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tonythescout wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2025 4:53 pm
It’s been a very alarming and bizarre couple of weeks but today’s fine win keeps the wolves at bay.
Promotion is a must this season if fail then he’s got to go. Been very naive at times this season and to expect better of a 60odd year old former premier league manager is fair to say the least.
Unsurprisingly we disagree but bizarrely I'm defending Brown here. Promotion or sacking is rather extreme! I think, avoiding any disasters he's done enough to warrant another crack. To win the play offs requires more luck than anything and so to need to win the league or face the sack can't be a recipe for success.
We also have quite a rebuild with our mainstay of AMS/Hemmo coming towards the end and so the last thing we need is more instability.
An interesting question, and perhaps, after 4 defeats in 5 home games, in the modern game, a reasonable one.
From my perspective I don’t have a love affair with PB as manager, but if you re-frame the question as whether I think he remains the right man for the job, I would say yes.
Things change quickly and there is the danger of looking at results in isolation, such as our home form in 2025, whereas the overall position is, IMHO, quite positive.
We’re currently sat fifth in the division and if we win our games in hand we’d be top.
We also won through five of our seven FA Cup and FA Trophy ties - no-one will remember this season for our cup exploits but our record was decent.
Our undoing in cup competitions was two home ties where we struggled to score, and that has also cost us four home league defeats too.
That comes from a problem that PB inherited from the previous management and dates back to the summer of 2022. We lost Sammy Austin and OSJ that summer and have failed to replace their goals, exposing AMS and Hemmo as our only regular contributors of goals. That failure, as we so often identify, is, in my mind, PB’s biggest failing.
But otherwise I think we’re in a pretty good place and recruitment from the summer onwards of the likes of Downing, Devine and Kandola has generally been a success.
On Boxing Day we were top and had been told by several managers of teams we had played in the preceding weeks that we were the best team in the league.
Since then league form has been more mixed (W3 D2 L3), but it probably feels worse than it actually is because the three defeats have all been at home.
Our away record remains strong (W4 D2 since the thumping at King’s Lynn).
Our season has oscillated - a good start, and then inconsistent form until mid-October, picking up strongly after the Guiseley defeat.
Our record in all competitions between Guiseley and Rushall was superb - W11 D2 L1 (counting Fylde as a win) - yet the defeat - at KL, mentioned above - sticks in the mind, perhaps clouding judgment as to just how good results were in that period. We’ve stuttered a bit since, but not awfully overall, given our continued unbeaten away run.
If we can again be the side we saw in the late Autumn and up to New Year, we’re definitely in the title race.
TomLong78 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2025 1:47 pm
An interesting question, and perhaps, after 4 defeats in 5 home games, in the modern game, a reasonable one.
From my perspective I don’t have a love affair with PB as manager, but if you re-frame the question as whether I think he remains the right man for the job, I would say yes.
Things change quickly and there is the danger of looking at results in isolation, such as our home form in 2025, whereas the overall position is, IMHO, quite positive.
We’re currently sat fifth in the division and if we win our games in hand we’d be top.
We also won through five of our seven FA Cup and FA Trophy ties - no-one will remember this season for our cup exploits but our record was decent.
Our undoing in cup competitions was two home ties where we struggled to score, and that has also cost us four home league defeats too.
That comes from a problem that PB inherited from the previous management and dates back to the summer of 2022. We lost Sammy Austin and OSJ that summer and have failed to replace their goals, exposing AMS and Hemmo as our only regular contributors of goals. That failure, as we so often identify, is, in my mind, PB’s biggest failing.
But otherwise I think we’re in a pretty good place and recruitment from the summer onwards of the likes of Downing, Devine and Kandola has generally been a success.
On Boxing Day we were top and had been told by several managers of teams we had played in the preceding weeks that we were the best team in the league.
Since then league form has been more mixed (W3 D2 L3), but it probably feels worse than it actually is because the three defeats have all been at home.
Our away record remains strong (W4 D2 since the thumping at King’s Lynn).
Our season has oscillated - a good start, and then inconsistent form until mid-October, picking up strongly after the Guiseley defeat.
Our record in all competitions between Guiseley and Rushall was superb - W11 D2 L1 (counting Fylde as a win) - yet the defeat - at KL, mentioned above - sticks in the mind, perhaps clouding judgment as to just how good results were in that period. We’ve stuttered a bit since, but not awfully overall, given our continued unbeaten away run.
If we can again be the side we saw in the late Autumn and up to New Year, we’re definitely in the title race.
After the hope of last season it’s clear that Brown is naive and doesn’t understand the league or has the quality to get us what we need.
We started off with a physically weak Eustace style of play which quickly unraveled after promising start
Since then we became solid but not spectacular. Our Achilles heal again has been poor conversion rates and requirement for a goalscorer which again hasn’t been addressed
Not sure what is going on in training but since the turn of 2025 we have yielded five yes five defeats which ain’t good enough
Sheffield Harrier wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2025 12:16 am
Who’s going to pay off his contract?
