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Sluffy wrote:Any manager can only play the cards they have in their hand.
All managers have constraints put on them from a greater to a lesser extent as to what happens off the pitch directly effects what happens on it.
There are quite simply many things we don't know, not least of which is how much say does Parkinson have in the players we sign - and what strings are attached (for instance do loan players contracts include a certain minimum of appearances - maybe that is why we saw so much of Flanagan and nothing of Little for a spell - or do players contracts include a bonus payment after a set number of appearances - we know Wheaters did (£50,000) - maybe Ken could not afford a further £150k/£200k if a further 3 or 4 first teamers trigger their bonuses too?).
Clearly even a blind man could see that our centre defenders were unable to cope in this division without a defensive midfield blanket in front of them - 2 points out of the first 11 games is evidence of that, until Henry reached match fitness. From then on we had to play catch up with every other team in the division with a quarter of the season already gone and having to play seven defensive players (two defensive mids, back four plus keeper) - so how exactly do we achieve a crowd pleasing Klopp type all out attack with just four players, one of whom being Gary Madine?
Well remarkably Parkinson achieved the results although it wasn't pretty football. We even sold Madine (without a direct replacement for him) and still Parkinson kept us catching up and even passing other clubs in our rise from the bottom.
With eight games to go we were just about safe when the wheels came off again - I've said above and several times before what I think happened - behind the scenes issues preventing certain players to be available for first team selection - and thus resulting in some weird team selections in the those games such as the Dervite recall.
Take away the first 11 games when for whatever reason we had no defensive midfielders in front of the clearly not good enough Wheater and Beevers - and achieved just 2 points - and the last 8 games when I strongly believe issues off the pitch directly effected player availability - and were we picked up just 4 points (19 games, 6 points) and compare that to the 27 games, 37 points were Parkinson had the team free from off field issues (and easily the stats of a mid-table Championship club).
There's a massive difference.
And that's why the Anderson's have kept him despite balloons like Martin demanding him to be sacked every five minutes.
More conspiracy theories sluffy. Are you going to present proof or are you just one of those "balloons" you like to call people?
But, as always, the telling question is this: how many games did you attend?
