Thetownend.com

OK, I’ve been reading some on the comments on here over the last few weeks regarding the on-field performances and wanted to think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, before I just posted a response.
I also wanted to have actually seen the side play a couple of times before I waded into a debate, which I have now done in the Donny and Sheff. Utd. games (feel free to demand I never go to a game again as I do feel like something of a Jonah).
Firstly I’ll put the off field stuff to one side (I’ll say my piece on what’s going on in the Boardroom elsewhere).
Secondly I want to make clear that this isn’t meant in any way to be a PDC slag-off piece. This is purely about football performances so my feelings about his politics and personality aren’t that relevant (although the latter has some impact on the way the club operates and the side performs so might get touched on).
All that aside, the man led the club to a championship last season, and kept the club in play-off contention throughout his time here this term. Regardless of the resources employed that is an achievement.
However, one thing I want someone to explain to me is why, over the last month or two, there have been fans on these boards and others:
• Insisting that up until PDC’s departure we were certainties for automatic promotion;
• Slagging off the current manager’s performance, (a 2nd Malpas FFS!) and calling for him to be sacked.
Now I’m all too aware that the last three away performances have left a lot to be desired, but this bollocks started before that run of games, when, as far as I can tell from reports, stats and results, things weren’t going that badly.
The first point first as is only right. One question – Have I been looking at a different league table to some of you this season? The ones I’ve been looking at have had us somewhere in the play-off spots pretty much all season, dropping to 7th I think once or twice for days at the most, and with a very brief flirtation with the auto spots just after PDC left.
We certainly hadn’t been at the top of the table most of the season and then suffered a devastating loss of form and plummeted down the table, that was Tranmere, (they play in white and are from Merseyside).
Neither had we had a dodgy start followed by a relentless rise up the table that looked unstoppable, for that see Bournemouth (with one dodgy patch) and Brentford.
We’ve been there or thereabouts all season but, other than a little run over Christmas, have never looked consistent enough for either of the top two spots. And that was the consensus of opinion on these boards for pretty much the whole season as well, if you look back at the past discussions.
Oh and incidentally if one more person posts that “we were top when DiCanio left” I will track you down and give you a very long and dull lecture on the Stalinist practice of re-writing history, and show you a print out of:
• The Adver website story announcing PDC’s departure
• The league table on that date showing us in THIRD place
Almost nobody expected automatic promotion this season. A sizable chunk were expecting mid-table. All would have settled for a play-off place if offered it in August. When we went top in January, most of us thought it probably wouldn’t last, and as soon as a couple of sides recovered their form, it didn’t.
Second point then. Can idiots my fellow forum members stop pointing at Paolo’s win ratio, comparing it with Macs, and then insisting that means the latter is crap and should be sacked. Because it makes you look like morons.
I don’t want to have to point out the bleeding obvious but some of you people force me to. PDC has had two seasons and some 95 games to build up those statistics. MacDonald has had 10. That’s not really a fair comparison.
Tell you what take a minute and look up PDC’s stats for his first 10 games on Swindon-Town-FC.co.uk or somewhere. Done that? Doesn’t look so clever does it? Did all those calling for Macs head have the knives out for Paolo in his first couple of months in the job?
Bear in mind also that Paolo had the advantages of:
• Being in a weaker league;
• Having a larger squad that he’d largely built;
• Having a budget available for transfers, and the window still open;
• Having had a full pre-seasons training behind him to get to know the players and get the team playing how he wanted
People keep saying that the results / stats don’t lie, but I’ve worked analysing stats for a lot of my career and I can tell you that the sort of shallow referencing of them that some fans do is incredibly misleading. So, stand by for some reasoned statistical analysis.
As I said earlier I know the Doncaster, Dons and Sheff Utd performances have been bad, but this shit started before them so I’m going to talk about them later. Place the last four games, including Tuesday’s win to one side, and there are six other games since Mac took over.
Those produced 2 wins (Coventry and Yeovil away) one defeat (Brentford away) and 3 home draws, giving 9 points; with 8 goals scored and 6 against, plus 2 to the goal difference.
Those that were posting at the end of March saying that since Mac took over we’ve turned shit and the results had turned, clearly hadn’t even looked at the results because, if you look at the 6 games prior to his appointment guess what? It gave us 2 wins, 3 draws and one loss (at home to Bury FFS), giving 9 points, with 7 scored and 5 against, plus 2 to the goal difference. An identical performance other than the defeat was at home to a relegation candidate, rather than away to a promotion rival.
