Let's attack this drivel in order, shall we?
Bitter Cambridgeshire **** wrote:
"Their woeful run without a win earlier this season though says to me that he's no better there than here.
Our 'woeful' run of P8 W0 D4 L4 F9 A18 came against teams with a combined score of the standard
Ferrarilover Scale of 135. This represents a true 82%, that is a seriously tough run. So, what you'll find, Mr Cambridgeshire ****, is that we hit a run of tough fixtures and, aside from the last two against Southend and Gillingham, we did ok, not well, not appallingly, but ok.
Contrast this to a run in the Conference of P8 W0 D2 L6 F9 A18, against teams with a
Ferrarilover Scale of 133 (I had to go from the end of season table, no in play table was available, so it's not absolutely accurate, but it won't be far out) which represents, unsurprisingly, a true 81%. So, over an equal number of games, at an equal time of year, against perfectly identical opposition in terms of quality, Mr Ling achieved identical outcomes...
Except he didn't, because where as at Torquay, the next fourteen games read P14 W11 D2 L1 F23 A7 against teams with a 48%
FS rating; at Cambridge, they read P14 W6 D4 L4 F18 A12 against teams with a 68%
FS rating. Against teams 20% easier, we made 83% of our points, compared with 52% for Cambridge. That's 31% more points against teams just 20% easier.
So, Mr CT, you'll find he is, in fact, considerably better with us than he was with you over a similar period.
Except he's not, because, by your own admission, you spent an absolute fortune in the Conference when Dinger turned up, hand over fist signing players, and you still posted the above figures. Dinger came here, spent not a bean, and made the numbers shown above. So, either he became some sort of managerial guru overnight, or something other than Mr Ling was to blame for your catastrophic failure to capitalise on your strength in the years he was there. Which is it, do you think?
So, next...
Bitter Cambridgeshire **** wrote: It's just that they've managed to get on a run, with their confidence high, so his general ineptitude is being masked at present.
Pray tell, Mr CT, what exactly happened in the three days between us losing 4-1 at Southend and winning 4-0 against the Wombles? Did we go out and spend £500,000 on some super striker? No. Did we transfer list the whole squad in an effort to motivate them? No. Did we sack Dinger and get in someone else to manage the team? No. What we did we stick by the boys, work hard and pull ourselves out of the slump we were in. We were resolute in defence for the first 20 minutes, then we got ourselves into the game, scored two quick goals and proceeded to tear apart a team who, at the time, were on quite a run themselves.
Who do you suppose brought about that performance, Mr CT? Surely if the manager is to blame for the bad times, he has to be credited with the good times, does he not? Yes, so, chalk up another victory to the Lingmeister then.
Bitter Cambridgeshire **** wrote: For me, you don't have to be a good manager to preside over a team on a good run.
I agree entirely. Except, that’s not what happens, is it? Managers do not simply preside, empirically, over a winning team. They work their bollocks off, using guile, skill, tactics, knowledge, research, effort and a slice of luck to keep the run going. One of the first things one is told when learning to fly a helicopter is that, in a car on the motorway, if you take your hands and feet off the major controls for three seconds, aside from getting a bit slower, absolutely nothing will happen. You won’t crash, you won’t die, you won’t make a big mess of the carriageway. In a helicopter, however, if you do the same thing during straight and level flight, you won’t actually make it to the third second, because half way through the second second, you’ll have crashed and burned.
In this sense, managing a football team is very much like flying a helicopter, if you lose focus, even for a very short while, you’ll pay a heavy price.
Bitter Cambridgeshire **** wrote: To be a good manager you have to be able to turn difficult spells around quickly and influence games when things haven't started well. I've seen no evidence to suggest he can perform the latter at all...
You mean, apart from the eight games without a win turned into one loss in fourteen? To be honest, there’s very little for me to do from this point, since you proceed to contradict precisely the statement you opened with. My only hope for you, Mr CT, is that you do not have a public service job, so you can’t inflict your own particular brand of complete rubbish and utterly cataclysmic stupidity on normal folk going about their daily lives. Sadly, I rather suspect you might be a police officer, or an employee of the DVLA, or even a traffic warden.
Please do keep posting tripe, it’s what the internet was invented for....apparently.
Matt.
But Matt, how does the
Ferrarilover Scale work?
Assign each side a valve inversely proportional to it's league position at any given time, first place is worth 24 points, last place worth one point, add them up, the higher the number [as a percentage of the highest possible total for X games] the harder the run, the highest possible 8 game score is 164
I take your points on board. Most people on here know that i don't rate Stevens and i don't rate Tai as consistent league footballers. I've admitted on one thread that from what i've seen of Stevens this season he has impressed me and improved a great deal; however, i still don't feel 100% that he is a 'quality' league footballer. Quality being the attribute to which i've said he and Tai don't have. I'm not saying they haven't done well for the team Matt just that IMO i believe there are players out there somewhere who are better than Stevens and Tai who we could bring in and who would offer us more. Morris maybe i'm being harsh as i haven't seen too much of him. From what i've seen of him at Macc and at other games recently he has vastly improved so maybe he just needs a bit of time and a settled role. He certainly has played at a higher level and maybe he could do so again.
