Coyles season of blunders

Took him 4 month to realise 4-4-2 did not work.When he changed it v Blackburn 20/12/2011 we started picking points up.He blew points v Newcastle by subbing Muamba x2 v Newcastle and Norwich when 0-0 s looked the order of the day.Then the biggest Mystery of all the buying then not playing Sordell.Their are 2 strikers who are well past their sell buy date.no names required.N;Gog at 4 million is a wate of money ,Sigurdson at swansea and Pogrebnyak at Fulham £400-000 sigurdson on loan will cost a fraction of N;Gog;s fee.Where are the scouts that brought Eidur Gudjohnson to the club and the like.It makes me wonder will people not deal with fat Gartside.

Born to be a wanderer wrote:N;Gog at 4 million is a wate of money:evil: ,Sigurdson at swansea and pograbynek at Fulham £400-000 sigurdson on loan will cost a fraction of N;Gog;s fee.Where are the scouts that brought Eidur Gudjohnson to the club and the like.It makes me wonder will people not deal with fat Gartside.

You can't really blame Gartside for the signings, Coyle is the one who decides who we buy so the buck stops with him. In my opinion Ngog will one day rival the Johan Elmander signing in terms of wasting money. Darren Pratley, although a free transfer, could well be the worst player ever signed by a Bolton manager.

What I can blame Gartside and the board for is not getting rid of Coyle much earlier in the season, if they were the great businessmen they claim to be they'd have seen what was about to happen.

I will always leap to the defence of NGog while he's being asked to play in a completely unfamiliar role.

who in their right mind would buy NGog and play him as a target man? He isn't Alan Shearer or Duncan Ferguson.

Darren Pratley worse than Blessing Kaku or Mikel Alonso don't be so stupid.

I'm with Nat on this one, although gartside must shoulder some of the blame for the bad purchases. Shouldn't he have asked for evidence or something?

Who the fuck are our scouts? If I miss anyone out then tell me but from last summer we have signed:

- Wheater - not bad but a red card waiting to happen
- Pratley............
- Ngog - Never going to be a prolific goalscorer whilst he has a hole in is arse.
- Ream - Looks decent but looks quite lightweight for a defender
- Sordell - the biggest mystery of them all, we have £7million to spend on a player who could keep us up and coyle blows most of it on a striker who might aswell be the kit man for the amount of time he spends on the pitch.

In short, I know we have a limited budget but coyle hasn't half blown it on some shit.

aaron_bwfc wrote:Who the fuck are our scouts? If I miss anyone out then tell me but from last summer we have signed:

- Wheater - not bad but a red card waiting to happen
- Pratley............
- Ngog - Never going to be a prolific goalscorer whilst he has a hole in is arse.
- Ream - Looks decent but looks quite lightweight for a defender
- Sordell - the biggest mystery of them all, we have £7million to spend on a player who could keep us up and coyle blows most of it on a striker who might aswell be the kit man for the amount of time he spends on the pitch.

In short, I know we have a limited budget but coyle hasn't half blown it on some shit.

I really do see this differently to you:

I think wheater and ream were both good signings, its actually their efforts that have got us a lot of our points recently.

Prats is poor, but he was free and on a small wage so I dont care so much.

N'gog could still live up to his price I think and tbh hasn't had a dreadful season, but I know many will disagree with me there. No he will never be a prolific goal scorer but he can be a £4 mill striker.

I agree that Coyle should have got someone who could make an impact straight away but im yet to pass judgement on Sordell, haven't seen him enough to know if he was worth it. Look at it this way: either we got Sordell last day for 3 mill or we got no one.

And the other two you missed are:

Ryo - good loan

And this Wylde for free who has had a few good reviews.

All in all, given the wages these guys will be on I don't think they are a bad bunch.

Tuncay and Kakuta...the less said about them the better, though I am still sure we never used Tuncay in the best way, just behind the striker. He would have been great in the position Mark Davies used to play when NRC and Muamba were together.

