Honestly never ceases to amaze me how much of a pass Frank gets in these debates. He should never have been appointed, so the ultimate blame goes to the people who made that decision. But he could have done things differently and had a better time of it.
It also never ceases to amaze me that the team is spoke about as ‘two years of this form’. It just isn’t. The season before last we finished 5th, and we were NO WHERE NEAR as bad in the second half of that season as we have been in this. And we also didn’t start last season badly either. The slide started once ridiculous injuries took hold, not because the foundations were so bad or that the manager was terrible.
Each season is its its own thing, with its own dynamics. I frankly don’t understand the desire to talk down the ability of our players, especially when it’s completely incongruent with the fact that they are almost to a man top internationals. Clearly something has happened at the club that is bigger than just ‘the players are bad.’
And Frank served up the most risk averse, ungodly awful football that we have probably seen in the last 30 years minimum. It was dreadful. The fact that the players clearly enjoyed playing in a polar opposite style and enjoyed taking risks surely has to factor into people’s analysis of this season? They was clearly no proper buy in for what Frank is selling.
Frank could have done more to build on the bits of last season that the players appreciated. He could have made an effort to understand the dynamics of the squad better. But he didn’t do any of that. He decided to build a team in his image from the ground up. And if the squad was desperately calling for that, I’d get it. But that clearly wasn’t what was happening.
And overall fault clearly goes to the decision makers. Who decided to in a completely self inflicted manner to put yet more transition on the team. Transition that they weren’t asking for, and didn’t need. But the decision makers thought they were right. They were dead wrong.
