Poll: Should Noel Hunt be sacked?

[linkenholtroyal]

No but only because he should be put back with the U21s, not sacked just repurposed.

[RoyalBlue]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

[South Coast Royal]

No but only because he should be put back with the U21s, not sacked just repurposed.

Once you have held the top job (and presumably a good salary to go with it) I'm not sure that reverting to the U21 role would be what he would want .
Having tasted the manager role I expect he would probably try to get a Div 2, National League or League of Ireland job.

[Hound]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

Yes that’s probably true - note I said it was an example of the teams failings rather than Doyle’s

He has worked hard and done ok generally - better option than Elliott imo - but still not the sort of returns I was expecting when he signed

[jonnyroyal1871]

[quote="Armadillo Roadkill"]Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

[jonnyroyal1871]

[quote="Armadillo Roadkill"]Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

[Clyde1998]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

The FotMob stats suggests he's doing only slightly worse creatively at Reading this season as he was at Crawley (comparing League One per 90 stats) - 1.53 chances created vs 1.86. His expected assists (basically the quality of chances he's created that ended in shots) is basically the same - from 0.18 to 0.16; his assists are up from 0.17 to 0.22. His general passing is better too.

There are however clear differences: he's clearly shooting and scoring less and he appears to be involved more defensively - suggesting Crawley were playing him higher up the pitch than we have been. I'd imagine he'll benefit from playing in the hole behind a striker now we've moved to a 4-2-3-1, rather than a 4-3-3.

[Vision]

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

The FotMob stats suggests he's doing only slightly worse creatively at Reading this season as he was at Crawley (comparing League One per 90 stats) - 1.53 chances created vs 1.86. His expected assists (basically the quality of chances he's created that ended in shots) is basically the same - from 0.18 to 0.16; his assists are up from 0.17 to 0.22. His general passing is better too.

There are however clear differences: he's clearly shooting and scoring less and he appears to be involved more defensively - suggesting Crawley were playing him higher up the pitch than we have been. I'd imagine he'll benefit from playing in the hole behind a striker now we've moved to a 4-2-3-1, rather than a 4-3-3.

It strikes me we changed our whole system to 4-2-3-1 precisely to accommodate Doyle in his best position so he really does need to produce because the change has seen our wide players (full backs and wide forwards) get progressively worse.

Somebody earlier mentioned creativity with regards to Elliott and citing goals & assists. This isn't the only metric for creativity. Our best performances last season always seemed to coincide with Eliiott being influential in beating players in midfield and driving forward creating space for others because defences have to commit. This often leads to chances 2 or 3 passes later that don't show up on a Goals/assists chart.

The final pass and finish are definitely things he needs to improve on but to judge his creative contribution solely on that seems a little too simplistic to me especially when the players apparently ahead of him in the side are also lacking in production.

[morganb]

Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

After all this talk of a relegation dogfight, who do we think are going to be the four teams worse than us this season?

[Mid Sussex Royal]

Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

After all this talk of a relegation dogfight, who do we think are going to be the four teams worse than us this season?

MOM's record at Pompey wasn't that bad....3 goals in about 10 starts; suffered from injuries a bit.

Re who will finish below us, that's the issue the way we are playing. Burton have got form for surviving, and are above track for where they usually are by now and Peterborough, Blackpool and Rotherham I wouldn't put money on us finishing above any of them with the current coaching regime in place.

We've lost one in 8, great - only one of the 5 draws (Wycombe) could you argue we should have won. If we start getting "unlucky" we will be bottom in a month.

[West F]

No but only because he should be put back with the U21s, not sacked just repurposed.

This should have formed part of an interim package when he took over first team affairs last season. To do so now would be almost impossible for him. To go from being the Gaffer to answering to a different one would be hard for both parties to do. More so as he has his players still in the dressing room.

[fred sharpes nose]

Its a No for me. But he needs 15 points from the second batch of ten games to demonstrate improvement - so currently 0.5 behind target. If he fails to hit this I guess all concerned have prepared for the consequences. Its a results business

Coaching Element
> Playing style - non existant other than hoof wide and hope.
> Entertainment - still waiting
> Getting best of the squad - maybe they really are donkeys but currentlly failing here
> In game management a) usage of subs an improvement b) tactical savvy - outwitted majority of the time

Managerial concerns
> Recruitment - disappointing, way too many of average or worse quality, appears to be scatter gun and "getting in bodies, rather than pieces of the jigsaw.

> Injuries - this is my biggest concern. The players are the most important asset. We appear to have a shed load of injuries from training. Saw a clip of Noel talking to the new guys " blahblah high intensity etc etc if you get kicked then just get on with it" or words to that affect.

Noel wants us to play the way he played himself - running all over the place never say die, and hope for the best. Has he sanctioned the signing of players who can't play this way or are too old or knackered - if so why did he get them ? If he thought that they could hack it, was correct due diligiance applied before singing them? Like Ince before Selles, Noel has similar "fight spirit" and Ince also had a fair few internal injuries as we can all recall, Rueben was more educated (at least on paper) but also knew loads about sports science etc and my hazy memory tells me injuries were not a major thing .

