it doesn’t give Val much of a stay of execution.  Of all the managers we’ve had in recent history I’ve not wanted a manager gone as much since Kean. 

I think other managers might have got a tune out of Gueye - for Eustace he was useful and his size and strength was handy. Not sure what has gone on there between them. 
 

His public criticism of players and the ways he holds himself in interviews reeks of arrogance. It’s hard to get behind him the same as previous managers and do think his record is abysmal and do believe he will take us down to L1 if we are stuck with him 

[John]

I think it’s extremely unlikely that VI would leave or be sacked - he’s intrinsic to the “project,” and much of the discussion around recruitment over the summer focused on finding players suited to his pressing style.

Assuming he was Gestede’s pick for the coaching role, replacing him would mean RG admitting he got it wrong — which seems highly unlikely. There’s also no chance he’d appoint anyone with more pedigree or someone who might stand up to him.