Don’t like that comparison? Think that it was PDC that was vital and it’s since he left the form has dropped? Guess what? His last 6 games (which obviously overlap a bit with the last six games before Mac’s appointment described above) were 2 wins and four draws, giving 10 points; with 6 goals scored and 3 against, plus 3 to the goal difference. A massive 1 point and 1 goal better than Mac managed in his first 6 games. Proper drop in form I don’t think.
OK then you say, you can’t ignore the last four games, they’re part of MacDonald’s record. Fair enough, those away games were bad, certainly in terms of performance. But I can’t help feeling that the reaction to them is heightened a lot by the way the fixture computer has treated us this season.
We just played 3 away games in a row to sides challenging for promotion. If those 3 games had been distributed evenly throughout the season, I’m not that sure we’d have thought much of it. Not even the blindest optimist expects to win every away game of the season do they? And the ones we expect to lose are usually the ones against promotion rivals surely? And we’ve played a lot of them lately.
It’s interesting to look at the distribution of away games this season actually. Since Paolo left we’ve played seven sides away:
Tranmere (top of the table at the time) – Win
Coventry (challenging for the play-offs at the time and in decent form) – Win
Brentford (challenging for the play-offs and in decent form) – Loss
Yeovil (play off rival) – Win
Doncaster (top of the table) – Loss
Franchise (challenging for the play-offs and in decent form) – Loss
Sheff Utd.  (play off rival) – Loss
Not an easy game amongst them. So 9 points from those 7 games, more than a point a game away from home to the better sides in the division; I’d have taken that at the beginning of the season. Looking back it’s worth noting that Paolo’s side only managed to take 12 points of that lot at home earlier in the season, so if we hadn’t fallen apart in the last 20 minutes at Griffin park we could have matched that. (Actually looking at it that maybe explains why we had better away than home form earlier in the season; we played a lot of poor sides away from home in the first part of the season, and better ones at home?).
Anyway, actually diving into the stats in a bit more detail it looks to me that the change in our form doesn’t seem to date from the new manager taking over, but from the period at the end of January.
There’s clearly a lot going on at that time off the field; ownership limbo, manager resignations etc., but most importantly, a bunch of decent loan signings leave, our best player is sold, and no-one comes in to replace them.
The squad has looked thin and, outside the first 13 or 14 players, a bit lacking in quality ever since. The Spurs lads have helped a bit, but they’re young and have taken time to settle into a side that wasn’t in great form and short of confidence. Maybe Tuesday’s game will have helped with the confidence thing at least.
That does bring me to the negative comment I have to make about Paolo’s management, which does relate to his personality a little. People on here have said that the only important thing about a manager’s record is points on the board. Results are apparently all that matter and there might be a certain truth in that for fans (although there are plenty of fans who want some style and entertainment with their points from what I’ve seen).
But it’s not true about boards, chairman and club owners. All of them want results, but they want more than that. There’s a cliché that says that ultimately all managers are judged by the quality of their performance in the transfer market, and while I wouldn’t go that far, I think the combination of results and transfer market effectiveness is pretty important to anyone that’s paying the bills. And PDC is clearly not great in this area.
It’s hard to believe that after the last couple of years, with so much transfer activity, so many players signed, so much money spent on agents fees, we have such a small squad with so few marketable player assets. Of all the players that PDC signed how many are still at the club? How many that have left have brought us in any money? Other than a pretty good goalkeeper I can’t think of a single PDC signing that I think has appreciated in value. Far too many have been found wanting and disposed of.
It’s the reason why when people have attempted to argue that PDC would have sorted out the team after the Doncaster game, and the Dons and Utd results would never have been allowed I’ve disagreed. Think back and be honest about what Paolo’s reaction to a performance like that at the Keepmoat would have been during his time here.
My guess is he would have ranted and raved on TV and radio, referred to the players as mice, pussy cats or some breed of small dog, and dropped 3 of them for the next game. Some might have been told they’d never play for the club again. And then he’d be on the phone to the Chairman insisting he needed to bring in a couple of loan players because those he had were inadequate.
Only he couldn’t because the window’s shut, and the embargo was in place while it was open, so he couldn’t do what he did last season when we signed 4 or 5 players in the run up to the deadline to bulk up the squad.
I don’t know what PDC is like as a manager having to work within existing playing resources that he didn’t choose. Is he capable of getting something out of players in those circumstances without being able to threaten to bin and replace them? We’ll see, as that’s the challenge he’s taken on in Sunderland. He’s been lucky that his second game there was a local derby, where his kind of motivational passion must count double. It’ll be interesting to see if he can sustain it.

