FAO Jayson Blair

Fine - but Man City (a), Chelsea (h) and Birmingham (a) still looked hellishly difficult to most observers. Sure, Citeh suffered a number of defeats at Maine Road: it was still their best side since the early 90s, and remained so until Eriksson took over. And Chelsea were in form, going for a CL spot, and had just overtaken Newcastle and gone 3rd!

I'm not looking for reasons to slag the guy off - but bloody everyone at the time thought that Brooking had done remarkably, and almost rescued an impossible situation. Of course, it's moot whether Roeder's deteriorating health had been the major factor behind WHU's campaign that season anyway: perhaps it was, there's no way of knowing. But I defended him elsewhere in my post, pointing out the obvious lack of resources and unreasonable expectations he was dealing with at West Ham and Newcastle - and like phrankin, I'm simply aware that his record thus far says 'impact manager', but he's unproven over the longer term.

Posted By: thebigfeller, Feb 25, 15:14:43