Evatt - stay or go?

Firmly believe you have to be a bit of a knobhead to think he should be sacked at the moment - but clearly there are a lot of knobheads out there. 

Personally I’d give him at least 3 more months - few reasons for that:

- I like the style, it’s far from perfect but we’re far more interesting to watch now than we have been in years. You can see what he’s trying to do and there have been improvements.

- Recruitments been patchy, understandable with so many needed to come in and Evatt takes some responsibility for that - maybe Phoenix takes the most though? Giving them another window now weave seen the players in action seems fair though.

- Despite the above there are bright spots: Crawford (I know not an Evatt signing), Sarc, Santos and Doyle are all good ball players at this level, makes a nice change from watching the plodders we’ve had over the last few years.

Where do you stand?

Stay, it’s very much a work in progress.  Not a great start, but can’t see what getting rid now would achieve, still stuck with the same players.  I do believe we need a new keeper.

Stay.

Doubt there is any money to sack him and bring someone else in even if they wanted to.

There's little to no flexibility in changing the squad in January - unless we sell off Doyle and/or Sarcevic and that would end our season if we did.

As I've said we need to get Doyle and Sarcevic playing to their strengths and if necessary refine/dump tippy tappy football to do so.

Need to give Crelling a break and that means playing Gilks, who should at least command the defence better at least.

Back to basics for me, we need to learn how to walk before we can run.

Stay for now but he doesn't help himself does he? He was all guns blazing at the start of the season saying he wanted promotion now he's saying we all need to be patient and stop criticizing the players on social media.

Recruitment has been patchy and we definitely need a more experienced keeper. He also keeps picking Baptiste who is an accident waiting to happen every game. I can't see him changing formation again as he tried that already and went back to his back 3 and wing backs. Just seems odd to me that Brockbank has been played LWB when we have Maskell and Gordon available. 

Brockbank would be much better in the back 3 in place of Baptiste but he went off last night with what looks like a hamstring injury. Not been that impressed with the various holding midfielders he brought in either as Comley has been very poor and White not much better.

It's fine saying keep him for now but what happens if we get towards Christmas and we haven't improved? I certainly don''t want to be watching us playing in the conference next year.

Agree it's unlikely we could get rid anyway so we'll just have to stick with it. I think the root of the problem is expectation management and we shouldn't have had to listen to all that crap about being favourites for promotion because the fools that swallowed it are most likely to be the ones who are upset.
We've shown enough to suggest we won't get relegated and it was always a long term project anyway as it was for Evatt at Barrow.
Only if we slip into the relegation spots will Evatt's tenure be seriously under threat.

Norpig wrote:Stay for now but he doesn't help himself does he? He was all guns blazing at the start of the season saying he wanted promotion now he's saying we all need to be patient and stop criticizing the players on social media.

Recruitment has been patchy and we definitely need a more experienced keeper. He also keeps picking Baptiste who is an accident waiting to happen every game. I can't see him changing formation again as he tried that already and went back to his back 3 and wing backs. Just seems odd to me that Brockbank has been played LWB when we have Maskell and Gordon available. 

Brockbank would be much better in the back 3 in place of Baptiste but he went off last night with what looks like a hamstring injury. Not been that impressed with the various holding midfielders he brought in either as Comley has been very poor and White not much better.

It's fine saying keep him for now but what happens if we get towards Christmas and we haven't improved? I certainly don''t want to be watching us playing in the conference next year.

Agreed on Crellin and Baptiste, would also prefer to see Brockbank take his place in the back three. But once Gordon came on at LWB can see why Brockbank has been there, better on the ball and in defence for me.

Are you honestly worried about getting relegated? 

My thinking is, with such a large change both in terms of playing personnel and coaching this could take a while to bed in. I'd rather go into another League 2 season with some stability than all change again - that is contingent on showing some development throughout the season though.

Sluffy wrote:As I've said we need to get Doyle and Sarcevic playing to their strengths and if necessary refine/dump tippy tappy football to do so.

I agree it needs refining but think we're closer to playing to their strengths than we would have been in any previous year, the ball's on the ground and we're dominating possession - we're just not getting up and supporting Doyle in particular, he's having to drop deep to get on the ball way too often he's shown what he can do if you get him changes in the box we just need to get him that supply.

Definitely go.

Sadly, there's absolutely no chance of him getting potted as it would likely cost a fortune to get rid.

T.R.O.Y. wrote:

Agreed on Crellin and Baptiste, would also prefer to see Brockbank take his place in the back three. But once Gordon came on at LWB can see why Brockbank has been there, better on the ball and in defence for me.

Are you honestly worried about getting relegated? 

My thinking is, with such a large change both in terms of playing personnel and coaching this could take a while to bed in. I'd rather go into another League 2 season with some stability than all change again - that is contingent on showing some development throughout the season though.

