I wasn’t taking anything away from what Gareth did for us and the achievements that his achieved at all. The man is always a legend in my eyes and I always backed him. I was just drawing on a comparison that it looks like all of our managers go through at some point in their career here.
Dodds may well prove to be out of his depth, although i would have said the same thing about GA and Blooms at the same stage of thier career, but that’s not the most pressing issue.
We know what our senior players are capable of, and to a man they failed to deliver. And this was the week after some of them had taken shots at the fans on social media. A few embarrassed squad members at the training ground today i should hope.
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As someone said above everyone is focusing on Dodds but once the team cross the white line, other than subs there is little he can do if the team fail to follow the game plan.
I am fairly certain there will have been the Dodds equivalent of hairdryer moments after the game & this morning & rightly so as the players failed to deliver on the day.
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To be fair, we do always have 1 game every season where we are awful. I hope that Saturday was that one-off even though the timing of that game was the worst they could have used it on. However, there are still 2 games left, we know that Wrexham aren’t as consistent as they thought they were and their game against Charlton this weekend is HUGE! We just need to make sure that we don’t concede any more ground and/or points
Please please refer to next season - not next year. My cardiologist thinks my chances of surviving into next year are not great!
In response to a post on Facebook that said Dodds has ruined a team that was flying before he took over, I looked back at the results of the 14 league games before his arrival and the 14 he has subsequently overseen.
Pre-Dodds: W6 D6 L2=24 points.
Since Dodds: W7 D4 L4=25 points.
Since there is no provision in football for awarding extra points for style of play, I won’t get into that debate, but purely on results he isn’t the disaster some people think he is.
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7+4+4 = 15
You’ve given Dodds an extra game!
The last 15 games pre-Dodds produced 27 points.
PS: Not surprised you don’t want to get into the style of play debate.
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FWIW if we don’t finish 2nd I wouldn’t put it down to Dodds and I wouldn’t put it down to our results against Charlton or Wrexham either. I’d put it down to our complete inability to find the back of the net in draws such as Shrewsbury, Wigan and Northampton, all of which we had countless clear-cut chances in.
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On this occasion it was arthritic fingers rather than arthritic brain but thanks for spotting the error. Point is (if you’ll pardon the pun) that the points return wasn’t much better in the months before MD arrived
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I think you can do anything with stats.
I think there was a disappointing three game run under Bloomfield in the league and then obvious disruption when he left. But that followed a magical period. If you want to compare, compare to first half of the season.
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No way is that a like-for-like comparison.
In the first months of the season players are at peak fitness and playing with the freedom of being under no immediate pressure to win. Now they are inevitably feeling jaded after playing 50+ games and the pressure of pushing for promotion is immense and suffocating.
In addition, early season we had players like Harvie, Morley and in particular Kone in top form, something that MD hasn’t been able to enjoy.
I yield to no one in my admiration and affection for Blooms, but if the roles had been reversed and he had taken over from Gaz with the team in the top 3 and key players missing or out of form, he would have faced the same challenges MD has faced. We will, of course, never know how he would have coped.
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We do know exactly what happened when MB took over from GA with the team in the play offs picture though.
We were 15th in the table when Blooms replaced Gaz in February, 2023.
Wrong I’m afraid @glasshalffull1 - we were 7th, 3 points off the play offs (Gareth Ainsworth: QPR appoint Wycombe boss as head coach; Matt Bloomfield to be Wanderers boss - BBC Sport).
We finished 9th, 8 points off the play offs. The parallels are clear.
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We were 7th referring back to chairboys.co.uk (which is pretty close to my memory surprisingly). We’d just won 5 in a row and were playing some of the best football for a long time under GA.
We only dropped a couple of places to the end of the season (which is a lot better than my memory recalls).
In terms of results MD has done okay - the timing of MBs departure (no blame from me in his direction) and the possible failure to secure the Plan A replacement head coach (the Danish guy) pretty much derailed the season but it could have been a whole lot worse.
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Yes, I mistakenly looked at the following season but the point remains the same-it’s not easy taking over at that stage of the season.
And we signed 12 players in January so should in theory be better!
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Including breaking the transfer record twice
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What would you have said if MD had dropped most of the players who got us into the top 3 and brought in a host of new arrivals?
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Rava, Low, Fred got us to where we are and recently they’ve spent a lot of time on the bench.
Norris, Bradley, Simons, Reach have played a lot of minutes. Some good some bad.
I find our current tactics incredibly frustrating and we were absolutely pummelled yesterday. I have felt that potential result has been coming for awhile. We’ve just been fortunate to play most of the out of form teams recently and have been so solid. However, what we saw yesterday is that when we concede, it is almost impossible for that line up and team to turn it around. When was the last time
Ainsworth was incredibly successful by making positive attacking changes when other managers would take off an attacker and put a defender on. Importantly he tended to keep the balance of the team.
Bloomfield realised, at this level, getting the ball forwards (like Liverpool/Brighton do) would be more successful than the Man City way. Yes it took him awhile but it worked.
I just hope Dodds realises sooner rather than later and that we don’t have a Russell Martinesque manager who is wedded to his principles.
Given the Charlton, Wrexham and Birmingham performances and defeats recently, I do not believe Dodds can manage in the Championship currently. Of course, I’d like to get promoted but I just don’t see how he would make us competitive.
Perhaps, if we will be sticking with him, then another season in League One would be better for his personal development and maybe better for us long term. Who knows.
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