Manager/Coach Des Buckingham

Yellow There! said:
@Leysboy Would you argue that last season’s Karl Robinson is better than Des?
Because Appleton has taken a side full of very good league 1 players (May, Camara, Isted etc) towards a relegation battle this season, and they are winless in something like 14 games, very similar to us under KR last time out, and we didn’t have many good players.
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I would say they the same. They aren’t much different in terms of results, and I expect there PPG is pretty close too.
 
There is clearly an enormous opportunity to fix the squad in the summer to the point that Des’ life becomes significantly easier.

For a while he had extremely poor depth in attacking positions, lately it’s been the defence. Has he been good enough to deal with those issues? Not really. I think he’s been pretty poor tactically overall.

He’s not coped with Moore and Stevens missing, but hopefully they’ll be back soon. I’m very concerned that if Murphy gets injured we’re back to being extremely one paced unless Burey comes back into favour or Edwards makes a surprise return. I do think a more experienced manager would likely have coped a lot better than Des has. Manning would have.

Moving forwards, I’m not sure what the logic is though of appointing a young manager with potential then sacking him for not performing when his Plan A wasn’t available after a few months. Especially heading into a summer where there is clear opportunity to create Plans B and C.

Des will need to improve, and the squad will need to be improved to cope with an inexperienced no 1. Especially with what appears to be a fairly limited coaching group. He does have Ed Waldron though who’s just delivered two positive transfer windows.

For me, he gets the Summer and a cleaner slate to work from. If we start seeing new contracts for people like Bodin because they’re nice around the place and it’s easier to keep him than convince someone else to sign, then my vote will change very quickly, but I can’t subscribe to the idea that Des doesn’t have the potential to become a competent League One manager right now. And if he has that potential, he might just be another young asset to the club that we can cash in on rather than pay off.
 
Foley said:
Heroic position? Probably overstated?
Most observers I have read, heard from, have suggested that we were very unlikely to remain heroic, and the play offs were likely under Manning.
I would agree that if we drop out of the play offs then it will be an opportunity wasted, but that doesn't mean that we should sack Des necessarily, and doesn't mean that I dislike the guy.
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Ok poor choice of word perhaps, but he arrived to a huge amount of day one support considering a highly popular manager just walked out. By comparison, look at Manning’s welcome at Bristol City. I accept there’s a different in that the club dismissed Pearson rather than lost him, but nonetheless look at the fan reaction. Des came in to a very warm fuzzy fan base that’s been extremely patient with him. I don’t think 30 games is too soon to form a definitive opinion in football. Especially when we’ve seen how he handled adversity, how he handles a transfer window and how he handles an almost all singing and all dancing squad when compared with the vast majority of the league. He hasn’t scored close to a maximum score in any.

We’re at the business end now and the objective is promotion (having picked the team up in 2nd spot), not just finishing 6th. He’s managed to break everything that was working and introduce nothing in its place and it’s unsurprisingly resulted in near-to relegation form which is a spectacularly poor performance, assistant or not.
 
Thinking back over our recent-ish history, we've always struggled if a manager leaves and the club is in with a chance of promotion. I'm thinking back to Wilder, before him Atkins. Both times we fell away badly afterwards under Mickey Lewis (Wilder) and Graham Rix (Atkins). So this downturn is hardly unexpected. I don't think we've ever won promotion if we've changed manager during the season.

I've said elsewhere, in my opinion, it's too soon to say if Buckingham is any good or not. With Manning, we only implemented a style (as such) once he'd had a full pre-season with the players. If the club appoint these types of managers then they have to give them the time to implement their style/structure on the players.
 
Bigdwoolly said:
Thinking back over our recent-ish history, we've always struggled if a manager leaves and the club is in with a chance of promotion. I'm thinking back to Wilder, before him Atkins. Both times we fell away badly afterwards under Mickey Lewis (Wilder) and Graham Rix (Atkins). So this downturn is hardly unexpected. I don't think we've ever won promotion if we've changed manager during the season.

I've said elsewhere, in my opinion, it's too soon to say if Buckingham is any good or not. With Manning, we only implemented a style (as such) once he'd had a full pre-season with the players. If the club appoint these types of managers then they have to give them the time to implement their style/structure on the players.
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Some on here would have had Jim Smith sacked first time around after we blew a very good position when he first came in following Ian Greaves' departure mid-season. We stuck with him, thankfully.
 
SteMerritt said:
Some on here would have had Jim Smith sacked first time around after we blew a very good position when he first came in following Ian Greaves' departure mid-season. We stuck with him, thankfully.
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Likewise Appleton - although I was in the sack Appleton camp back then.
 
A handful of fans can keep shouting and repeating themselves, but they’re waisting their breath or typing skills. Whether we agree with it or not, there’s no way the board are going to sack him anytime soon. Des was given a 3 half year contract, plus we paid a hefty compensation to secure his services.

