Whenever the subject of how much time you should give a failing manager to turn it around, get his system working etc, comes up people almost always point at Old Big Red Nose or David Moyes.
My problem with that is they are the exception as opposed to the rule. Plus they have both had very different amounts of success. OBRN has of course won everything going over a very long period of time. Could anybody else have done what he has done? Who knows but unlikely. Moyes has in contrast won nothing. His claim to fame is that he has kept Everton in the PL with very little money. Two very different meanings of success.
How long is "enough time" and if you give the manager enough time and it fails where does that leave your beloved team?
What - 5 years, 10, 2 ?? OK, so you give him 2 years and say to yourselves "no matter what happens we give this guy 2 years" and at the end of the 2 years you are in the Championship, mid table, the ground is nearly empty and all your best players have gone with no chance of replacing them. Do you stick with the manager on the basis that he needs more time then?
There is too much at stake for everybody, the owners, the players and the fans, to stick by someone that you "hope" will turn it around. Its a tough old world and whilst you might not expect a new manager on several million pounds a year (sarcasm!) to win his first 6 or even 10 games, you would certainly expect him to have the crowd, the management and most importantly, the players on his side.
Joe, in another post, said that getting rid of a manager too quickly showed a small club mentality. I don't agree with that. Are Chelsea a small club? Have they got rid of several managers after relatively very little time? Yes, are they CL Champions who will no doubt be in the top 4 (or 3) again this year - yes.
There are two differences between the AVB at Chelsea and the AVB now. First, he has been told to smile more when doing TV interviews and second, well there is no second from what I can see.
He has adopted the same negative team tactics, he has made some very strange sub decisions and subsequently that has put some of the neutrals in the crowd against him, he "appears" to have lost the support of some of the senior players (already), he looks like insisting on playing 4-5-1 with tiny Defoe up front on his own and even though he smiles more - he still looks like a smug git.
Yes of course we will win some games this year and I do not expect us to be in the relegation scrap but for a team that most neutrals and "experts" think should be fighting for 4th is that good enough? And what about next year whilst this "transistiion period" that is somewhere in AVB's mind is going on, where does that leave us? watching boring negative games and seeing our best players leave - that would be my guess.
I dearly hope I am wrong but all the facts (as I see them of course) do not point that way.
So, and this is only my opinion of course, AVB is not going to be the saviour we all crave, not now and not next year. And on that basis, regardless of the flack we would get from those who think everyone deserves "more time", I would start looking for someone with all the qualities that a top manager has right now. That "flack" would be long forgotten if we were to actually win something or even get into the top 4.
