The attention turns to
Andy Scott.
Michael Appleton gets a wide berth from me. Appleton will stand in the Charlton dug out from Saturday and therefore gets my support. What betterments and regeneration the next coming from Salford can achieve with the squad he has been given is talk for another day.
So then, Andy Scott.
The Technical Director has masterfully landed himself a role in SE7 where he is calling a lot of the shots. Recruitment, hierarchical blueprint, culture, playing style and executive search. It’s s big job and I think we should all keep a watch on Scott.
Recruitment has been lukewarm at best, and we will see if the August work improves us. Scott of course has pitched the head coach over a club manager philosophy. I am not against that profile, but the onus is on Scott to make it click.
I did like that Scott was brutally honest about the culture and mentality at the club. We are in a steep decline with a big black cloud of nihility hanging over us. That has to change, and Scott has stuck his neck out to make the change.
Scott chose Michael Appleton, with rubber-stamps from Jim Rodwell and podcaster Simon Lenagan, but the decision was Scott’s, and his importance in the football club should not go understated.
Appleton like Holden, Garner, Jacko and others beforehand will get the fan’s frontline angst, but remember the puppeteer.
The puppeteers purse strings will be cut if the results don’t start going our way a football clubs finances can tolerate a bad end to a season but at this early stage of the it could be calamitous…..fans get bored of losing no matter how loyal !
I’m aware of the positioning of Scott in recent months and his influence on signings in all areas is evident.
Dean was not impressed with Scott’s stance on recruitment and as a result was sacked.
Let’s be honest here….the fans have gone through tough times and the burning light of promotion has been snuffed out.
We will have a season of trying to remain in this league.
Appleton I’m sure will do his best with a very weak squad but don’t be surprised if we lose another manager before the end of season if we continue to nose dive.
Charlton fans are on the case and they will vote with their feet if we don’t make progress up this league.
First, I like Holden but I believe he had to go and it was probably better now than wait until we were even worse off, as whilst he was a very genuine person, once he gets on a losing streak he has no real idea how to turn it round as many managers with little experince do an as we have seen with our past ones! Let’s be honest Holden couldn’t get the defence right last season and it has just carried on into this season, with the same tactics and consistant errors!
To get out of this division and also the Championship reasonably quickly, you need an experinced head, someone like Warnock, who knows what it takes and the sort players required. When in the Premiership its a different ball game and different tactics and type of players are required and normally a different manager, to be handle this.
So we come to Appleton, well he has had much more experince in these divisions, but in all reality has had hardly any better win ratio etc and has been sacked a few times for poor results.
Will he be better than Holden who knows, let’s hope so, but the thing that concerns me is when he was at Lincoln, he never engaged with the fans and totally lost it with them in the end, which doesn’t bode well with how Charlton want a manager to engage with them!
Plus more worring, it appears he has certain players who he really likes, most managers do, but Appleton continues to play them no matter how bad they play or errors they make, one of them being McGrandles!
Anyway for now I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but if things start to go wrong, we may well see McGrandles straight back in the team, as the saviour, even if he is still not over his continual injuries! 🙂
Certainly Appleton will not be your friendly saying all the right things clapping the away end type of manager, but if he is successful so what. If he is successful.
Reminds me of Russell Slade so much this appointment….
Agree with Mike. I hate to keep banging the same old drum, but does Scott and his cohorts not see that the way to give the club the best chance of promotion from League 1 is to invest in experience and quality. As we know, in the last two months, the club has been woefully deficient in acquiring playing personnel with those attributes, and that same course of action has now been extended to the installation of he new manager. Maybe Scott can see something in Appleton that nobody else can. Lets hope that is the case. I wonder what qualities put him head and shoulders above other candidates, or is he just the best of a poor bunch, much like most of the current playing staff. We will have to give him a chance, as everyone deserves that, but my personal hopes are not high.
I would have kept Dean Holden, the recruitment process was not complete (arguably it still isn’t) and he had a number of players either injured or coming back from injury and not match fit. Michael Appleton will benefit from having these players to call on.
But football is a results game and I presume that the SMT felt that DH wasn’t their best bet going forward and a new manager would have more success and would benefit from more time with the squad.
The culture at the club is not helpful, the Fleetwood win was the first time in 18 months that we came from a goal down to win a game. When we concede we tend to lose shape and motivation and frequently look like we are giving up and about to concede again. We also have too much dead wood on our books and need to shift on some overpaid/underperforming players.
A random thought, I wonder if Michael Appleton has worked with the various members of the SMT before? Especially Andy Scott?
He has an Oxford connection, so Methven and the Lenagan’s.
Case of “jobs for the boys”
Your right CA I think they were all in the Oxford boat race team when it sank! 🙂
😂 😂