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Agree with Enzo. He was playing football manager in that first season. Evidently had a big enoiugh budget to bring pretty much any player he wanted. His talent was in identifying the players he wanted - and having coached at that level it can't have been that difficult, and moulding them into a squad - and he had the staff to help him do that as well.

One promotion, three play-off campaigns, two trips to Wembley and a trek to Old Trafford in four seasons isn't bad going, irrespective of resources and budget. He still had to build a team from scratch that could compete for promotion. We exceeded expectations the first season he arrived. He made a mistakes, most notably the defeat to Exeter, and rectified it the following year when leading this club back to the Football League. Then inside two seasons, he took us to the play-offs again and 90 minutes away from League One football. Again exceeded expectations.

I understand that people are angry at the way he has departed but you can't really knock his record. If a more popular manager, a la Leroy, achieved what Buckle did then he would be heralded as a saint. Buckle's ego is at times out of control and there has always been a wall standing between him and supporters. But whatever you think of Buckle as person, surely nobody can deny that he did one heck of a job as manager.

Southampton Gull wrote:Results.

Exeter - Lost
Ebbsfleet - Lost
Cambridge - Won
Crawley - Lost
Stevenage - Lost

Did I miss any? He chokes far too often in the big games where his tactical nous is invisible.

If counting Exeter as a big game then surely you must include:

Histon - Won
Shrewsbury - Won

Now is not the time to be sensible

How was saturday down to tactical nous?

The same was used v Shrewsbury who are a better side than Stevenage, we whalloped them. We just didn't perform.

The only one of those we really lost or won down to tactics was Exeter. We changed setup and messed up big style.

tommyg wrote:One promotion, three play-off campaigns, two trips to Wembley and a trek to Old Trafford in four seasons isn't bad going, irrespective of resources and budget. He still had to build a team from scratch that could compete for promotion. We exceeded expectations the first season he arrived. He made a mistakes, most notably the defeat to Exeter, and rectified it the following year when leading this club back to the Football League. Then inside two seasons, he took us to the play-offs again and 90 minutes away from League One football. Again exceeded expectations.

I understand that people are angry at the way he has departed but you can't really knock his record. If a more popular manager, a la Leroy, achieved what Buckle did then he would be heralded as a saint. Buckle's ego is at times out of control and there has always been a wall standing between him and supporters. But whatever you think of Buckle as person, surely nobody can deny that he did one heck of a job as manager.

With the amount of folk seeminlgy thinking the bloke was lucky/crap/over rated it's a wonder there's so much anger about it?!!!

You seem to assume the anger is over him going, It isn't, it's about how and when the seeds were sown.

royalgull wrote:How was saturday down to tactical nous?

The same was used v Shrewsbury who are a better side than Stevenage, we whalloped them. We just didn't perform.

The only one of those we really lost or won down to tactics was Exeter. We changed setup and messed up big style.

Do me a favour. LRT on and Nicho off, Robinson off instead of Kee. Oastler on for Lathrope.

How did any of those help us get back in the game?

Do you think Tisdale would have done that?

Buckle has no tactical nous whatsoever.

Who on the bench could we bring on to change the game saturday?

all our attacking players worth anything were already on the pitch. They just didn't perform.

Stevens for Kee for a start.

Oastler on for Kee and push Eunan up in behind or alongside Tomlin

I would also add what would we have done had we of equalised?

The subs in the 80th minute added nothing, however they could have added something had one of the two with a better eye for goal had scored in the last ten minutes hadn't been taken off.

We were left with no plan to win in extra time had we of equalised. The subs could have been used in extra time were players start to get leggy for both sides and we'd have had an advantage with having an additional set of fresh legs on, as Steveage used 2 of their subs by the 60th minute.

Southampton Gull wrote:Stevens for Kee for a start.

It's the change i would have made but I don't think it would have made any difference. Would Stevens replacing Kee have changed the game, i doubt it.

We didn't really have the options off the bench to properly change things. Couldn't bring on someone 6ft + and chuck it long and we didn't have 2 or 3 lads with real pace or players with a goal in them to bring on. It's the gamble you take playing all 4 strikers from the start, but having done that and beaten Shrewsbury, who honestly wouldn't have played the same team? If we'd won we wouldn't be having this discussion about tactics in all honesty. It's a one off game, we didn't play the way we can, they scored and we couldn't break them down. One of them things.

I'd go further than that, basil, he removed the threat from Nico set-pieces, and didn't replace the ineffective Kee, imagine how hard Kee would have been blowing IF we'd got that equaliser?

Buckle was still making the same old mistakes right up to that final substitution, he never had a Plan B in all his time here, in fact that's not right, his PLAN B was to feck off to Rovers, so sod him.

Ian, we did have options, he just chose not to utilise them as I've already pointed out.

To change system to something not that familiar, i dunno that would be an Exeter style risk which i'm sure he'd have got slaughtered for on here for doing had we not got back in the game.

i made that point about Nicho on Saturday, it was the strangest one of the 3. I didn't think Nicho had a particularly good game on Saturday and perhaps he was thinking of trying to go shorter instead of longer. Trying to get LRT to overlap and get forward maybe inject some pace. I'm not sure, it was the hardest of the 3 to fathom, but i'd imagine that was the reason.

Personally the options on the bench offensively weren't as good as the ones on the pitch in my honest opinion.