Sorry it's a bit of an essay, but that's got a lot of my chest.

TL;DR

So you're part of that "3 second attention span, holds and expresses opinions without bothering to look at any evidence or think" generation?

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

A few CR;LF would help

I actually enjoyed reading that and I think some good points were made.

This season certainly hasn't been dull!

A :hmmm:

Quite agree with your season assessment. When we kicked off at Hartlepool we would all have been happy thinking that a win in our 45th game would guarantee us a place in the play offs. Particularly if we had been told that the best player in the League would be sold in January and that we wouldn't be able to reinvest the (ludicrously small) transfer fee to replace him. Di Canio wouldn't ever have taken the job on without guarantees from the board as regard money available etc. I know that Cox and Benson are now injured but how you can look on it as anything other than poor management to have 3 experienced players out on loans that can't be cut short at a time in the season when you can't replace them and the bench has to be populated with kids from the youth team. Who have incidentally had their worst season for quite a long time.

I think there are certainly fears that Kmac might turn into Malpas mark 2 but with nearly half the first team squad out injured and a very testing run of fixtures it's wrong to blame him entirely for our poor recent results. I think you can question why he felt changing a formation that had got us to the top of the table, and that the players were clearly comfortable with was necessary. Of course there were games when it didn't produce the result or performance we wanted but generally it worked. It's his prerogative as manager to do that if he sees fit, but if it doesn't work as well as what it replaced then it's also fair that he faces up to flak from the fans who are paying his wages

TL;DR - Too long; Didn't read
CR;LF - Carriage return; Line feed ?

Sorry! Wrote it off line and cut and pasted. It was a bit better spaced in Word honest.

A pretty fair assessment of where we are.

I didnt read a word of it.

How the fuck anyone could write such a long winded piece of bollocks (presumably) having not had jack shit to do with following the club for 18 months is a mystery.

Yeah but that formation had got us to the top of the league with the inclusion of a few players that are no longer available to Mac.

He had little choice but to try to find a system that would work with the pitifully small squad that he had left to him. Having got the Spurs players in, who clearly had quality that the team needed, he then had to find a way to incorporate them into the team. Unfortunate that this period of tinkering coincided with a run of 3 tricky away games.

A well thought out post and some salient points made.

However, I think it's ironic that you left the forum when Di Canio was appointed, have now returned as he's left, but all you've done is talk about Di Canio.

Stop being so angry and defensive. People have their opinions, you don't need to counter them all the time.

I found this pic of you DMR:

[url width=500 height=380]http://fireden.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/tumblr_m8bfvd3rDo1qfdtqno1_500.jpg.jpeg[/url]

I can assure you I am not trolling. I just happen the think Lumps is a cunt :)

 Basically what you're saying, is the same as what a few of us on here have been saying....judge KMac on next season, not this.

The frustration has been caused I think by the fact that Div 3 is relatively weak this season. Once that realisation crept in around the turn of the year, it looked as if we were in a decent position to challenge for auto....there was then the sense, it could only happen at Swindon.

Less importantly...did you go to Grimethorpe or some such place on Wednesday?

Followed by:


:facepalm: I give you irony.

If we're playing the blame game, my vote goes to Black.

After the first season with PdC he knew exactly what would be needed to keep the club challenging for a 2nd promotion.