Bearing that in mind, certainly for the time being), giving Des our support ( in what must be a difficult time for him) is the best thing our support base can do.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made mistakes, and it doesn’t mean I or others were 100% behind his appointment. It’s ok to have reservations but still give the guy a chance. Let’s hope he’s allowed to bring in an assistant manager of his choosing PDQ.
 
dickwalton1964 said:
Des has brought in a keeper of repute in the lower leagues, a midfielder with two successive L1 promotions, a player who was Millwalls POTY in the Championship, a winger who's last two clubs have ben at the top end of L1, a striker for £400,000, a left back who's spent virtually his entire career in the Championship or PL. On top of that he's been gifted Brannagan, arguably one of the best midfielders around at this level, Moore who's as good as any centre back in L1, a Welsh international in Harris who he clearly rates, and other very decent L1 players like Brown, McGuane, Bodin etc. Then there's a young player like Goodrham who's bailed him out a few times.

Yes, there's some dead wood but there is at every club, that's the cycle of football. To suggest Buckingham hasn't got the tools at his disposal (6 or 7 of whom are his signings) to make a better fist of the job than he's doing is absolutely ridiculous. He has players who are clearly capable of beating the likes of Wycombe, Cheltenham, Northampton (twice), Orient, Blackpool and Reading (twice) under the right guidance.
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Or maybe, just maybe. Some of the players we have aren’t as good as we think they are. This isn’t Des’s squad and won’t be for another window at least. If you want to blame anyone, blame manning for leaving and blame Tim Williams for not getting Des the coaching team he needs around him, this is the same coaching team now that we had under Robinson. One that performed horribly last year & most wanted out and a Fresh start under manning.
 
Think we should get away from the idea of both a manager and a managers squad. The recruitment team (ideally a Director of Football) should be leading the long term recruitment (with input from the "Head Coach") based on the philosophy of the club e.g. possession based/athletic counter attacking/physically dominant/. Otherwise you have to continually recruit new teams to fit the managers ideas lurching from Robinsons winger fetish to an Ainsworth Orc Top Trumps. The question remains for me as a coach has he improved players and playing style, irrespective of results. Not yet and I think even aside from results that needs to become more evident to make him the right person
 
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Anyone thinking that Tim and Co are going to admit that they got things wrong again by sacking Des has clearly missed the vibe.
They will be writing their own resignation letter if they are seen by our owners that they got it wrong once again.
Their future is solely dependent on Des being successful here.
They sanctioned a hefty fee for his services and that on the back of their woeful wet handling of Knobinsons denouement means that they are nailed to the mast of HMS Buckingham for the foreseeable.
 
Big Ronaldo said:
Anyone thinking that Tim and Co are going to admit that they got things wrong again by sacking Des has clearly missed the vibe.
They will be writing their own resignation letter if they are seen by our owners that they got it wrong once again.
Their future is solely dependent on Des being successful here.
They sanctioned a hefty fee for his services and that on the back of their woeful wet handling of Knobinsons denouement means that they are nailed to the mast of HMS Buckingham for the foreseeable.
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Wrong again ? What Manning was a 'wrong' appointment was he ? I suppose he could have got us top as opposed to second.
 
Steve Gilbert said:
Exactly this.

We need to move players on like Bodin, Long, Henry, McEachran, Seddon, Findlay, Smyth and Browne IMO and bring in much better as well get a more balanced squad before we truly judge Des. He is dealing with the fall out of 2 managers not just 1.
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This is totally incorrect. Just look at the record of these players under Manning before the owners made the worst ever decision in football and appointed someone with absolutely no EFL or equivalent experience who is clearly out of his depth and worse still substantial compensation was paid to get him. Just why ?
 
JimSmith2 said:
This is totally incorrect. Just look at the record of these players under Manning before the owners made the worst ever decision in football and appointed someone with absolutely no EFL or equivalent experience who is clearly out of his depth and worse still substantial compensation was paid to get him. Just why ?
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Well at least the des out lot are being reasonable
 
It's not even the worst managerial appointment we've made - see Graham Rix. This was the league table when he joined - 6 points clear in a playoff place
https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-3/21-march-2004/
compared to the league table at the end of the season

11v11 league table generator

League tables for any day in football history - going back to the start of the Football League.
www.11v11.com

6 points in 9 games. And 3 of those were last game of the season when we were already out of the race
 
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billyturleyscurlywurly said:
Yeah and he also lost 2 Wembley finals & missed out on a title to Northampton (our squad was 2 times better on paper)
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Did you go to those Wembley finals. I did and loved them both. Despite being on the receiving end both times. I was proud to be there supporting my team.

We lost to a in form Barnsley, that were bottom in November that season, and went on an incredible run, and ended up getting promoted. Despite this, we gave them a bloody good game, and narrowly lost 3-2.

Coventry was a bit more of a let down, but not many fans get to go to Wembley two times in two seasons.

Northampton won the league yes, but like Mapp said, we played the better football, and that was ok because he got right under Chippys skin. We stayed up, and they finished…. Oh they went back down.
 
Sack him, no good from day 1, hopeless and as for Saturday at Pompey he will get found out that’s for sure.
 
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