Finally found a moment to fully express my views following the loss yesterday against Chelsea.

I believe we have reached a moment where the blame must be equally split between both Roy Hodgson & Steve Parish/The Board.

Starting with the board, regardless of the views of the Viera sacking, bringing Hodgson back to finish the final 10 or so games last season was a very sensible move. He steadied the ship, albeit against on-paper 'easier' opposition and kept us safe. There was a lot of frustrated fans in Roy's final season and that gave him the opportunity to receive the hero's goodbye which he quite frankly deserved.

However, in those 3-4 months it was Parish/the board's responsibility to be scouting a new successor. I genuinely don't quite understand the thinking behind appointing Roy for 1 more year. It's not long term and therefore doesn't help our club move forward. Just retain and stay still for a year.

I've seen a similar argument recently and historically here before which is 'who else can do the job?' and I really despise this weak argument. Firstly, we are an established Premier League club - the idea that nobody would be attracted here is ridiculous. Secondly, it's not down to us as fans to identify someone. We know the big available names i.e Cooper, Lopetegui - etc, but we have a scouting team who should be identifying exciting and available managers from other leagues, domestic and abroad. They exist and we've seen other clubs find them and become successful with them over the years.

With Roy Hodgson, we've regressed to negative tactics which frustrated us all in his final season with us. Play for a draw, using his same 12-13 players on rotation, players being played out of position, and subs being used very late if we're lucky.

I've seen a few comments asking if anyone else could do better with our team? My view on this is strongly yes. Our team is not a poor team - it's a skeleton squad for sure but we have some very good talent here. Olise & Eze are our star boys. Guehi & Anderson are a superb CB pairing. Lerma, Doucoure (when fit) are both strong, talented midfielders and Hughes has been much improved this season. Richards is playing out of position but his defensive abilities - tackling, interceptions and tracking back is very very good. But a midfielder he is not. Our spine is strong and we genuinely have no idea how good players like Franca, Ozoh, JRS because their minutes have been minimal.

Finally, something I've noticed is whilst we don't want to sell players, we almost never earn any money from any player sales. With FFP, we can spend a certain % of club earnings. Well, if we aren't selling ever, our earnings and profit are of course lower. I'm not saying we should sell our top players but we need to be smarter to reinvest. Zaha for example should not have been allowed to leave for free. Even if we secured £20mill for him with a contract and agreement with him we'd let him go, that's further investment available for us to build the squad and manager/coaching staff. This is an issue that doesn't get discussed enough. Every club makes player sales, except us.

Unfortunately, Roy needs to leave now. But the board needs to adjust the way they are running this club. (This is not a Parish out post)

Edited by YoDougie (28 Dec 2023 3.20pm)

Finally found a moment to fully express my views following the loss yesterday against Chelsea.

I believe we have reached a moment where the blame must be equally split between both Roy Hodgson & Steve Parish/The Board.

Edited by YoDougie (28 Dec 2023 3.20pm)

The big difference between this and the Vieira situation is that under him, we looked like we could never win a game. The performances became totally unacceptable.
I think that only in the Bournemouth game did we perform anything like that badly.

The trouble is that no one can predict the outcome of sacking Roy.
I'd be happier to see new blood at the club in January than a change of manager, especially since the current available options are not very appealing.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (28 Dec 2023 11.53am)

I spoke today to someone who knows Dougie quite well. Apparently Dougie is fuming that Franca is being given very little opportunity to impress on the pitch. I don’t know how much truth is in it, but just reporting as told.