BFS - Bristol City (H)

[Sanguine]

Yeah, he went to speak with them, then decided that actually Reading were better. But, once you've done that, you've marked your cards as being likely to leave when a better offer does turn up - you're not staying because you have a project you believe in, you're staying because something better hasn't come along.

Why should football managers be 'loyal' to their club? This is a role that in many cases will see them sacked on a whim (although not in Clarke's case), and yet we demand they commit to the 'Reading project'?

Of course he would leave if a better offer came along. Why on earth wouldn't he?

[Stranded]

Yeah, he went to speak with them, then decided that actually Reading were better. But, once you've done that, you've marked your cards as being likely to leave when a better offer does turn up - you're not staying because you have a project you believe in, you're staying because something better hasn't come along.

Why should football managers be 'loyal' to their club? This is a role that in many cases will see them sacked on a whim (although not in Clarke's case), and yet we demand they commit to the 'Reading project'?

Of course he would leave if a better offer came along. Why on earth wouldn't he?

All football fans know this but I guess they don't want it so clearly shown to them as the reality. Clarke did nothing wrong but it was galling at the time as we were actually doing pretty well and him heading off for a chat coincided with the season falling off a cliff.

If he had spoken to Fulham, said no and gone in a 10 game unbeaten streak taking us to the play offs (or something similar) then it would likely never have been mentioned again.

[Hound]

I think the main issue with Clarke and Fulham was that at the time they were pretty much same level as us. Would have really just been a sideways move, and obvs one whilst we were doing well at the time

rightly or wrongly he was always on borrowed time after that unless we were being very successful. Soon as the opportunity came to bin him he was out of the door

[Snowflake Royal]

I think the main issue with Clarke and Fulham was that at the time they were pretty much same level as us. Would have really just been a sideways move, and obvs one whilst we were doing well at the time

rightly or wrongly he was always on borrowed time after that unless we were being very successful. Soon as the opportunity came to bin him he was out of the door

This. At the time we were knocking on the door of automatic promotion, he'd been here about 6 months and he was just trying to jump ship for a bigger pay day. No one would have cared had it been a PL club.

It showed zero commitment or respect.

And at the time we certainly weren't known as a sacking club. Pardew chose to leave after several years Coppell didn't renew his contract after 5 years, Rodgers got a few months, McDermott was here for about 4 years and Adkins got about 2.

[URZZZZ]

Stam’s football philosophy was the same as Eamonn Dolan and David Dodds, Brendan Rodgers and Brian McDermott, the philosophy that permeates right through the club, the philosophy that our young players have been used to since they were young children. You might not appreciate it but it is the Reading way.

Clarke’s career since he left us hasn’t really lived up to his achievements before he joined us. Decent record at Kilmarnock but they’re not exactly West Brom.

LMFAO @ Stam and McDermott having the same footballing philosophy.

Oh they absolutely did. Remember when McDermott first took over and fielded a midfield of Tabb, Howard, and Gylfi? We stroked it around on the deck like nobody’s business.

Of course once we lost Gylfi and Howard went off the boil, McDermott was able to adopt a more pragmatic approach. But in his second spell at the club he adopted a very similar style to the one Stam ultimately adopted. His 4-4-2 diamond was practically identical to Stam’s 3-4-1-2, and fans were already jeering at the possession-focused style.

Progressively, we did
Our football was very rarely progressive under Stam though

They may have had similar philosophies but if so, the executions of them were vastly different

[NewCorkSeth]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't Stam judged a bit unfairly due to the team vastly overperforming during his first season?

Statistically speaking, when considering shots, shots on target, Shots against, the dreaded xG, possession, the whole shebang really we were only slightly worse off on all of those during his second season. The team just wasn't as lucky.

For every bit the team overperformed in his first season the underperformed in the second which, to me suggest he probably should have had us comfortably mid table.

Yeah he made some errors but which manager hasn't?

