A Kamil is a horse designed by committee

[Rev]

8 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

Why don’t you write in plain English?

I really don’t feel the ground is slipping away from me.  If I am right, the consequences that you outlined pretty much all fall at the door of Morris not Cocu. I also think you are making things up to suit your position regarding Cocu’s parting.

My instinct is that even though Morris has made a pigs ear of the finances, he wanted to do the honourable thing. Cocu followed his brief which was to slash and burn costs/squad size, and to bring in the kids. Morris probably would have liked to have supported him more this window on the basis he has proved himself quite astute as to who to buy/sell. There just wasn’t enough money available. So Morris wouldn’t have wanted to sack Cocu, nor I doubt did he want someone else to do it instead of him (post sale). They have parted amicably, and on negotiated terms, because I suspect they had a very good relationship and mutual respect for each other. Morris got Cocu at the wrong time, which is a great shame for many.

Ironically, I feel the ideal next manager may have been Cocu, free from interference from above.

[i-Ram]

14 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

An interim coaching team? Four interim managers?

That suggests to me we have a lot of contributors but no real natural leaders and a muddled hierarchy behind the scenes.

If things go badly, you can hide behind being part of a team.

It seems we have a lot of people who want to protect their own interests and don’t want to put their reputations on the line and take some responsibility.

We should have given it to Wassall. He’s done the role before and wasn’t afraid to front up and face the situation head on.

But, again this would be a Morris (or Pearce) issue.

I wonder if Morris said to Wayne, I hope you don’t mind Wayne but I am going to ask Liam to take interim control, or perhaps Darren in the Academy. Wayne then gives him a Liverpool kiss, and in storms Shay with a pair of pliers. All decisions are reversed, and to keep them all happy 4 are told by Mel that they can work it out amongst themselves and Darren is promised that Ethan can have have a 12 month extended contract.

Roll on ownership change.

[Ellafella]

16 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

Why don’t you write in plain English?

I really don’t feel the ground is slipping away from me.  If I am right, the consequences that you outlined pretty much all fall at the door of Morris not Cocu. I also think you are making things up to suit your position regarding Cocu’s parting.

My instinct is that even though Morris has made a pigs ear of the finances, he wanted to do the honourable thing. Cocu followed his brief which was to slash and burn costs/squad size, and to bring in the kids. Morris probably would have liked to have supported him more this window on the basis he has proved himself quite astute as to who to buy/sell. There just wasn’t enough money available. So Morris wouldn’t have wanted to sack Cocu, nor I doubt did he want someone else to do it instead of him (post sale). They have parted amicably, and on negotiated terms, because I suspect they had a very good relationship and mutual respect for each other. Morris got Cocu at the wrong time, which is a great shame for many.

1. I do write in plain English. Perhaps you fail to grasp the point: that we couldn’t afford a striker but we can afford the consequences (relegation) even though that ultimately costs more.

2. I “make things up to suit” my position? You don’t evidence this I note.

3.  You don’t grasp the key point - Morris wouldn’t have countenanced starting the season without a striker if the consequences of the constraint and its impact had been laid out by Cocu. 
 

4. The rest of your point is pure padding. If Cocu was put in such a double-bind, he should have pointed that out. That he didn’t suggests he’s not got the full grasp of how his job was being made untenable. They may have parted amicably but perhaps because Cocu doesn’t have the backbone to point out how he’s had his hands tied.

5. “Morris got Cocu at the wrong time, which is a great shame for many.” That sentence is quite meaningless really. Did we get Jewell at the wrong time? Or Clement? Or Pearson? Or Tommy Docherty? Managers live or die by the decisions they make at the time and in the context that they make them. Far too many of GroupCocu’s decisions were plain wrong and not just in hindsight Eg we’ll drop the Player of the Season to accommodate Dutch Mike. Result: 3-0 down in 16 minutes. 

