by Snowflake Royal »
11 Sep 2020 08:30
SouthDownsRoyal I’m not a fan of what has happened over the past week or so nor the timings.
I do agree with the idea of giving a manager time BUT only if you feel he is the right man. I personally saw Bowen as a man to steady the ship after Gomez keep us up, he did that and I think that’s how the owners saw him.
What they offered him a year extension baffles me.
We will never know and there are numerous other factors at play but I don’t personally believe had we given Bowen 2,3,5 years that we would have progressed into a top championship team and/or in the premier league so why waste those years?
Brick by brick innit
You can't go from consistently shit to great without the step in the middle.
This is part of the problem, the demand for immediate turn around and success. It's bizarre to expect someone to turn an underperforming, unbalanced demotivated squad of failures into play off contenders in one transfer window and six months.
Look at how we've achieved sustained success in the past (and other clubs) and use that as a model. And it's about incremental positive change.
Bowen took us from perennial relegation battlers to comfortably full midtable, despite a pandemic that wiped out our form at the point t we were basically safe.
The next step is replicating that a little bit further up the table and inproving home form. Following a consistent, stable plan and structure. Building a foundation from which you can trial small squad changes that find that mercurial mix that gets you consistently competing inside the top 10. Rather than having to do yet another complete rebuild.
Bowen probably wasn't the guy to get us up, but he probably was the guy who could build the platform for us to attract the right players and staff to go there next when it was the right time to move on in a year or three. A Hughton for example. The sort of guy we currently have zero hope of attracting.
And just maybe, he would have been the guy to take us right back up there. And maybe we'd have been in another shitty season hovering around relegation in which case we'd have genuine reason to sack him and move on.
And what are the consequences of sacking Bowen? A new manager who needs to assess the squad. Which means yet another chance for a player who has proved himself inadequate under 4 previous managers. What a oxf*rd waste of time that is.