I'm not having a go at Sordell, he must be decent to get the amount of goals he has in the championship. I'm just annoyed that coyle decided to blow quite a chunk of our budget on a player he won't even use. Plus can't say I am one for ''player for the future'' thing when we are fighting for our lives.

Coyle's biggest mistake was trying to revamp the entire squad with young players in just one season. Massive gamble that could cost us. Change was required but the pace of change should have been more measured IMO.

He was desperate to sign anyone in the jan window, made big (for us) bids for Zaha, Rhys Williams and then finally Sordell.

Owen Coyle - a triumph of PR over substance ! Better as a TV pundit that a manager of BWFC !

Depends on the brief. If the criteria he was given by the Board were:

• reduce the overall wage bill
  
• get rid of the older players and replace them with younger prospects so we won't need to spend much in the transfer market in coming seasons
  
• keep us in the prem
  

I'd say he's doing a cracking job on the first one, the second one we'll have to see if they are good enough to remove the need to spend big going forward, and the third one we'll know more about after tonight - although I would suggest that without the injuries (Holden in particular) our status wouldn't even be in doubt at this stage.

wanderlust wrote:Depends on the brief. If the criteria he was given by the Board were:

• reduce the overall wage bill
  
• get rid of the older players and replace them with younger prospects so we won't need to spend much in the transfer market in coming seasons
  
• keep us in the prem
  

I'd say he's doing a cracking job on the first one, the second one we'll have to see if they are good enough to remove the need to spend big going forward, and the third one we'll know more about after tonight - although I would suggest that without the injuries (Holden in particular) our status wouldn't even be in doubt at this stage.

agreed.

wanderlust wrote:Depends on the brief. If the criteria he was given by the Board were:

• reduce the overall wage bill
  
• get rid of the older players and replace them with younger prospects so we won't need to spend much in the transfer market in coming seasons
  
• keep us in the prem
  

I'd say he's doing a cracking job on the first one, the second one we'll have to see if they are good enough to remove the need to spend big going forward, and the third one we'll know more about after tonight - although I would suggest that without the injuries (Holden in particular) our status wouldn't even be in doubt at this stage.

Surely the first priority should be to stay in the Prem as that is where the real money is. Even if we stay up, which seems increasingly unlikely, I don't think Coyle has done a very good job. We have spent most of the season in the relegation zone. Yes the injuries to Holden and Lee have been very bad for us but given that Coyle knew that they would be unavailable for most if not all the season, what has he done to replace them?

And if he really wanted to reduce the wage bill and get rid of the older players, why didn't he sell Davies in January? That way maybe Sordell would have had a chance to play.

Of course the board and the manager want us to stay in the Premiership. That's the whole point of them being there. It's been a crap season but they don't have a magic wand or a crystal ball so it's down to the players at our disposal to roll their bloody sleeves up and knuckle down to the massive task in hand.

If we do survive then I think Coyle will be forgiven for his mistakes but next season is a different kettle of tilapia altogether. If performances don't improve then the board will wield the axe.

xmiles wrote:

Surely the first priority should be to stay in the Prem as that is where the real money is. Even if we stay up, which seems increasingly unlikely, I don't think Coyle has done a very good job. We have spent most of the season in the relegation zone. Yes the injuries to Holden and Lee have been very bad for us but given that Coyle knew that they would be unavailable for most if not all the season, what has he done to replace them?

And if he really wanted to reduce the wage bill and get rid of the older players, why didn't he sell Davies in January? That way maybe Sordell would have had a chance to play.