I could go on. I conclude and form my judgements after examining the evidence as it evolves. Despite lots of evidence to the contrary you conclude that the Team’s situation was brought about by MM. You’re arguments do not link to the point of the original thread and you explain it by putting it down to “the wrong time” as if time is somehow a causative variable in a context. 

[sunnyhill60]

3 hours ago, Rev said:

I assume the fall back was already in the squad. Martin's not particularly tall, doesn't flick headers on etc, just relied on his technique from his head down, to flick the ball around corners or lay the ball off to surrounding players.

In short, nothing that Rooney couldn't do.

Have you watched Martin play?

[i-Ram]

7 hours ago, Ellafella said:

1. I do write in plain English. Perhaps you fail to grasp the point: that we couldn’t afford a striker but we can afford the consequences (relegation) even though that ultimately costs more.

2. I “make things up to suit” my position? You don’t evidence this I note.

3.  You don’t grasp the key point - Morris wouldn’t have countenanced starting the season without a striker if the consequences of the constraint and its impact had been laid out by Cocu. 
 

4. The rest of your point is pure padding. If Cocu was put in such a double-bind, he should have pointed that out. That he didn’t suggests he’s not got the full grasp of how his job was being made untenable. They may have parted amicably but perhaps because Cocu doesn’t have the backbone to point out how he’s had his hands tied.

5. “Morris got Cocu at the wrong time, which is a great shame for many.” That sentence is quite meaningless really. Did we get Jewell at the wrong time? Or Clement? Or Pearson? Or Tommy Docherty? Managers live or die by the decisions they make at the time and in the context that they make them. Far too many of GroupCocu’s decisions were plain wrong and not just in hindsight Eg we’ll drop the Player of the Season to accommodate Dutch Mike. Result: 3-0 down in 16 minutes. 

I could go on. I conclude and form my judgements after examining the evidence as it evolves. Despite lots of evidence to the contrary you conclude that the Team’s situation was brought about by MM. You’re arguments do not link to the point of the original thread and you explain it by putting it down to “the wrong time” as if time is somehow a causative variable in a context. 

Sorry fell asleep. I think it was just as I got to time is somehow a causative variable in a context. 

You say you could go on. You do buddy. You do. 

 

[RoyMac5]

7 hours ago, Ellafella said:

“Morris got Cocu at the wrong time, which is a great shame for many.” That sentence is quite meaningless really. Did we get Jewell at the wrong time? Or Clement? Or Pearson? Or Tommy Docherty? Managers live or die by the decisions they make at the time and in the context that they make them. Far too many of GroupCocu’s decisions were plain wrong and not just in hindsight Eg we’ll drop the Player of the Season to accommodate Dutch Mike. Result: 3-0 down in 16 minutes. 

There are of course other examples. I find it most backed up by the fact we're playing awful football and are bottom of the table.

However thinking about the 'group' conundrum, I wonder was it lack of leadership from the top or was the group dynamics wrong. Mac1 needed Simmo to get to go 'all out attack' and had Steeley as well, etc.

Will this 'new group' of coaches combine their knowledge and personalities to be a winning team? 

[angieram]

14 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

There are of course other examples. I find it most backed up by the fact we're playing awful football and are bottom of the table.

However thinking about the 'group' conundrum, I wonder was it lack of leadership from the top or was the group dynamics wrong. Mac1 needed Simmo to get to go 'all out attack' and had Steeley as well, etc.

Will this 'new group' of coaches combine their knowledge and personalities to be a winning team? 

I do wonder how much influence the remaining four were able to have on the Cocu three? 

Maybe their suggestions to Cocu were falling on deaf ears? There is certainly some hints at that in the recent article by Ryan Conway.

We will only know this when we see how they set the team up over the next few games.

[FindernRam]

12 hours ago, Duracell said:

With Wayne Rooney, Liam Rosenior, Shay Given and Justin Walker taking charge against Bristol, it's struck me how absurdly top-heavy the club has been with coaches.