[Hound]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't Stam judged a bit unfairly due to the team vastly overperforming during his first season?

Statistically speaking, when considering shots, shots on target, Shots against, the dreaded xG, possession, the whole shebang really we were only slightly worse off on all of those during his second season. The team just wasn't as lucky.

For every bit the team overperformed in his first season the underperformed in the second which, to me suggest he probably should have had us comfortably mid table.

Yeah he made some errors but which manager hasn't?

I'm not sure the XG etc helps his cause tbh. Weren't we like bottom 3 or something over both his seasons on it? More the fact that S1 we massively overperformed it, whilst second we were performing as per XG?

edit: dug around and found the stats - S1 we were 17th in XG, S2 (obvs with 8 games of clement) 23rd. So basically judging Stam by XG really does him no favours. And prob does point to a fair bit of luck in S1

[Hound]

as i'm on the site....

Currently 10th by XG, and have the second most number of goals scored in our games at 2.93. So no wonder Sky keep putting us on

[URZZZZ]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't Stam judged a bit unfairly due to the team vastly overperforming during his first season?

Statistically speaking, when considering shots, shots on target, Shots against, the dreaded xG, possession, the whole shebang really we were only slightly worse off on all of those during his second season. The team just wasn't as lucky.

For every bit the team overperformed in his first season the underperformed in the second which, to me suggest he probably should have had us comfortably mid table.

Yeah he made some errors but which manager hasn't?

Can’t attribute the change in success to luck

We went from a rigid structured 4-3-3 (for the most part) with everyone having a clear role to some random shapes with players (Aluko, Bacuna, Clement etc) in random positions, completely unbalancing the team. He tried to overcomplicate things when it wasn’t necessary

Quite frankly, his tactics were awful in the second season and he was too stubborn to change it. Hence why he’s done nothing since leaving us

[Snowflake Royal]

Xgoals sucks balls

[Maneki Neko]

dont need stats to tell me that stams football was shit to watch
ill take shit football getting us to the playoffs though tbf

[Snowflake Royal]

dont need stats to tell me that stams football was shit to watch
ill take shit football getting us to the playoffs though tbf

Winning > Losing for sure.

[Old Man Andrews]

His shit football is what cost us that playoff final though. Huddersfield were no world beaters and we just did absolutely NOTHING to try and win the game. His lack of ability to adapt and have a plan B cost us promotion ultimately.

[NewCorkSeth]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't Stam judged a bit unfairly due to the team vastly overperforming during his first season?

Statistically speaking, when considering shots, shots on target, Shots against, the dreaded xG, possession, the whole shebang really we were only slightly worse off on all of those during his second season. The team just wasn't as lucky.

For every bit the team overperformed in his first season the underperformed in the second which, to me suggest he probably should have had us comfortably mid table.

Yeah he made some errors but which manager hasn't?

I'm not sure the XG etc helps his cause tbh. Weren't we like bottom 3 or something over both his seasons on it? More the fact that S1 we massively overperformed it, whilst second we were performing as per XG?

edit: dug around and found the stats - S1 we were 17th in XG, S2 (obvs with 8 games of clement) 23rd. So basically judging Stam by XG really does him no favours. And prob does point to a fair bit of luck in S1

All I mean is the drop in xG was from 1.28 to 1.1..

And we actually, statistically speaking, looked better in season 2 with an overall xG improvement of .22. Stams first season xG had us at 19th. Al-Habsi saved us from that. The second season the same analysis had us at 17th.

We were so good in the first season that the second season looks all the worse in comparison when, imo, we were just a lot more unfortunate.

I dont want to hear about stats being bollocks, they are not infallible obviously and I'm not a huge fan of xG but it is useful for certain things and when a team wins 19 games by a single goal and scores the first goal in 28 out of 46 games all while having a keeper pull of saves he shouldn't have of course its relevant to look at the data model and say "christ yeah, they're right. We were pretty lucky".

