Ainsworth was a great manager for us but he had a habit of making subs very late and sometimes his optimistic reading of a poor game was so optimistic it was almost delusional.
This clearly didn’t make him a bad manager and statistically he has been the best manager we have had. He wasn’t perfect as no manager is and he dressed like the oldest rocker in town. Certain players responded to his personality and the ones who didn’t were moved on.
Duff is clearly not perfect either but he has shown he is a good solid manager imo.He has his own personality and I assume the remaining players are the ones who will now respond to it,with the others now gone or out on loan.
I think maybe he has at least earned the right for people to try and focus a little more on his qualiites rather than his flaws at this point of the season. At least try not to be so jaundiced in your views before it’s even begun.
There is no such thing as the perfect manager, Duff’s use of Lyle and Scott is as bad as Dodd’s beige cargo pants in my opinion but at least neither looked like a throw back from several decades ago .
Ainsworth and Bloomfield could have be accused of gaslighting with their take on some performances,Duff says it exactly how it is with without holding back which is his style.
We can debate all day as to why last season was how it was but but one thing is without question,Duff had to pick up the pieces and it is only now that he has his own team.Bloomfield was pretty poor before he had his own team with murmors of needing to be sacked.Ainsworth has also had a heard time at Gillingham with a complete collapse in the second half of their season last year. He now has his own team for next season.
I am not saying Duff if beyond reproach but the utterly negative take a few have on this seasons prospects under his leadership does appear to me to come from a place of extreme entitlement or perfectionism.
Your perceptive Ainsworth point is a fascinating one… “his optimistic reading of a poor game was so optimistic it was almost delusional.” As someone fascinated by coaching methods and behaviour I think this fits into his ‘never too high, never too low’ mantra. When there is a low, finding the positives (even if they appear delusional at times) keeps everyone on an even keel and pressing on/building. For me this is a great skill to have as a manager and his relentless positivity contributed to his successes with us. However I agree it could be frustrating /strange to listen to post match interviews at times as a fan.
You missed the obvious one: he’ll be gone because he’ll have the team flying by xmas and Dan Rice hates the idea of promotion so he’ll force Duff out and replace him with a nice guy patsy. Again.
To be clear though,this isn’t an attack on Ainsworth or Bloomfield.
It is simply pointing out that different managers have different styles,flaws and despite this can go on to be very successful for us ( with the exception of Smith,Adams,Smillie,and Dodds of course ) !
I actually quite like that. A reaction that surprised me - my reaction, I mean and I’m pretty sure that it has to do with a very tiny lingering doubt (arising from things said in post match interviews) about the motivational aspect of Michael Duff’s skill set. But against that (and paradoxically) I like to think that, in much the same way as Dan Rice has clearly learnt on the job, MD2 has thought long and hard - done some soul searching - about player motivation. Gareth Ainsworth’s seminars on motivation were brilliant, apparently so I can see it all coming together.
Ainsworth was more about results than performances. These were beginning to coincide more frequently towards the end of his tenure. We’ll never know what a big budget Ainsworth team would have looked like, but probably not silky and sexy.
Managers work well in certain environments. I think Duff is better with a smaller club, more close knit, where grit & determination can give you an edge.
He reminds me of David Moyes to a degree. You know he doesn’t suffer fools gladly and hates tardiness and laziness. He also has room for flair players in his teams but they have to work hard.
I have some reservations about Duff but those are far outweighed by the pro’s thus far. As we saw so painfully in the World Cup Semi, shutting up shop and not being positive can be incredibly costly. Duff seems to prefer protecting what we have. Ainsworth was so successful for us because he would take the game to the opposition as the best way to defend a lead more often than not.
I’d like to see Duff be more positive in defending a lead and also more positive in his post match interviews and focusing more on what we’ve done well than what we didn’t do well.
He is clearly a very good manager at this level and I would be surprised if we were not challenging for the play offs going into April.
If we ever got back to the Championship and we needed a new manager to get us out of it then Blooms would certainly be in the frame given his experience
