Rovers 1 : 2 Rams

optimists-0-pessimists-1!

Why can't this team win?Why can't I "tweet"Dean Saunders?Changes are needed for Tuesday!Last Chance Saloon.Why can't these people see that fundamental changes are required?I am only a fan.For them it is their liveleyhood!Why don't they do much better?They are rubbish at their job!League 1 beckons!

Impossible to prove one manager is better than another? Correct, it is. You would have to give them the same set of players against the same opponents at the same time so fitness was the same. Even then I could argue flaws in the comparison.

BUT you can look at the current managers resources and say that in terms of playing staff, they are massively bigger than his predecessors. You can then look at what his predecessor did with less resources and compare. There is nothing unfair about that.

This is the point of what I said. Deano, in my opinion is not making good use of the playing staff at his disposal. He has many players who I wonder why he signed. This is wasting the clubs money.

Do you believe he is making an effective and efficient use of the players he has available? Go on - you can tell me, and you don't have to say anything nice about SOD while doing so.

"Impossible to prove one manager is better than another? Correct, it is. You would have to give them the same set of players against the same opponents at the same time so fitness was the same. "

Never a truer word said about management - ever. Actually it's true for any comparison - it's why mathematically you need at least one equation for every variable, just to be able to start eliminating unknowns.

Best wishes for the rest of the season. Regarding SOD, I hope that your loss isn't Forest's gain.

Fuzzy: We have both put the same point about better use of resources in our own style and used numbers to support our contentions. Even though a great deal of what regulates our civilised society is based on numbers, people still believe that statistics have no place in any argument.

The argument can be won, but getting those who deprecate any proposition that involves stats to accept that there is even a case to answer is impossible.

Perhaps concepts of quantity do not influence their business or private lives at all.

But we do have scores in football matches, but then again a lot of managers do not always want these to be seen as a true measure of performance or success.

Indeed is this not the nub of it? If your numbers are better than those of the opposition you accept them. If not you dismiss them as mere statistics.

If I said SoD was the best manager Rovers had ever had and DS the worst, so what? What are WE going to change?

Personally, I think DP was better than both of them put together. If you add all the matches, DP has a far higher win ratio, a far better Cup record and a far more determined and effective team ethic.
What's that you say - different circumstances? Oh heck!

To answer your question Fuzzy:
No, I don't think DS has done a good job. I won't go into the many reasons why this might be.
I was surprised to see he had been appointed and feel that there must have been some insider trading involved.
I would have gone for someone with more appropriate experience, but then none of us really know the why's and wherefore's.
As has been pointed out earlier, how can we have cut the wage bill, and does this indicate that we are another club on the edge?

Oh dear some fickle fans here!

Donaldo - very true as ever.

A commonly used quote on statistics is the one that states you can prove or disprove anything with statistics. It's not true of course. Stats is a branch of maths much the same as is geometry. I can disprove a truth with statistics much the same as I can disprove Pythagoras theorem. As long as I apply the methods incorrectly.

Say Lavee - at least we agree that there are question marks against Deano's use of resources. Believe it or not, I don't really care if SOD is a better or worse manager than Deano. The problem is that SOD is the only other manager we've had in this division so he's the only manager where you compare like with like.

So I set a benchmark at SOD's performance. Look at periods where the two have similar resources available to them and compare results. It really is as fair as I can get it.

Incidentally, I have done this with Penney and SOD when both managed us in league 1. SOD comes out better.

Is SOD the best manager we've ever had. He's the best in my memory of the Rovers (post McMenemy and Docherty). But - who cares?

Finally Askern - no, no fickle fans. Exactly the opposite in fact. Fans who care passionately about their club and who will still do so after whatever this or any other season may bring. Do not make the mistake of thinking a fan is for everything and anything a club does. Those aren't fans, they're sheep.

Hi Fuzzy,
I regret that my responses may seem spasmodic, but that sums up my life.

My remark about Penney was just a continuation of the surrealness of the argument/debate. I have no idea of the win ratios at all.

What I can say, though, is that I agree 100% with your last paragraph. I would rather someone questioned everything than nothing. In fact the majority of my comments are intended to encourage people to look at things differently.

As Mark Twain said "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,".