As a fan, my first priority is to see my team play well, improve and hopefully do well at the highest level. For the Board, however it's a tricky one. We've been in the prem for more than 10 years and yet we're losing money at an increasing rate. The potential income is higher but so are the potential losses. And whilst it's raking in dosh for the likes of Manure, the odds are stacked against the likes of us. We get sloppy seconds at best when it comes to new talent and we have to pay over the odds for average players. Long gone are the days where we can find an Eidur for 250k, a Jussi for even less and a McAteer for a bunch of footie strips. We could have the best scouts on the planet but we can't compete when it comes to the contract.
Perhaps the ONLY strategy open to OC was to get the kids in and hope that what remained of the old squad was enough to buy enough time to bring them on? If so, it's a gamble and we'll know tonight if it's likely to pay off. Like all fans, I have my disagreements with the way OC has set up the team for specific games, bemoan certain individual and collective performances and am exasperated by our players' inability to make good use of possession sometimes. But there again I've always had those disagreements whether we are doing Ok or doing shit, whichever manager has been in place - that's what opinions are about. It's easy to be critical if you don't have the personal pressure or are looking at a performance in hindsight. And then there's the big variable that is watching the players all week and not just on match days and trying different ways of setting the team up and seeing what works and what doesn't with the players available.
At some point we have to be fans rather than wannabe managers and get behind the team and hope for the best. And I'm hoping for the best tonight - not confident but hopeful. This season has been a gamble. We've placed our bet and the moment of truth is about to arrive.

BTW I was at the Norwich game when Sordell came on for the last 10 minutes and he didn't look ready. His movement was not anything special and that probably could be expected, but I'm in no rush to pile a load of expectation on the kid.

wanderlust wrote:
At some point we have to be fans rather than wannabe managers and get behind the team and hope for the best. And I'm hoping for the best tonight - not confident but hopeful. This season has been a gamble. We've placed our bet and the moment of truth is about to arrive.

As far as I'm concerned the team gets far more support than it deserves to, there is very little critisism during the 90 minutes. Much less than Megsons team received.

We have a poor manager and bunch of players that clearly lack motivation. That's not going to change whatever division we are in - much better to ditch Coyle and bring someone else in. Unfortunately the Muamba situation has saved Coyle's job for at least 7-8 months.

Wanderlust I'm pretty certain we all want the same thing, but the reason we are on this forum is to express our views, however ill-informed they might be, about our team and how it is managed.

I hope we win tonight but expect a draw, and even a win doesn't guarantee us staying up. The most interesting aspect of this game is the suggestion that a number of players may not be fit in which case Coyle will have to make some changes.

Finally I do get irritated by Coyle's relentless and often clueless optimism. As an example look at the latest quote below. It completely ignores the fact that 9 out of 10 of these points came against Wolves (relegated), Blackburn (going down) and QPR (relegation candidate and we were very lucky). We were hopeless against Fulham and our remaining games are against much better teams. What kind of form is this and does it really suggest we are going to get the points we need?

"We are not a team that has been struggling for form. We have taken ten points from 18 available over the last six games, and if we return that over the remaining five fixtures it will be enough to stay in the Barclays Premier League. It's as simple as that."

I agree he overdoes the PR - especially his constant references to the frigging "Barclays Premier League" which would indicate he gets a commission every time he says it - but I'm undecided as to whether "protecting" the players from the media (which is what he does) or doing a Di Canio and publicly humiliating them is more productive. I think we'd all like to see him have a go at them a bit more in the media, but that would only serve our egos. The important stuff is what he says behind closed doors and sadly we don't get to see that. I'm just hoping that tonight he busts their balls before during and after the game - behind closed doors.

wanderlust wrote:Depends on the brief. If the criteria he was given by the Board were:

third one we'll know more about after tonight - although I would suggest that without the injuries (Holden in particular) our status wouldn't even be in doubt at this stage.

Can't agree fully with you on that one, I know Holden is good but would he really have made up for all the defensive blunders that cost us, the red cards that we seemed to get nearly once a week at one point in the season, the lack of goals which our strikers have scored?

Sorry but we wouldn't be in that much of a better position if he was still playing now I'm sure of it.

Holden seems to have turned into some sort of mythical footballer while injured.

He's a good player, but he had as many bad games as good ones.

As for Lee, he'd been out of form a long time before his injury.