If we carry on having very little goal threat and a defence and keeper dodgier than Nat's boob job then yes we could get sucked into a relegation battle.

I'd happily take a lower mid table finish the way things are going now to be honest.

Stay, far too soon to be pessimistic, yes the football is awful, and yes he is sticking with out of form players, and yes his substitutions are non game changing, but let's not forget trying to bed in 20 new players and getting them playing to his style takes time. and anything around mid table this season, will be a success for now, next season will be his benchmark.

People are kidding themselves if they don't think we're in a relegation battle.

I've seen nothing from the manager to suggest he knows how to get us out of this mess.

Natasha Whittam wrote:People are kidding themselves if they don't think we're in a relegation battle.

I've seen nothing from the manager to suggest he knows how to get us out of this mess.

Man United fans wanted Fergie out in his first season, that didn't work out too badly, managers need time to put their own stamp on things, Parkinson from day one bored the pants off the fans, Coyle started brilliantly, then screwed up royally, give him time.

Bringing that many players together and expecting them to work as a team so quickly can't be easy so I'd be inclined to give him more time to work with them and get it right. 

I'm not clear on whether he should be judged on the player recruitment because I don't know the level of involvement he had but from what little I've seen they aren't up to the task of getting us promoted. I don't hold out much hope for anything better than a mid table finish with this lot.

Keep him for now but review at the end of November. Performances have to improve before then.

MartinBWFC wrote:Man United fans wanted Fergie out in his first season, that didn't work out too badly, managers need time to put their own stamp on things, Parkinson from day one bored the pants off the fans, Coyle started brilliantly, then screwed up royally, give him time.

This is no better than Parky football. Maybe even worse.

And Coyle was managing in the Prem, we're in League 2. Big difference.

I'd sack him simply for the goalkeeper situation.

Natasha Whittam wrote:
This is no better than Parky football. Maybe even worse.

And Coyle was managing in the Prem, we're in League 2. Big difference.

I'd sack him simply for the goalkeeper situation.

100% with you on the GK situation, but we don't know if he was Evatt's pick, one thing that does piss me off about Evatt, is his not naming  a keeper on the bench, I do think Gilks will be in goal against Crewe though.

Stay but if he doesn't sort the goalkeeper out, i will lose faith, A ridiculous decision to go with no experienced goalkeeper, But even on Tuesday other than no end product, we played some nice football for 20 minutes and then ............

Natasha Whittam wrote:People are kidding themselves if they don't think we're in a relegation battle.

I've seen nothing from the manager to suggest he knows how to get us out of this mess.

9 points off the play offs, I’m feeling it.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

This is no better than Parky football. Maybe even worse.

And Coyle was managing in the Prem, we're in League 2. Big difference.

I'd sack him simply for the goalkeeper situation.

Both Parky and Coyle had relatively quality players to work with so I don't think you can make a comparison. We currently have a mixture of rejects, kids and non-league hopefuls that we all pray can make the step up. And why shouldn't they? Their moneyball stats suggest they could.
As for the kids - whilst I like both Brockbank and Darcy neither have shown they they can impose their will on the game in the same way e.g Holding has shown he can do, so I suspect that they ain't good enough - but at least the game time will help their development - but not convinced they're ready yet.
Moneyball is a gamble and we seem to have a mixed bag. Santos seems to have come good. Delaney remains solid. Tutte is functional. Kioto, Gordon and Gnouha are athletes that need direction. Sarcevic (who ate all the pies?) and Crawford seem reasonably creative. And we have 2 proven goalscorers. 
It only takes two good transfer windows to fill in the gaps and the goalie surely knows what needs to be rectified. I can definitely see a project here - and TBH that's probably the best we could have hoped for a few months ago.

A Wanderers fan in the pub tonight started a sentence by saying "Delfonueso - any other time we'd have said he was a striker who's failed everywhere he's been....but in our current situation...."
Sums up the mismanagement of expectations for me.
Suppose it was short-term thinking at the time reflecting how desperate our situation was however IMO Boards have to be more open and honest warts and all to get complete buy-in. 
Nonetheless I think the recruitment has been astute if not holistic - so it comes down to how the hand is played as much as the cards dealt.

Very good twitter account this for those who don't already know it:

️ Incredibly frustrating to see glimpses of great play like this in the middle of lots of poor play. I'm not prepared to give up on the project just yet, these things take time. Injured players return, string a few results together and things could look a lot different come Xmas [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— BWFC Analysis (@analysis_bwfc) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This is exactly how i feel about Evatt/the current situation. We get glimpses of quality football, which we haven't seen since that brief spell under Coyle, when we look a cut above the opposition - but it's interspersed with long periods of being anonymous. Obviously that needs resolving, but i think it's worth sticking with.