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north_ender

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  1. Lovely man who tried his best but miles out of his depth and should have been sacked weeks ago. Should never have been appointed to begin with. Our squad isn't as strong as when we had Davies, Pearson, Robinson, Hugill and others but it's still good enough to be playing way better, and be higher up the league, than we are at the moment. Our defence needs strengthening but our goalkeeper is one of the best in the division, our midfield is strong, and Riis and Evans are decent strikers at this level. Frankie just isn't a manager and couldn't get them playing. Ryan Lowe seems to be the very strong early favourite with the bookies but we'll see I suppose.
  2. Not confident heading into this one, or any game this season for that matter. I wouldn't be too taken by our last 2 results. We were horrendous at Middlesbrough and were essentially gifted the win. Fulham we did okay with Ched Evans galvanising us but we were still nothing special and only got a point. My view, and the view of most fans, is that McAvoy is hugely out of his depth. I would be surprised if he does a job on Mowbray tactically like Neil did 2-3 times whilst in charge. Like any team at this level we have the odd big result in us, like winning away at Bournemouth, but performances have been poor all season on the whole and the majority view is that we need managerial change very quickly if we're to move up the table. Evans coming back into the team is a big boost as he has been outstanding since signing, and Riis is a big threat up front too, but our defence is there to be got at. We play 5 at the back but don't really have any good wing backs.
  3. Dolan would have gone anyway even if we'd offered him a deal, but letting him go just sums up what we've become as a football club in the last 2-3 years. The owners are continuing to put in large amounts of money just to keep us afloat, and they aren't getting good value for money. You can't have a football club losing 5-10 million pounds a year giving away talents like Dolan for nothing. Dolan will be worth millions in the future especially if he gets England U21 recognition soon. We used to be a club that brought on younger players like Dolan but now the money seems to go on older journeymen or mediocre lower league signings who won't be worth a penny in re-sale value in the future, whilst, as mentioned above, the club continues to operate at a huge loss.
  4. Wouldn‘t be surprised if you moved for Alex Neil. He has a track record of getting into or pushing closely for the top 6 with decent Championship squads and a reasonable budget, which you have. And he is settled in the area with his family.
  5. Yes it is a very tough job. Which is why despite the bad run we have been on, most fans are thankful to Alex Neil for the job he has done. It has been a herculean effort to keep us competitive and pushing the edges of the play-offs for 3 years whilst we continue to sell our best players and fail to re-invest. In a sense there are attractions to the job. It is a fairly stable club where managers get time, we now have a top quality training ground, and the squad will always be very easy to man-manage. But the management of contracts, transfers and basically everything off the pitch to do with football this season has been nowhere near good enough which is why fan criticism is now heading in Ridsdale's direction.
  6. It sounds like they want to appoint a young upcoming coach as more of a head coach, with the club controlling transfers by investing more in recruitment staff and analysts. Like at Brentford or Barnsley. Neil is a good coach but he has had tensions with the hierarchy about transfers throughout his tenure and is more of a 'win now' manager, whereas the club want to generally bring in younger players and bring them on. He has hardly played Tom Bayliss, for example, who the club bought from Coventry, but experienced heads like Ched Evans or Cunningham are thrown straight into the side and trusted from the off. The two parties are no longer on the same page. He will do well elsewhere and we will be capable of kicking on without him, but for everyone's sake he needs to be moved on with the club's best wishes.
  7. Reports this evening that he will be leaving imminently. Good manager who has on the whole done a decent job. Apparently things have been a bit tense behind the scenes this season with multiple key players allowed to run their deals downed, who were then sold in January without adequate replacement. It has made things very difficult and Neil seems to have now given up. He will go on to do well elsewhere but a parting of ways now feels like the right thing to do for all parties.
  8. I thought we played well in the first half and probably on balance deserved the win, but was relieved that you didn't attack the way you did at Deepdale, especially as we've lost our 3 best defenders since then. We are currently very vulnerable at the back, yet Harvey Elliott was left on the bench and I'm not sure where Armstrong was playing? Armstrong was devastating at Deepdale through the middle as a striker. I was relieved that he seemed to be shunted into a different role tonight. Even when he was central, the ball was hoofed up to him against a 6ft 3 centre half. Thought Branthwaite struggled a bit for you at the back, although Evans did have a very good game again. Most PNE fans have looked on at your transfer business and 20 goal striker in envy this season yet under Mowbray your limit seems to be mid-table, despite how heavily he has been able to invest. With an ambitious and more tactically adept manager I'm pretty sure you'd be seriously in the top 6 race every season with that squad.
  9. Lol, think a couple of the players live around there too. After bad home defeats there will always a big backlash. But I would argue that social media and forums aren't always representative of the majority view. A lot of fans would still argue that Alex has done a very good job for 3.5 years now with one hand tied behind his back, allowing us to compete in the top half of the Championship whilst our best players are all sold and replaced on the cheap. He has also had players foisted onto him like Nugent, and we are now in a scenario where our 5 best players - Pearson, Browne, Johnson, Davies, Fisher - are all available on free transfers next summer because the club have failed to offer them the market rate for proven Championship players. He has also continually argued for an U23 squad which has not been allowed to happen due to finance, which leads to lads like Dolan leaving the club. Basically recruitment, contracts, the entire footballing side of the club has been mismanaged for a number of years now, so with that and the lack of any reasonable backing on transfers it's very hard for Alex to continue to place us in the play-off hunt every year. We are now dropping back to where we probably belong - lower mid-table. The problem is that the ownership is not going to change, so even if we did change managers, the next manager would face all of the same problems. Was impressed with Blackburn tonight despite our ineptitude. Unlike us you have been shrewd in the loan market and actively added pace along with Championship experience to the squad. The squad looks much improved and Armstrong looks like a Premier League player at the moment. Throw Dack back into the mix, if he can hit the ground running, and you could be in for a good season.
  10. He wanted to leave anyway but the fact that we did even offer him a contract is very bad. There was some talk during lockdown that no funding had been made available to keep any youth teamers on, except for Ethan Walker who'd already signed a pro contract some time ago. We're also yet to make a single addition to the squad, despite having the worst strike force bar Hull last season.
  11. From an outsider's perspective, I've always wondered why Mowbray's position isn't more widely discussed. He's spent £15m, correct me if I'm slighly wrong, on strikers yet can't mount a serious play-off push. Looking at some of the options you have got, a more ambitious and hungry type of manager would probably get more out of them. Mowbray has underachieved in a similar way to Lee Johnson at Bristol City.
  12. The lower tier went first last time. I had to leave it late buying one and ended up in the upper. Suspect it's because it's not a daft kick off time for once that they tried to make it upper first this time.
  13. Neil is in a position to play the long game though. He's in a stable and decent job at the moment on £1m+ a year, he doesn't need to take any job or wage increase that comes up. Chances are in the summer he'll be offered a big deal at another club far more stable than Stoke and at that point he'd probably go, but there's no point rushing to a bottom of the table club who keep sacking young managers.
  14. Nah, just poor planning from Stoke. Looks like they tried to agree things with Neil first then strong-arm us after that, and now it's transpired that we weren't having any of it and AN wasn't even bothered about the move. Given the shambolic way Stoke's been run since they came down, really wouldn't be a surprise if they drop down again into L1.
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