Agreed. How people get it in their heads that SP is doing a bad job, that he's preventing the club moving forward, is not splashing out just because he's tight, or various other drivel spouted on here is beyond me.

I just cannot understand how people don't see it. Lower mid-table in the top flight every year for eight years is bordering on miraculous given our history, budget, facilities, fairly recent scrapes with administration, maximum wage bill allowed under FFP, and all the other things that actually exist in the real world, but get overlooked (or just aren't understood) by critics of Parish.

The current stick being used to beat him with is that he backs Roy who plays awful football. Well, last Saturday was certainly dire, and it wasn't the first time that's happened, but leaving aside whether Roy is right to play as he does, it's wrong to say that Parish doesn't care how we play. He just weighs that up against whether we get relegated which, and I can't believe this is even something people debate, would be a bad thing.

When appointing De Boer Parish talked frankly about how the team needed to develop from being a very defensive counter attacking side to one who would use the ball better and score more goals, especially at home where our record (at that time) was bottom three material. As we know, he got his fingers burnt, and reverted to the safe pair of hands of a defensive coach.

I'm sure he finds days like Saturday as tedious to watch as we do. The difference is he sees the ugly reality of it - playing like that is, overall, the most likely way that a small-to-medium sized club like ours will stay up, and it's only by staying up that he can make us a medium-to-big club through long term planning and development of the academy and stadium. Which he has explained. Openly. Again and again.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (23 Oct 2020 3.36pm)

The beautiful game turned ugly and all because it is considered by our owner and manager that is the only way to get a starting 11, (who between them earn in excess of 1/2 a million pounds a week), to play and stay in the Premier League?

Sorry, I don’t buy that. We play that way because it is the only way our manager knows how and not because the players are incapable of playing differently.

Our team is frozen with fear out on the pitch, it’s like the ball is a bundle of Covid and no-one wants it because it’s more important to stay ‘in shape’. We’ve seen it before with Roy’s England sides.

It is time for a change. Whoever comes in must understand how football is evolving and how best to utilise the existing talent within the squad which in my mind is being stifled by the current set up.

I expect Roy to call it quits at the end of this season, Dyche would be the safest and likeliest option, many on here will disagree with me, but I rate Nigel Pearson, and am willing to overlook his assault on James Arthur's throat as a bit of surplus emotion brought on by the extreme stresses and strains of football management - he's a thinker and a good coach, but he might be a bit too independent-minded for Parish.

Roy's interviews are always so sterile and stage managed by a guy with decades of media training. Football and life in general needs a few more people that wear their hearts on their sleeve.