The fact that he says he was close to selling the club before the start of the season says he didn't want to bankroll the club further. So why sign up to PdC's vision of promotion and how to get there?

If he wasn't willing to make a season-long commitment then he should have had the balls to tell Paolo from the off - not 'car-crash' the season with 3 months to go.

I still don't know/understand why the sale had to be done to such a short timescale.

If there were, indeed, other parties interested in purchasing the club but could not adhere to Black's timescale, surely it makes sense for him to keep things going for another 3 months with the prospect of having a Championship club to sell.

I just don't buy he couldn't bankroll the club for 3 more months. He didn't want to, obviously - and the real reasons for that we will never know for sure.

But the post isn't really about PDC, but about how Mac had done since he got here. It refers to Paolo only because that's the point of comparison that is inevitably being made.

I give you selective reading of the post to make a pretty weak point.

I make it clear that I set those four games to one side at first only because people were slagging off Macdonald and saying the results had nosedived BEFORE we'd played any of them, when it's clear from the stats that the teams performance was pretty much exactly the same as it had been since the end of January.

There's then a whole paragraph that does talk about those results, and the other 4 tricky away games we've played since PDC left, and makes the point that we did almost as well against those teams away without PDC as we did at home against them under him.

For what it's worth, my opinion of MacDonald so far is pretty good. I was talking about this the other day and putting it into context, and pretty much made several of the points you've highlighted.
In his first 9 games in charge, we faced the following away: Coventry, Brentford, Yeovil, Doncaster, Franchise wankers and Sheffield United. Combine that with the fact we lost Ritchie and have a squad decimated by injury, to still be in the top 6 is a fucking good achievement in my humble opinion.

he knows that - but now you've read it what do you think?

I thought PDC did a pretty amazing job, he probably spent too much money on agents fees and relied on the ability to cycle players through which was fine if it was supported (I've said as much before), the wheels fell off a bit in Jan by not being able to replenish the squad while selling Ritchie (and financially it seems we had to), I do not think Kmac is doing a bad job at all (but I wouldn't have changed formation if I could have avoided it until the summer) and we still could very easily go up.  That end result would be bloody amazing.

I agree with your comments i think over all we have done ok this season , slightly disappointed over the last couple of months however it was always going to be tricky with the away games against the top teams in the league

Nah, was at work in Stoke, and then had a meeting in the evening in Crewe. Got back about half ten to see Look North running pictures of the Grimethorpe street party though.

It's nice that someone took some pleasure in the day don't you think?

I'd have thought there'd have been something in Stoke....I was up there a couple of weeks ago, and although everybody associates it with pottery, Staffs had a sizeable mining industry. I did a walk, and chanced upon the site of Hem Heath Coliery, which was near the Brittania Stadium....didn't close til 96. Now a housing estate...a mate worked down the pit at Silverdale, which didn't go until 98.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7frOxx-Dm0

My biggest issue is I don't really understand why you're dredging all this up. Apart from a few outliers like DMR who want to go on fellating the memories of the old regime, most of us moved on as soon as Di Canio quit and left us in the shit, and all this post is doing is keeping the old arguments going by attempting to fight fire with fire (or arbitrary statistical analysis with arbitrary statistical analysis).

If I was to make a direct statistical comparison between Macdonald and Di Canio WITHOUT ignoring the last 4 games, then it would read:

Macdonald: 3 wins, 4 defeats, 3 draws, 12 points from 30; 12 goals scored, 12 against, +0 to the goal difference.

Di Canio: 6 wins, 0 defeats, 4 draws, 22 points from 30; 22 goals scored, 3 against, +19 to the goal difference.

And in the improbable parallel statistical universe where Di Canio could actually repeat those numbers with the squad we now have available, that would be the difference between hanging on for sixth place and being clear at the top of the table.

But it's all pretty irrelevant considering the complex off field circumstances of the last 2 months he didn't have to deal with which remain the only points that need making for the case in favour of Kmac.

Personally I'm quite excited to see what sort of team he'll build next year given his background in youth development. I wouldn't be averse to a Crewe-style model of financial stability based on the development of youth players integrated into a first team spine of experienced players. In this regard, considering the financial model many of us expect Kmac to be working to next year, he is probably one of the best qualified managers we could have put in charge in the long term, even if some people are questioning his credentials for the short term end of season push.