I posted some time ago (when I could go to a match) that during the warm up Derby had an amazing number of "trainers" on the pitch with the players. I can't find the post now but as I recall it was something like 20 hangers on for the 18 players. That didn't include the Rams TV people. The opposition at the time had around 10.

Presumably these people are not mindless clones full of telepathic Cocu speak! It is inevitable that messages get mixed, even contradicted. Too many cooks etc!

Management by committee is not good.

[Ellafella]

1 hour ago, FindernRam said:

I posted some time ago (when I could go to a match) that during the warm up Derby had an amazing number of "trainers" on the pitch with the players. I can't find the post now but as I recall it was something like 20 hangers on for the 18 players. That didn't include the Rams TV people. The opposition at the time had around 10.

Presumably these people are not mindless clones full of telepathic Cocu speak! It is inevitable that messages get mixed, even contradicted. Too many cooks etc!

Management by committee is not good.

Yes; “Send reinforcements we’re going to advance” becomes “send 3 & four pence we’re going to a dance” once it is communicated down the chain. ?

[FindernRam]

4 hours ago, Ellafella said:

“send 3 & four pence we’re going to a dance”

I guess you are not a millennial then!

[brady1993]

18 hours ago, Ellafella said:

I respect your views @brady1993and more often than not agree with you. But:

1. Why would they not expect Martin to leave? 
 Why not have the cash? If 1 is true, it makes it even more important to do the risk analysis. Not having a striker meant we scored no goals which meant we won no games which meant we fell to the bottom of the league. Which cost Cocu et al their jobs. Had CM stayed, ironically, they might all still be in the job but once that happened the whole thing unravelled with a domino like effect. If I was Cocu I’d have been straight on the phone to MM saying this is a show-stopping risk...no Martin could mean no striker could mean no goals could mean no wins could mean bottom of the table. That was the worst case scenario and that, unluckily played out. Cocu held himself hostage to fortune and fortune won. 
 

2. If specialist coaches are that specialist, why does Cocu’s group not include one? And if that’s ok, why did it take 15 months to get one in? It’s a gap that was identified just a short time before the writing appeared on the wall. Doesn’t reflect well on Cocu’s assessment of what was required to compete. 
 

So, for both above scenarios it was too little too late:

1. CM: we offered too little too late

2. Dursun, the German centre-forward target: we offered too little too late. 

3. Colin Kazim-Richards - the eventual “solution outcome”; he’d been training with Derby for 3 weeks prior to the deadline but still wasn’t fit enough to start a game; so too little too late. Bring him on with 10 minutes left - too little to late. 
4. Losing 1-0 with just 5 minutes to go - get Sibley / Knight on = too little too late. 
 

Too little too late is the product of a lack of decisiveness despite Cocu having 4 heads on the bench. So the inverse law of decision-making is the more heads you have the less likely you are to make a decision in time to effect the outcome. 
And we haven’t even examined “confused tactics”. 
 

I also the points in reverse order.

2) Its a specialist position but you don't need someone who's in circle so to speak. I believe last year Steve Haines was doing that alongside his current role (I'm not 100% on the exact details though). The management team reviewed the season and decided we need to bolster that side of our game and brought in Nicholson at the start of the summer. I don't see a deal wrong with that.

1) I'm going to start with my conclusion with the striker situation before I begin speculating. I don't think we have enough information as outsiders looking in to know where it went wrong and for what reason or who was at fault. There's just two many moving parts and elements we aren't privy to. 

What we do know is that Cocu wanted to extend Martin's contract, that a striker was a clear target and that Cocu was confident right up until the last week of getting someone in (mild note of speculation I think we must have been close for Cocu to be so confident regarding given is usual reserved nature). Its also important to keep in mind that we were operating in a restricted time window both due to the soft embargo and the reduced overall window length.

Now for the slightly more speculative stuff. I think it's worth observing three factors:

1) Martin wasn't first choice last season or at least far from guaranteed with him and Waghorn rotating.