Was Stam a good manager? Nah. Probably not. Think he's a good coach though. I just think he is judged too harshly in light of the success we had in season 1. Not that sacking him wasn't the right decision. He had his opportunity to turn it around.

[Hound]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't Stam judged a bit unfairly due to the team vastly overperforming during his first season?

Statistically speaking, when considering shots, shots on target, Shots against, the dreaded xG, possession, the whole shebang really we were only slightly worse off on all of those during his second season. The team just wasn't as lucky.

For every bit the team overperformed in his first season the underperformed in the second which, to me suggest he probably should have had us comfortably mid table.

Yeah he made some errors but which manager hasn't?

I'm not sure the XG etc helps his cause tbh. Weren't we like bottom 3 or something over both his seasons on it? More the fact that S1 we massively overperformed it, whilst second we were performing as per XG?

edit: dug around and found the stats - S1 we were 17th in XG, S2 (obvs with 8 games of clement) 23rd. So basically judging Stam by XG really does him no favours. And prob does point to a fair bit of luck in S1

All I mean is the drop in xG was from 1.28 to 1.1..

And we actually, statistically speaking, looked better in season 2 with an overall xG improvement of .22. Stams first season xG had us at 19th. Al-Habsi saved us from that. The second season the same analysis had us at 17th.

We were so good in the first season that the second season looks all the worse in comparison when, imo, we were just a lot more unfortunate.

I dont want to hear about stats being bollocks, they are not infallible obviously and I'm not a huge fan of xG but it is useful for certain things and when a team wins 19 games by a single goal and scores the first goal in 28 out of 46 games all while having a keeper pull of saves he shouldn't have of course its relevant to look at the data model and say "christ yeah, they're right. We were pretty lucky".

Was Stam a good manager? Nah. Probably not. Think he's a good coach though. I just think he is judged too harshly in light of the success we had in season 1. Not that sacking him wasn't the right decision. He had his opportunity to turn it around.

think you have the wrong seasons Seth. S1 was 16/17 and then we were 17th with XG of 1.27. S2 was 17/18 with a horrendous XG of .88. So a massive drop off from a not very high base

So over the course of the two seasons, you've got a manager delivering an XG of about 1.1 despite spending a fair bit of cash.

Noticed Cincinnati are bottom of the MLS - is he still there? 12 Goals in 23 games....

[NewCorkSeth]

I'm not sure the XG etc helps his cause tbh. Weren't we like bottom 3 or something over both his seasons on it? More the fact that S1 we massively overperformed it, whilst second we were performing as per XG?

edit: dug around and found the stats - S1 we were 17th in XG, S2 (obvs with 8 games of clement) 23rd. So basically judging Stam by XG really does him no favours. And prob does point to a fair bit of luck in S1

All I mean is the drop in xG was from 1.28 to 1.1..

And we actually, statistically speaking, looked better in season 2 with an overall xG improvement of .22. Stams first season xG had us at 19th. Al-Habsi saved us from that. The second season the same analysis had us at 17th.

We were so good in the first season that the second season looks all the worse in comparison when, imo, we were just a lot more unfortunate.

I dont want to hear about stats being bollocks, they are not infallible obviously and I'm not a huge fan of xG but it is useful for certain things and when a team wins 19 games by a single goal and scores the first goal in 28 out of 46 games all while having a keeper pull of saves he shouldn't have of course its relevant to look at the data model and say "christ yeah, they're right. We were pretty lucky".

Was Stam a good manager? Nah. Probably not. Think he's a good coach though. I just think he is judged too harshly in light of the success we had in season 1. Not that sacking him wasn't the right decision. He had his opportunity to turn it around.

think you have the wrong seasons Seth. S1 was 16/17 and then we were 17th with XG of 1.27. S2 was 17/18 with a horrendous XG of .88. So a massive drop off from a not very high base

So over the course of the two seasons, you've got a manager delivering an XG of about 1.1 despite spending a fair bit of cash.

