Thetownend.com

Thinking about what Andrew Fitton the other day made me think why are swindon fans always expecting a little bit more and why are the fans always so deluded so to speak .

I have come to the conclusion that its because of what we have been used to, since i began supporting the club we have had some very big names at the club,Macari,Hoddle,Ardiles,mcmahon,wise,poyet

Its hardly suprising then looking at those names that maybe my generation expect more is it.

I suppose its time to accept that Fitton is looking for stability rather than a big name to run the ship

My generation don't. I was brought up on Les Allen and Dave Mackay. I've also been through the Beamish year/s.

:old:

And of course Evans & Ruddock :cry:

Big name = no loyalty.

Whats the point of having a name when he's gonna bugger off at the first opportunity?

Because the manager you have to sack you pay out the remainder of his contract. Whereas the manager who goes to another club gets you a big wonga of compensation which often pays off all his previous wages. Also big name managers might stay longer than the manager you have to sack. Sturrock was here longer than Iffy. Obviously Wise wasnt, but its turned out that he hasnt stayed anywhere long.

Comparing Iffy and King to Sturrock and Wise is night and day. I do think old SSW had figured this out. Guess we'll just have to let Fitton figure it out in his own time as well.

Touché. Good point.

The thing is we need a turnaround of managers 'bought' from us by other clubs, its a sad fact of football but the money obtained is critical

 Dave Mackay....was a huge name...captain of Surs double winning side, legendary hard man and went on to win the title with Derby....the only ex Town manager to succeed at the highest level.

 Les Allen certainly less of a name.

 The thing that STFC fans need to get their heads round and the sooner the better, is that big names cost a lot of money.

  We employed them in the past though didn't actually have the money in reality to afford them.  So we see, the likes of Sturrock and Ince still trying to get unpaid wages.

 In the days of Glenn and Ossie, it would just be whacked on the overdraft.

  A facility which was withdrawn long ago under Newbury.

  AF and co have made it as plain as a pikestaff from the outset, that they wont throw money at this, and on our gates we'll not afford a name.  We were told that one if the interviewees priced themselves out.  MM was desperate for a job, came with no extra staff, and so is relatively cheap. On our average gates that's what we can afford......get used to it.

Relatively cheap??!! Super cheap. How he doesnt have his own assistant is beyond me.

Theres a massive hole in your argument Reg, which is that weve just paid 150k for Cox and possibly 3 figures for McNamee and they are both on MASSIVE wages! There were good managers out of work, who would have been on simmilar wages to those two players. AND we're talking about MM getting his own team in the summer!!!!!!!!!!

So bollocks. The money should have gone on our main man. That was the number one priority.

But obviously I wouldnt say that to Fitton's face. So if you are reading this Andrew, please ignore me. Whats done is done, etc etc.  :mrgreen:

Maybe the idea is to save  money on the management side but invest that saving on the playing side giving us a better chance on the pitch.

To my mind thats wrong, THE most important man at the club has always been the manager. Always will be.

FWIW, I don't think MM was appointed because he was the cheap option but because he corresponded to what AF wanted to do in terms of building the team the "right way" ie other managers who ruled themselves out by asking for too much it wasn't so much a case of AF being unwilling to spend the money as he clearly is willing to do so as that he doesn't see spending your way out of this division as the right way to do it. Assuming that is the rationale, I think he's right about not spending your way out of this League - whether MM is the right appointment to do it the "right way", time will tell

I also get the impression that AF sees Malpas as being the guy to bring on the youngsters.  He certainly places a lot of value on coaching and probably thinks if we can sell young untried players for big money how much better would it be if we coached & improved them & kept them here / sold for even more money.

I think it's clear that M&M said all the right things about wanting to be at the club for the long haul rather than just using it as a stepping stone to a bigger club. Fitton clearly wants to build something lasting here and wants a manager that buys into that dream. He wants a Steve Coppell or a Martin O'Neill figure, (or even a Dario Gradi), someone who's happy to stay at a club for a good few years as long as there's a plan for making progress and a budget available to help make it happen.

You're not gonna get that with your Paul Ince's of this world. The Dong's will get their promotion this year and half way through next season, if they're still doing alright, Bolton will bin off Megson, or Fulham will sack Hodgson, and "the Guv'nor" will fuck right off to pick up a nice big cheque.

I'm not even sure that it's going to be possible to recruit a "name" as a manager of a lower league side for much longer anyway. With the sort of salaries that the average prem player earns now, and the way they're generally financially set up for their retirement, it's going to be a minority that'll be prepared to work that hard for less than a couple of hundred grand a year.

The only one's who are going to actually need the money, (and not have the chance of the soft option of poncing about in a radio or TV studio instead) are the likes of Ruddock who pissed most of it up the wall at the time. And who'd want them running your club?

Which only leaves the really ambitious ones, who all see themselves as the next Man Utd manager or England Manager or whatever. And they'll be off at the first whiff of a bigger club.

Which leaves a club like ours with the choice of:

a) Getting a name and accepting you'll have a new manager and a new regime every couple of years
b) Looking really hard at the coaching talent that's out there and hoping that you hit on a diamond, just like we do with players.

But to do that you've got to give a new manager time. From what I can tell from reports the team are starting to have periods of play that indicate what a decent team they might be.

Why don't we give Mo the chance to shape the squad a bit in the summer, have a full pre-season to properly bed down the style of football he wants from the team, and see what happens. If it doesn't work then I'm sure the board will think again.

 The counterpoint is that although the Cox/ Wee Macca money may have ben used for a name....in the modern game a name tends to want a lot of assistants....in what might be called showing your Sir Clive Woodward credentials .  In Wise's time at the club, I sometimes looked at teh large team photo in my local and marvelled that we seemed to have nearly as many staff as players.

  We are just not a club of sufficient status to generate the funds to pay for this, so a more frugal approach is needed...who better than a Sweatie then?

Now we've got that win I feel the pressure is off Malpas.

I fully expect our starting line up to look very different next season, with perhaps four or five new faces. Malpas will want to get players who can play his way (ie get the ball to McNamee!!!) and it seems a few of the current squad want to leave anyway. I'm happy to be patient with Malpas to see what he does with building his own team and what he does with the youths - this year's remaining games may even give us a clue with that one.