It’s everything isn’t it

The results have been mixed, and recently flat out poor. The performances ever since he took over have been poor. People cut some slack while in the Prem and we understood the squad wasn’t there. But no pattern emerged then, no pattern has emerged since. We came out of close season looking patternless and it’s got worse not better. We were expecting some kind of progress during the WC break, but we’ve got, if anything, worse. The coaches including Smith don’t even seem to see what everyone else can see in terms of performance. They don’t seem to be trying to do anything to change it. They don’t seem to be trying to connect with the fans and speak honestly. The comms from the coaches is that it’s the fans fault and otherwise it’s all great. The players look lost and/or disinterested. Nobody is performing as well as we have seen they can, nobody. We’ve spent a lot of money on signings this season and nobody is really having an impact. Team selections are pretty baffling, and serial poor performers keep getting picked. The balance of the team is all wrong, and it’s hampering individual performances. Even the better players seem to be played in positions that make them ineffective. And don’t even get me started on last seasons recruitment. Throughout all of this the wider communication from the club has been either missing or terrible. Pravda style soviet era “you will be delighted to hear how well it’s going comrades…”. Very senior figures in the club are disconnected in lots of ways, and seem to be taking bad decisions. The perception is they are more interested in arguing with the fans and the local media than getting everyone pulling together. And the message seems to be that it’s us, the fans, that need to change to put that right. The controls structures and decision making processes in the club seem broken, full of conflict of interest and absence of checks and balances. Theres no communicated vision for what we/they are trying to achieve and why we should stick with it. And the signal from the club is that we’ve done all our dough last year and this year, and it’s going to be fire sale time soon, all that in the context of any squad that looks tired, disinterested and where figures that have been key are out of contract.

The only absolutely baffling thing is that leadership of the club don’t seem to able to see that this is what we can all see. Everything, from top to bottom at the club seems to be a total mess.

So, Smith out (many of them). Webber out. We need to go back to the drawing board. Change is urgently needed.

Posted By: Under soil heating, Dec 18, 09:43:53