Where did it all go wrong?

[eastsussexred]

Originally Posted by fugazi3973

So what you're saying is that he improved the squad, rebuilding it from a fiasco, but now these players, without him, but playing the same tactics as Keates we would end up much lower in the league.

So improved the squad, and without him, they don't perform, sounds like quite a motivator. Doesn't sound like a disaster to me.

We'll obviously never know now, but I do genuinely believe that this pre-season would have led to Keates improving the midfield and attack. I hope that as the defence is on long-term contracts this will still be the case with the new manager, and what good steps that have been taken so far aren't just swept away.

I meant- much lower in the league than this season, as we will be very lucky to have such a poor league again next season. For me, Keates was far too defense-minded and didn't know how to set up an attacking team or play attacking football. This seemed to be fairly obvious throughout the season, even when we were breifly well ontop of our opponents and scored, the team would then shrink back to only play a defensive, hoofball game, giving the opposition a new lease of life, from which they either equalised or won the game. It suggested to me that the team were brainwashed into a 'don't lose' outfit, rather than a 'try to win' team- a symptom of Keates's managerial lack of confidence, which lasted through to the end of the season.
Would things have changed had Keates stayed? I'm not so sure, as the board have told us that he was given a very good budget this season.

[deeside_dragon]

We've played poor football all season. Its only the fact that every other team in this league has been, equally poor, that some of our fans got carried away, and thought we were good.
We stayed at the same level, while others have improved, hence the reason, we've finished tenth.

[aussiejackoinsaudi]

Basically a lot more money spent but no better than last season. Keates improved nothing.

[pagl]

Originally Posted by aussiejackoinsaudi

Basically a lot more money spent but no better than last season. Keates improved nothing.

I would disagree as I think Keates did make improvements but not as many as we hoped for.

I said after a couple of games that we were more scared of losing than going for the win and got shot down by fans saying we needed time to gel.

Not sure on the stats but it would be interesting to know how many goals we scored in the last quarter of a game.

Thankfully its all done now and the new manager will have a better philosophy on tactics and players.

[crazywelsh]

I don’t understand why anyone expected much from boden I was told and posted it as he signed that at Inverness he was shocking, Just vanished at games so they stopped playing him. Serious questions should be asked if a player will leave the spl for the National league as it is usually in reverse.

The attack was spineless and new additions in January have produced nothing of benefit to the team and that is partly our downfall we could all see it.

But fcuk it, we go again.

[krux]

Originally Posted by standman

From who? No one is in charge at any level within our club.

Players are in charge
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[Captain Dread]

Originally Posted by Wrexhm 1978

I disagree. This gives Keates too much credit. The wheels were coming off before he left. You can’t grind your way to promotion with anti-football. If you use grinding tactics you are the ones who usually get ground down. You can never rest players or mentally relax at any time so the collapse was inevitable. The style of football has been horrendous all season
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Earlier in the season I foolishly said I didn't mind how ugly or negative we were as long as it got results. That's come back to bite me hasn't it. The 'don't lose' mentality was as much a cause of all the passing sideways and back as the limitations of some of our players. Instead of risking losing possession by trying to beat a man just pass back. But then we'd happily hoof the ball forward out of defence back to the opposition.
At yesterdays match I questioned the effort on the pitch when we managed a break and only Rutherford arrived to support (the rest jogged up 5 minutes later). But Young Dread thought it was more likely that they just didn't know what to do. So we had a defensive minded team with no counter-attacking game plan. That explains a lot this season.
And when you play like this you need clinical strikers. We tried 7 altogether and none of them could be relied on to hit a ball cleanly and on target. Even Holroyd seemed to bundle in quite a few of his meagre top scorer's goal tally.
You also can't play defensive football while forgetting how to defend corners and set pieces, and seemingly get worse at it as the season drags on.
I suppose overall it's been better than the second year of the Mills regime with a bit of that damage repaired, but it's all wearing a bit thin at the moment. This time I'll start from an assumption that the new manager will be rubbish then hopefully I wont be disappointed yet again.

[pwynnej]

I'd say the issue goes back a long long ago, not pre-season, not in January this, and not recent managerial appointments which were, by and large, welcomed at the time..

Think back to around 2006-7, we were on a poor run and Denis was dismissed, we appoint Brian instead of Darren, who spits out his dummy and runs to Peterborough... Decisions made then continue to affect us now...we are where we are because of what happened then.

More recently, had Deano not been seduced by Doncaster we might be in the league by now, things might be rosy and everyone will think Moss Dickens and Roberts are the Messiahs.

For this year, it was the recruitments at the front end that ultimately led to where we are now, my boss (Macc fan) said Holroyd isn't going to get us any goals....

[Sandgrounder]

Originally Posted by the_holt_dragon

To me Keates would have got us in the play offs, but we would have been quickly out of them. The end result would still not have been league 2.

The problem has clearly been lack of goals with Boden our main striker signing being a huge flop. If he had managed 5 or 6 goals (still a very poor tally) we would have made the play offs. However the midfield also need to take some responsibility offering no goals and little creativity. Lack of goals meant we had a poor (particularly at home under both managers) record against the top clubs restricting our points total and giving up points to our rivals. I think this is mainly down to poor (non defender) recruitment and any manager would have struggled to get this team up.

Agree with this.

For me, Keates has been the butt of some unfair criticism (which isn't to say he was blameless).

Keates IMO saw the job as a 2 year project and his aim this season was to make us difficult to beat. He did that and, in any other season with some decent teams in the league, we would have finished upper mid table and probably we would all have been happy with the progress from the Mills era.

The problem for Keates was that the standard in the league has been exceptionally weak this season and he was very slow to realise this and adjust accordingly (or too stubborn to change his plan, perhaps?). Striker recruitment was below average in the summer as Boden and Holroyd as the main strikers weren't complementary to each other. Recruitment in Jan was just horrific and Keates does have to cop for an awful lot of blame there.

At the end of the day, though, he was an L plate manager and he was always going to make mistakes: the job really can 't be as easy as fans would like to think. He'll have learned a lot from this experience, assuming he can hang on to the job at Walsall, but the kicker for us is that it's Wrexham that's paying the price.