Not according to infogol? I think the 8 games we played under Clement throws the xG table off as the article they wrote on Stam at Reading quotes the figures I stated.


Edit: sorry I think I see the confusion. The improvement i stated above was overall xG. That includes xGagainst which was the thing that brought us up overall season 2. Season one we have a very high xGagainst but Al Habsi saved everything.

[Hound]

All I mean is the drop in xG was from 1.28 to 1.1..

And we actually, statistically speaking, looked better in season 2 with an overall xG improvement of .22. Stams first season xG had us at 19th. Al-Habsi saved us from that. The second season the same analysis had us at 17th.

We were so good in the first season that the second season looks all the worse in comparison when, imo, we were just a lot more unfortunate.

I dont want to hear about stats being bollocks, they are not infallible obviously and I'm not a huge fan of xG but it is useful for certain things and when a team wins 19 games by a single goal and scores the first goal in 28 out of 46 games all while having a keeper pull of saves he shouldn't have of course its relevant to look at the data model and say "christ yeah, they're right. We were pretty lucky".

Was Stam a good manager? Nah. Probably not. Think he's a good coach though. I just think he is judged too harshly in light of the success we had in season 1. Not that sacking him wasn't the right decision. He had his opportunity to turn it around.

think you have the wrong seasons Seth. S1 was 16/17 and then we were 17th with XG of 1.27. S2 was 17/18 with a horrendous XG of .88. So a massive drop off from a not very high base

So over the course of the two seasons, you've got a manager delivering an XG of about 1.1 despite spending a fair bit of cash.

Not according to infogol? I think the 8 games we played under Clement throws the xG table off as the article they wrote on Stam at Reading quotes the figures I stated.

maybe - no expert in it, but just pulled the figures from footystats

[Sutekh]

I think the main issue with Clarke and Fulham was that at the time they were pretty much same level as us. Would have really just been a sideways move, and obvs one whilst we were doing well at the time

rightly or wrongly he was always on borrowed time after that unless we were being very successful. Soon as the opportunity came to bin him he was out of the door

This. At the time we were knocking on the door of automatic promotion, he'd been here about 6 months and he was just trying to jump ship for a bigger pay day. No one would have cared had it been a PL club.

It showed zero commitment or respect.

And at the time we certainly weren't known as a sacking club. Pardew chose to leave after several years Coppell didn't renew his contract after 5 years, Rodgers got a few months, McDermott was here for about 4 years and Adkins got about 2.

For Steve Clarke to talk to Fulham though it would have required the Reading board to approve an approach from them in which case what signal does that send to a manager of a club at the same level other than not really wanted. Or was it all a clandestine meeting somewhere in which case surely Reading would have complained to the FL about an illegal approach at the very least.

[NewCorkSeth]

think you have the wrong seasons Seth. S1 was 16/17 and then we were 17th with XG of 1.27. S2 was 17/18 with a horrendous XG of .88. So a massive drop off from a not very high base

So over the course of the two seasons, you've got a manager delivering an XG of about 1.1 despite spending a fair bit of cash.

Not according to infogol? I think the 8 games we played under Clement throws the xG table off as the article they wrote on Stam at Reading quotes the figures I stated.

maybe - no expert in it, but just pulled the figures from footystats

Soz I edited my above reply. Because the number we stated were the same(ish).. but its the xG against that improved season 2 so on an overall scale we improved.

Anyway. Doesnt matter. I'm jut shook that anyone thinks Clement did a better job than Stam. Dude lost 50% of his games.

[Hound]

I could see a way to better things under Clement. I only saw relegation and financial ruin at the end of Stam's reign. Him, Gourlay or whoever - very very dark times. 1 win in 18, dire football, blown the entire budget + plenty which we shouldn't have spent

makes me shudder thinking about it tbh