With you all the way.
As you kind of said, grow some balls and say NO to more players required, paying off contracts etc.
He could be selling a Championship Club now and recovering some of the losses.

Car crash ........More like a multiple pile up.

My uncle worked at the Silverdale mine from 60's to early/mid 70's. Took me around the site one afternoon when I was a tiny sprog but unfortunately not down the pit. Very tight community spirit (lived in Newcastle under Lyme). Great bloke (as was the community) sadly died of 'black lung disease' (pneumoconis) many years ago.

Exactly this for me too.

Oh and this....

My point was that it's those sort of direct statistical comparisons that people keep reaching for when, as you point out, the factors like players available, opposition faced etc. are every bit as significant as whose arse is sitting behind the managers desk come Monday afternoon.

PDC still had Ritchie, Hollands and Martin available to him for all but 3 of the 10 games above, had a much smaller injury list, played more games at home and faced weaker opposition, blah, blah, blah....

You're right though it's a post aimed at a handful of regular visitors to the forum and the repeated one-off nutters/trolls that spout bollocks and have wound me up.

And I'm with you totally in looking forward to seeing the sort of team that Macdonald can build given a bit of time and funding.

But if it hadn't been for Black we would never have been in the position in the first place, if he had turned the taps off at start of season we would have been bust anyway if no sale, he chose to contiinue to fund whiklst tried to sort it which maikes him a good guy in my book, but it had to end sometime.

Equally how can it be Black's fault that Paolo and Wray exceeded budgets/cash flows etc, they were given the info and chose to ignore it, once the money was spent he did turn the taps off.

It reminds me of John Hartson on fivelive the other night suggesting that the trouble at Wembley was the polices fault as they knew that Millwall fans had a reputation.

Sorry but its a joint effort of many parties of which Paolo is a significant element.

We haven't had such an inspirational manager at the helm since Maurice Malpas.

I can see why Black wanted out. It was his timing that fucked us over. He should waited until the summer. In fact if he had not only would the club have probably received compo for PDC but we could have sold Ritchie then for a decent amount. He could have used the money to pay off some debt and then write off the rest as well as selling the club for a better price than the peanuts he sold for it in the end. I still think there was something deeper to this that was driving him on even more to sell ASAP.

Black had been trying to sell the club for at least 6 months.

Try 18, he all but sold the club in the summer of 2012.

Was that to the fella who then died?

Could you imagine if that fella did buy and popped his clogs 2 weeks later. What a kerfuffle that would've been.

Yep they were at Due Dilligence.  Did anyone ever dig around true TEF style and find out who it could have been?

The consortium had links to the middle east, I know that much.

Nail on the head.

Close thread.

Well at least we know they weren't from the middle east.

 :)

:D

'Links' to the Middle East, doesn't mean that they were 'from' the Middle East, John.

You're right, Di Canio's win ratio in his first 10 games is similar to MacDonalds

However you miss one point, Di Canio took over a relegated basket case in complete dis-array, whereas MacDonald took over a team near the top of the League

It's good that you put your hatred of Di Canio to one side though !

He took over a football club near the top of league one, not a team

then they definitely had nothing whatsoever to do with the middle east

Unless they were from, say, Colchester

Yeah. PdC took over a club and had a whole summer to build his own squad, shit loads of cash and a chairman that couldn't say no.
Yeah, KMac's had it really easy. All he's had to contend with is losing loan players, an embargo and a ever growing injury list.
Just for balance you understand.

... and on top of all that, he's overtly Scottish.

Not seen this posted anywhere

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22370325

An interesting read, thanks for that.

I assume this is purely based upon the fact that it coincided with William Patey, who had links to the middle east.

I was hoping for Afghan links after Patey's time there - the Taliban have got to launder all that heroin money somewhere...

I believed they looked at it but concluded that Jed was just too dodgy for them to work with.

Taliban funding would be fine. It would only make the national press if they also started to fund Sunderland.

Some posh spiv from Sunbury on Thames