Gordan Sparks interview with Martin Ling just now

[nickfrench82]

Let's face it, whoever comes in is a massive gamble. We could appoint Hargreaves with no experience, Sturrock with a world of L2 experience, Warnock with a big reputation and in a fire-fighting role, Martin Allen with his tough talking, taking no prisoners and lower league experience.

When they announce the new manager, 30% will be pretty happy, 40% will be indifferent and 30% will be underwhelmed. It was the same with Buckle, Ling and Knill. It was the same for most managers before them, and will be the same for whoever joins us in the future.

In essence, we need either a great man manager to get them playing better as a team than the sum of their parts, or a good coach to get them organised. I have my opinion, and many others have theirs, it makes no difference what we think, we just have to support whoever gets the nod, hope he has an impact and then when he leaves in weeks/months/years to come, have all the same fun again!

[bobby93]

He's a 1-0 merchant

Better than a 0-1 merchant.

I was a big Ling fan and thought our treatment of him, certainly publicly, was disgraceful. For Thea Bristow to go on camera and say she couldn't put her finger on why he was sacked, but that it was definitely for purely footballing reasons when we were middle of the League when he left, was wrong and Ling quite rightly felt aggrieved. Not an attack on Thea as she doesn't come across as a media-savvy person and probably didn't go into that interview with an agenda but it certainly made us look a bit silly. You never know what's going on behind the scenes, but I felt that we were very short sighted in appointing Knill and I said so at the time. Joss Labadie kept us up, not Alan Knill.

In theory, I would be happy to have Ling in charge in simple management terms - I think he would get the best out of some of our underperformers just as he did with Mansell, Stevens, et al, and he always came across as an honest, down to earth personality. I would worry, however, that if he came back he'd have a portion of fans against him straight away and that's not what we need. We need energy, togetherness, determination. Some of our fans are incredibly fickle and if he came in and didn't get results immediately, he would come under pressure quicker than a completely new face would and we'd be in the same mess. So I don't know, I'm in two minds. I highly doubt that the board would be prepared to go back to him with their tails between their legs anyway. Credit to him really for stepping up to the plate.

I like Lingy but I don't know if this is the right time for him to 'finish his business'. We shall see.

[brucie]

Bobby - are you in a dream world or what. It isn't going to happen. I think Thea Bristow more or less referred to Ling not being "enthusiastic" or something like that ie he was just really going through the motions. Having given a hefty pay off to more or less feck off do you really think we are now going to pay him to come back - it is seriously ridiculous.
Ling cannot get a job anywhere and coming out in the press and saying he wants to come back here quite frankly makes him look like an idiot.

[bobby93]

Bobby - are you in a dream world or what. It isn't going to happen. I think Thea Bristow more or less referred to Ling not being "enthusiastic" or something like that ie he was just really going through the motions. Having given a hefty pay off to more or less feck off do you really think we are now going to pay him to come back - it is seriously ridiculous.
Ling cannot get a job anywhere and coming out in the press and saying he wants to come back here quite frankly makes him look like an idiot.

Hardly in a dream world. I said in my last post I highly doubt it would happen, and even though I admire Ling I'm not sure this would be a good time.

What's so crazy about that? If this is dream world I need to get less sleep.