Weren't Penn and O'Connor under contract for this season as well, potentially we could still be paying them both.
Had we won last night (possible if Devine had been available and not had a bizarre red card) then a very different song people would be singing.
Yes, home form still needs addressing but I'm struggling to see how a change will transform anything. Who, how much will it cost, how long would they be given? I'm not convinced chopping and changing is a recipe for success.
Sheffield Harrier wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2025 12:16 am
Who’s going to pay off his contract?
Weren't Penn and O'Connor under contract for this season as well, potentially we could still be paying them both.
Had we won last night (possible if Devine had been available and not had a bizarre red card) then a very different song people would be singing.
Yes, home form still needs addressing but I'm struggling to see how a change will transform anything. Who, how much will it cost, how long would they be given? I'm not convinced chopping and changing is a recipe for success.
If you have a manager calling out a player for getting sent off when it was one of the worst refeering decisions we’ve seen for years, constantly plays his son over a very good
Loan player and doesn’t seem
To get the league or know his best team
Or system then change is needed imo.
It’s not as if he’s had plenty of time is it.
I don't think there were many Harriers fans on New Year's Day who thought we would win the league.
But I still don't think many would have foreseen how quickly we would fall from the top of the table, or how badly the January transfer window would go - and I do think you have to take both together.
Tom's post is good and there is a lot to agree with. But I was saying to somebody on Saturday that something feels off, and I can't put my finger on what. So many things don't make sense.
The selection stuff is weird. Bring in Lutz, doesn't get a game. Thompson has a stormer against Sutton and disappears. Money for old Tope is starting games in that good run, then disappears, AMS is exhausted and not scoring goals, Maz has gone off the boil, the formation keeps changing, Devine's role keeps changing, all of these things are exceptionally weird. Are the players no longer playing for him? Do players not want to come? Why?
Brown's recent interviews have been worrying - from getting a bit shirty with a reporter asking about signing a goal scorer and then last night blaming Reynolds for the red card. As I speculated elsewhere - it could well be him trying to give some 'tough love' to a young player - but it's not a good look after a loss like that.
We don't know what is going on behind the scenes. We've all heard fans being told by Lane that money was there for a striker, but instead we've not signed anyone. I'd love to know how true the Ebanks/Morrison etc rumours are in January - but they felt too good to be true and too 'not Harriers' to be the case - and so it came to pass. Why have we not brought in a RWB to replace Foulkes if Thompson isn't trusted. It's just bonkers. McNally, our best CB is being drafted in to replace him. Why!
What we see on the pitch and from Brown's interviews is the physical manifestation of Lane and Holdsworth - so I want to give him a bit of slack. However...
On paper Brown should have the experience to get our season back on track, but I think there is diminishing confidence that he is able to. It's all well and good him saying in his interview after Marine that he needs to go away and think about it. That should be constant process, not after an umpteenth loss against a team fighting relegation.
Anything outside the playoffs would be an aberration. I don't think he should go (nor do I think we're able to afford to) because after the January window has shut I'm not sure what the point would be.
But I do think we're in danger of blowing a very good season, and a lot of the reasons why seem to lie at Brown's door.
HumpySalters wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2025 12:34 pm
Transfer window open until end of March i believe.
The contracts for our dynamic management team were only extend to the end of the season I believe?
I've had many conversations with my Southend United supporting cousins since PB joined us. It seems that our trajectory with him is familiar. A period of uncertainty followed by a time of mutual love with a string of good results. Then disillusionment, when he starts making decisions that are unfathomable to the fans.
We seem to be in the latter phase and this is when classically he 'loses the dressing room'. Are we seeing signs of this with Devine's phoned-in sick note and the unexplained absence of Sep Thompson? Is the continual mixing up of the back three (or is it four) going to help? Surely the unwarranted criticism of Ryley Reynolds was misjudged will alienate the player and lead to unrest.
Brown came to Aggborough with a reputation of being good with words but, 'truth be told', the cliché rich extended interviews and continual Bolton and Premier League reminiscences haven't been convincing. Is he being found out by both the fans and players?
I really hope I'm looking a fool at the end of the season because winning the league is still remotely possible but not with the discord between PB and the players that I'm sensing now.
“But I was saying to somebody on Saturday that something feels off, and I can't put my finger on what. So many things don't make sense.”
I agree Harry.
Feels rather directionless to me. Nothing from Lane for ages. Nothing from Holdsworth. I do get that not all owners want to make statements every five minutes.
Can anyone say what type of identify and style of football we are trying to play under Brown? Do we think he is personally watching games around the region and looking at players? How much knowledge does he have? And if not much, who does he rely on?
Who runs training? Him? McDonald? Wonder what sort of contracts they’re on compared to Russ and Jimmy.
His interviews aren’t good are they?
Recruitment and retention is very questionable.
I expect the Phil Brown chapter will make very interesting reading when Matty Paddock writes that book he has promised!!
Hopefully I’m another negative ninny who looks a fool in a few months time.
