Sorry for the long post but this is how I see it, I doubt many will agree but then they never do
I don't think getting rid of Garner would get us anywhere at the moment. Clem would still get in a man who wants to play passing attractive(at times) football and buy, nurture and sell young players, thats Clems remit he has admitted that already several times.
I have said since day 1 that Garner is not a manager, hes a development coach, his background is development of young players and is not tactically aware of what is needed in a cut throat results based league. He has come from a career as a youth/academy development coach, a job in which he has to be nice and get on with the young players, coach them and improve them to prepare them to get ready for the 1st team, a job he had some success with previously.
At academy level there is no pressure to get results, you just develop the players and even if you lose 3-0 week in week out your job is safe, you are under no pressure to learn how to learn game management, there is no impetus to need to change tactics to win games as the result is largely totally immaterial. He could lose every game but if he brought 1 player a season through to challenge for the 1st team then that would be considered success.
He has never had to learn tactical styles, he plays to a formula that wins some and loses some but in a way that means the players can at least pass a ball but relies on the youngsters having enough already in their locker to play the position that they do, it merely prepares them for playing in a team but necessitates no need to over coach them with tactics which is why many youngsters struggle when they come to lower league clubs, they dont have the footballing intelligence to take on tactics and the pressure of needing to get results as its all new to them.
I don't think its a coincidence that Garner is getting rid of most of the old guard as they can see we need results at the expense of pretty football, Grant wanted to win the ball at all costs, Garner didn't want that, he wanted a player who could pass a ball and maybe win a couple of challenges too not just a ball winner, which we can all see is blatantly missing in the team.
Garner has never had to learn how to manage a game, how many times have we been in the lead with 15 mins left and yet he makes what with foresight and hindsight are errors in substitution or doesnt know how to shut up shop. That is something badly needs addressing, being a league manager is 99% about results and not about about playing just an attractive style of football.
At an academy there is no danger that if you lose games then the academy will not suffer long term, in the league if you dont get results the entire club suffers with relegation or worse, the lower down the leagues the harder it is to get decent players, to get decent sponsorship and to attact fans, all of which will have an impact on the club financially, then you can get into the realms of overspending and take out loans and not repay then as Bury learnt and so nearly Power too.
Chesterfield, Notts County, Stockport, Wrexham, Grimsby and Southend were all well established league clubs with a history of plying their trade in much higher leagues but how they have dropped with poor on the pitch performances, its easily done with just one poor managerial appointment, look at us last season with Sheridan for instance, if he was removed in December I still feel we could possibly have survived in L1.
A couple of blatant faults for me have been - why go into a whole campaign essentially with a lone "front man"? yes we have "attackers" players who can play in a variety of positions but not as an actually front man. If Simpson or Davison got injured then we have zero actually striker options on the bench to change/improve us, that IMO is a fault of recruitment Chorley or Garner.
We have probably too many players who are very similar, McKirdy, Barry, Williams, Payne and JML so although all offer something a little different none have enough to change a game dramatically, that is a fault of recruitment Chorley or Garner.
We have a few underperforming players and all players have highs and lows but no single player is ever the reason for poor results, 1 player (for instance Conroy) makes an error then the other 10 players should make up for that by closing ranks and helping.
I have noticed we seem to have no "talkers" on the pitch, helping players out, I lose count of the number of times one of our players gets put under pressure in the middle of the pitch, or in front of our defence and we can all see 2 attackers pressing him yet he seems oblivious to any incoming players, nobody is telling him to get rid of the ball with a short pass, or put it into touch and all too often that player gets punished and often a goal results when often a simple call from a team mate may have made him more aware.
Anyway short term I think Garner needs extra help from an experienced manager to help him in the areas that we are obviously lacking, changing tactics, game management, better use of subs. Obviously he may not think he needs that help or be open to it, like Iffy and Big Ron a few years back but if a young manager doesn't feel he needs to learn then maybe he isn't cut out to be a manager?
Not just criticise Garner but encourage him to improve in his job in the areas that need it, oh and make him aware that his decisions ultimately have THE biggest bearing on fans/players/finances as the worse the results the less chance we will have of attracting better players, better sponsorship and ultimately more fans.
I get what you saying and there is no doubt Garner was bought it by Clem because of his background in football.
However, I don’t think the issue with us or Garner is having the core values/principles that we have installed and I think we all accept we will get mixed results from that and definitely get a mixed bag of loan players.
The issue is the lack deviation from the core values/principles
For example, yesterday if we had gone ugly, route one, silly fouls, kicking it in row z for 15 minutes in order to win the game I don’t think anyone would have minded. Aston Villa won’t all of a sudden recall Barry and never loan us another player again because we played ugly to see a game out (if anything part of the reason for getting these players out on loan in the lower leagues out of U23s football is to learn these types of things) Cooper & JOB aren’t going to demand to back because they were asked to boot the fuck out of it for 10 minutes.
First we distinguish whether this ‘one way and one way only’ is coming from the top down to Garner or whether it’s Garners choice. Then it’s working out if Garner has ability to change or whether he doesn’t want to change.
If we don’t want to change - we’ll never move forward.
If we want to change but Garner doesn’t have the ability too - he’ll be gone before the year is out.
It’s not like we need to rip up the book and start again, we just need to write an extra chapter.
Garner isn’t the only former U23 manager in a first team managerial position. Few years back Blackpool appointed the Liverpool’s u23 manager (or some youth position) but I bet they don’t play like we do, all the time…