Is Noel trying to fit square pegs into round holes, with many many new players he approved, with a training regime that i maybe be costly and / or lack of experience training mature players (as opposed to run all day U18s U21s)? He is not getting the best out of the squad and must take responbsilibty for training ground injuries (a problem of his own making surely) - I suspect this is what will do for him eventually. Don't know who gets the final call on a signing, but can't imagine RC/JJ sign a player without Noels approval. With a dull 1950s kick and rush style (constrained by his personal playing experience) which is more akin to pub football than what we have been used to.

Next decision point - 9 games time 13th December after our away trip (and likely defeat) at Bradford City

I hope he succeeds but the clock is ticking. He is not helped by the relative lack of experienced people around him from RC/JJ downwards, but thems the cards he's been dealt...................................

Nicked the below from the Injury thread
================================================================================================================

Clyde1998
RoyalBlue
morganb
injury update via Noel Hunt:

• Derrick Williams back in contact training, not ready for this weekend.

• Andre Garcia will be a few weeks still.

• Liam Fraser out for 6-8 weeks.

• Mamadi Camara back on the grass, non contact.


These long-term injuries are getting ridiculous. What's changed between last season and this? If anything you'd expect us to suffer less this season as we have more strength in depth in the squad, enabling more rotation and placing lower demands physically on the players.

If I was JJ/RC I would be talking a lot with the sports scientists/physios and wanting to know what they think has changed.

I wonder if the larger squad means injuries players could theoretically play through are being treated as something that stops them from playing this season, but wouldn't have done last season. I'd agree there should be less injuries this year, as you could better manage the squad with increased rotation.

On the other hand, the squad is a lot older this year. And we have retained players with poor injury records (Abrefa, Yiadom, Dorsett, Elliott, Camara, Ryan) whilst players with better ones have left (Craig, Knibbs, Bindon).

We no longer have a manager with a sports science background. And were training and playing at high intensity.
=============================================================================================================

[South Coast Royal]

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

The FotMob stats suggests he's doing only slightly worse creatively at Reading this season as he was at Crawley (comparing League One per 90 stats) - 1.53 chances created vs 1.86. His expected assists (basically the quality of chances he's created that ended in shots) is basically the same - from 0.18 to 0.16; his assists are up from 0.17 to 0.22. His general passing is better too.

There are however clear differences: he's clearly shooting and scoring less and he appears to be involved more defensively - suggesting Crawley were playing him higher up the pitch than we have been. I'd imagine he'll benefit from playing in the hole behind a striker now we've moved to a 4-2-3-1, rather than a 4-3-3.

It strikes me we changed our whole system to 4-2-3-1 precisely to accommodate Doyle in his best position so he really does need to produce because the change has seen our wide players (full backs and wide forwards) get progressively worse.

Somebody earlier mentioned creativity with regards to Elliott and citing goals & assists. This isn't the only metric for creativity. Our best performances last season always seemed to coincide with Eliiott being influential in beating players in midfield and driving forward creating space for others because defences have to commit. This often leads to chances 2 or 3 passes later that don't show up on a Goals/assists chart.

The final pass and finish are definitely things he needs to improve on but to judge his creative contribution solely on that seems a little too simplistic to me especially when the players apparently ahead of him in the side are also lacking in production.

Well said.
Regardless of stats we know what we see with our own eyes , especially if you have experience of playing in that position.
Neither Wing nor Savage drives a move forward by taking players on and so far the same goes for Fraser.
Doyle may be able to do that but , as yet, he hasn't set the world on fire.

I do feel that a new manager would be more inclined to include Elliott and that he is not in the Big Kelv or Ejaria enigma category.
He may be a bit lightweight but that is sometimes what you get with attacking midfielders and that is why managers often choose the more physical , safety first square passer in that position, i.e. negative football and just hoping that somebody else will do something.

[Hound]

I like Elliott but he still doesn’t fully convince me

I’d 100% put him in the same bracket as Kelvin E - talented and shown glimpses but not consistent enough for whatever reason that hasn’t yet been resolved. And injury prone

[hobbitx007]

No

[Sutekh]

Next 4 -
Cardiff (a)
Northampton (h)
Doncaster (h)
Stevenage (h)

Think he’s (rightly) gone if he doesn’t get at least 6 points from that lot.

[South Coast Royal]

A positive result or a close defeat today and I expect him to stay.
A heavy loss and negativity from the large away following and that could well be it for Hunt.

[Sutekh]

Assuming the plug isn’t pulled before, I’d have to say now that if Northampton aren’t beaten on Tuesday then Hunt should definitely go.

[Binfield Royal]

Assuming the plug isn’t pulled before, I’d have to say now that if Northampton aren’t beaten on Tuesday then Hunt should definitely go.

Agree

[Orion1871]

He has to get results in these next home games or I'm afraid it has to be it for him.