In Puel’s Defence

Typo alert

poisonous influence

UTF

Mersey - all of those decisions by the owners that you cite, except the first one, have either been extraordinary gambles that have paid off spectacularly (Ranieri) or have worked simply because we still have the old guard (Vardy and Mahrez) to pull us out of a hole.

If you were that confident about the owners ability to make good footballing decisions then you wouldn’t be remotely concerned about next season. But you are concerned. Because deep down, like me, once the title winning team dissipates, I don’t think you’ve seen enough to feel confident that they can repeat the Ranieri decision for example, or the Pearson one.

Don’t take it as an ungrateful swipe at the owners - beat thing ever to happen to us - BUT Lineker does know things behind the scenes that most of us don’t.

Time is a great revealer and next season will start showing whether we have owners who are absolutely sound footballing wise, or incredibly good businessmen with big ambitions - but not the footballing know how to make it happen

I should say ‘make it happen in the long term’ - I.e make us a sustainable PL club that competes in Europe

comment by Nevsaysagoal2city (U5194)
posted 1 hour, 23 minutes ago
The people that should take a good look themselves are the players none of the managers you have mentioned have kicked a ball and all except Pearson who got himself fired have been let down by the players.

Just a bit of nit picking "we looked doomed under CR but Shakey who had us in the bottom three should of been given more time

Kaspers dad should shut up his son and the senior players have had to much power imo


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ironically ONLY Pearson was let down by his players including his Son.

There is a rumour doing the rounds that CP has been told that he is out if we don't finish seventh or higher.

Bow - that would be disappointing, he took over when we were in dire straits and has us safe by March, with a chance of getting into Europe. Also doing this whilst clearly developing a new style. As long as we have a reasonable run to the end of the season, I'd expect him to be given the chance to build on that over the Summer.

A bad start to next season, with us in a relegation battle rather than challenging for Europe will likely see him sacked before Christmas. The owners have shown a propensity to panic in such situations.

Are the owners really that quick to act? I think they've been quite balanced over the years:

Sousa: Gave him the chop quickly but I don't think many could argue given that the players clearly weren't fit.
Sven: Was proving expensive, especially for the Championship. Arguably went too soon; arguably had gone as far as he could in that league.
Pearson: Still unclear what truly happened after the McArthur incident but they kept him on even when it looked like we were going down because the players were still energised. That suggests to me that they weren't just making decisions based on what they saw on the pitch.
Ranieri: We were trash for some time before they gave him the chop, and only just in time.
Shakespeare: Fired as it became more apparent that he didn't have the nous required for management. Arguably they should have worked that out earlier but on the other hand he had done an excellent job as an interim and it was likely a choice of either giving him a go at the main job or seeing him leave regardless.

Personally I don't believe that demonstrates a propensity to panic.

Dunge. I don't know when he was told that, if he was, but if it was a while ago then that would be target setting not panicing.
I hope CP is here to stay: he clearly wants to develop the team and utilise youngsters who can only learn from experience and to finish eighth whilst doing that is fine by me.

Bowstring - My reply was more to nuneaton's last comment than yours.

Whether or not he'll be fired if he doesn't finish 7th... instinct says I wouldn't have thought so but it's so hard to tell with these things. As you suggest, I would have thought Puel would set it as a target for his squad but I'm struggling to see how and when 7th+ could have been set as an absolute target from the owners. Unless we go on a horrendous run over the remainder of the season which gives the owners real cause for concern, I would have thought he'd be here at the start of next season.

I've got a different viewpoint Dunge. Every time the manager has fallen below expectations they've been sacked - sooner rather than later. Sousa, Sven, Claudio and Shakey.

The only one who apparently bucked that trend was Nige, but I'd argue that the target he faced was 17th, and he was still within reach of that, with the team being at least competitive even if struggling to get the results.

I expect Claude will have a target of Europe next year, if we're fighting relegation instead he might be gone by Christmas. Incidentally if we finish 8th this season I'd be surprised to see him get the chop- his target would have been to keep us up which he has achieved easily.