2) Even with Martin's contract up we had more pressing targets. Our 3 clear weak areas in both strength and depth last season were GK, RCB and winger. With Clarke leaving and Bogle suspected to leave that adds a LCB and RB. That's 5 targets arguably more pressing that we knew about for a while especially given we still had Waghorn, Marriott and Rooney on the books (keep in mind the first two were more than enough for Lampard).  And Waghorn was expected to be a back a lot quicker than he was. 

3) I think it's pretty reasonable to speculate that we had a very clear idea what kind of striker we wanted. Now keep in mind that strikers are expensive at the best of times. So say you scout out a striker that you think ticks every box, the price looks reasonable and so do the wages. You try to get the deal over the line because it looks highly likely but for whatever reason you can't make it work but you are 100% sure he's yours in January, what do you do ? 

Now you could go for a different player on a permanent but no one else is available for a reasonable price or has the right attributes. Alternatively you think short term but you have to be very mindful of money given that a temporary loan might mean not being able to sign someone later. So you try to get a deal that makes sense but ultimately given time constraints and monetary constraints you have to suck it up till January.

That exact situation had already played out twice pretty much with us with both Jozwiak and Te Wierik. Both of whom were close to joining in January but we didn't have the cash to throw around to make them happen at the time.

Could Cocu be at fault for all that? Yeah sure absolutely but ultimately my point is there is just too much noise to make a reasonable conclusion and id say even without Martin we should have enough firepower in the squad (with all fit) to do alright.

[Ellafella]

10 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

I also the points in reverse order.

2) Its a specialist position but you don't need someone who's in circle so to speak. I believe last year Steve Haines was doing that alongside his current role (I'm not 100% on the exact details though). The management team reviewed the season and decided we need to bolster that side of our game and brought in Nicholson at the start of the summer. I don't see a deal wrong with that.

1) I'm going to start with my conclusion with the striker situation before I begin speculating. I don't think we have enough information as outsiders looking in to know where it went wrong and for what reason or who was at fault. There's just two many moving parts and elements we aren't privy to. 

What we do know is that Cocu wanted to extend Martin's contract, that a striker was a clear target and that Cocu was confident right up until the last week of getting someone in (mild note of speculation I think we must have been close for Cocu to be so confident regarding given is usual reserved nature). Its also important to keep in mind that we were operating in a restricted time window both due to the soft embargo and the reduced overall window length.

Now for the slightly more speculative stuff. I think it's worth observing three factors:

1) Martin wasn't first choice last season or at least far from guaranteed with him and Waghorn rotating.

2) Even with Martin's contract up we had more pressing targets. Our 3 clear weak areas in both strength and depth last season were GK, RCB and winger. With Clarke leaving and Bogle suspected to leave that adds a LCB and RB. That's 5 targets arguably more pressing that we knew about for a while especially given we still had Waghorn, Marriott and Rooney on the books (keep in mind the first two were more than enough for Lampard).  And Waghorn was expected to be a back a lot quicker than he was. 

3) I think it's pretty reasonable to speculate that we had a very clear idea what kind of striker we wanted. Now keep in mind that strikers are expensive at the best of times. So say you scout out a striker that you think ticks every box, the price looks reasonable and so do the wages. You try to get the deal over the line because it looks highly likely but for whatever reason you can't make it work but you are 100% sure he's yours in January, what do you do ? 

Now you could go for a different player on a permanent but no one else is available for a reasonable price or has the right attributes. Alternatively you think short term but you have to be very mindful of money given that a temporary loan might mean not being able to sign someone later. So you try to get a deal that makes sense but ultimately given time constraints and monetary constraints you have to suck it up till January.

That exact situation had already played out twice pretty much with us with both Jozwiak and Te Wierik. Both of whom were close to joining in January but we didn't have the cash to throw around to make them happen at the time.

Could Cocu be at fault for all that? Yeah sure absolutely but ultimately my point is there is just too much noise to make a reasonable conclusion and id say even without Martin we should have enough firepower in the squad (with all fit) to do alright.

Some good points as I've come to expect from you @brady1993; and accept that we don't really "know" the half of it. However,

1. We are bottom of the League because we don't score goals. Nor have we looked like scoring although, admit we've had some poor luck (eg Florist Away, ) that Bucannan rocket cleared off the line, but we've had some luck also.

Regardless of all the "background noise", you surely, if you are a thorough and competent manager, ensure you have at least 2 targets, or even 3, because, given Murphy's Law, #1 and #2 can go wrong. ie You have a contingency. We have a full-time recruitment team, and there are plenty of "out of work" strikers right now. And given the worst case scenario, you damn well demand that somebody is brought in because, it will cost you your job if it doesn't happen. So, what happened? . . . We end up with a striker (who we then don't play) who, let's face it, was a random wild card. 

However many caveats you put in place, that is simply allowing yourself to be hostage to fortune. Remember Cloughie sleeping on sofas until they signed? That's good management and not allowing anything to slip away. It' s an unfair World so you have to take the situation and shore it up. Not look like a total Charlie when the fish slips out of your hands. 

Pretty sobering when you marry the facts. And don't agree that we are a side that has capacity to score, when we are hamstrung by a lop-sided, defensive mind-set and players who don't understand the "fuzzy" tactics.  

[brady1993]

1 minute ago, Ellafella said:

Some good points as I've come to expect from you @brady1993; and accept that we don't really "know" the half of it. However,

1. We are bottom of the League because we don't score goals. Nor have we looked like scoring although, admit we've had some poor luck (eg Florist Away, ) that Bucannan rocket cleared off the line, but we've had some luck also.

Regardless of all the "background noise", you surely, if you are a thorough and competent manager, ensure you have at least 2 targets, or even 3, because, given Murphy's Law, #1 and #2 can go wrong. ie You have a contingency. We have a full-time recruitment team, and there are plenty of "out of work" strikers right now. And given the worst case scenario, you damn well demand that somebody is brought in because, it will cost you your job if it doesn't happen. So, what happened? . . . We end up with a striker (who we then don't play) who, let's face it, was a random wild card. 

However many caveats you put in place, that is simply allowing yourself to be hostage to fortune. Remember Cloughie sleeping on sofas until they signed? That's good management and not allowing anything to slip away. It' s an unfair World so you have to take the situation and shore it up. Not look like a total Charlie when the fish slips out of your hands. 

Pretty sobering when you marry the facts. And don't agree that we are a side that has capacity to score, when we are hamstrung by a lop-sided, defensive mind-set and players who don't understand the "fuzzy" tactics.  

(Im going to lump your final point in with the first). To be honest the goals situation is a bit of a chicken and egg situation right? Are we not scoring because we aren't clinical or because we aren't creating enough chances? One thing we've found difficult all season for instance is the ability to mount consistent pressure on an opponent and that I feel is more down to tactics and personal in other position. My point about having enough goals in the squad is a point in a vacuum about the squad, the fact that they haven't been creating is why you look more shrewdly at tactics. I'm not defending Cocu on that front in fact the opposite, we should be doing much better than what we are.

I would had hazard a guess we did have multiple targets and I suspect a fair few contingency plans when it came to targets. Thing is when resources are tight (both money and time in our cases) you start having to take more calculated risks ? 

For example you've identified 3 targets that are both available and in the price range. Target 1 is head and shoulders better than the other 2 and would clearly take you forward. The other 2 would bolster the squad but wouldn't be much of a step forward. If 1 is isn't available till January what's the right solution ? 

If we had more money more targets become available and it gets easier to grease deals through. If we had more time we can wait take a minute and do some more scouting.

Funnily enough it's not that long ago we had the opposite problem were any perceived chink in the squad had huge amounts of money thrown at it without a second thought.

Again it may have been completely preventable and Cocu squarely at fault. It could also have been his hands were completely tied by outside circumstances despite a myriad of plans. Or anything in between. We don't know and it's unreasonable to confidently claim were the fault lays in my opinion.