Manager/Coach Des Buckingham

McXal said:
Agree with all of this. I am very much one of the people who think Des should be given a proper summer to get his squad together and we shouldn’t be considering sacking him at all right now - but I am absolutely of the opinion that we’ve played poorly for pretty much all of his tenure (even in the victories).

Shrewsbury was his best effort. Against Northampton and Portsmouth more recently I thought we were largely solid and let ourselves down with some errors at key moments. Other than that there have been a few good 30 minute periods - not even halves - but that’s it. We finished strongly (after a poor first hour) at Wycombe. We were good for 30 minutes against Derby. Controlled a pretty low quality second half at Carlisle. Gave it a good crack against Bolton but finished noticeably second best. Even the Wigan game we got the bounce of the ball on a few of our goals and were probably quite flattered by the scoreline. Considering how we’ve hung onto the Top 6 it’s actually quite unbelievable how poor we’ve been since November.

I’m not expecting to make the playoffs after the last 2 results - but they are still a possibility. Whether that happens or not I do want to see us finish the season delivering much better performances. That Orient performance was abject. On the assumption that we’re getting nothing from Bolton and Pompey away, the home game against Cheltenham is a MASSIVE fixture (as it was last season ironically).
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Playing well for parts of games and rubbish in others has been happening all season including under Manning, it just shows that the team isnt quite good enough yet to sustain performances. Not help by lots of money wasted by Robinson on players still not doing anything.
 
Oufcrealist said:
I don't think Carlisle was particularly good, it was patchy but we took our chances.
Charlton was pretty even I thought but Smyth scored a worldie to win it!!
Burton at home has been the only convincing performance for me since Des has taken over.
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I’m not convinced there’s been a huge difference in performance level across Northampton, Wigan, Portsmouth, Wycombe, Reading, Carlisle, Charlton… Some have gone our way and some haven’t. Burton was an outlier as much as Rovers was the other way.

The performance level has been consistently mediocre for a while. The hope has to be that finally being able to marry up Moore in defence, a balanced midfield and some pace out wide might yield an improvement. I won’t be convinced by Des though until he sticks to those principles he’s hinted at. Be interesting to see what he does when Murphy’s unavailable again and if it’s back to dreadful one paced sideways football.
 
Oxford84 said:
Playing well for parts of games and rubbish in others has been happening all season including under Manning, it just shows that the team isnt quite good enough yet to sustain performances. Not help by lots of money wasted by Robinson on players still not doing anything.
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Wholly agree, and the reason why I’m not convinced our current shortcomings are all Des’ fault and sacking him would yield a colossal uplift in form.

He’s clearly not done great. He is underperforming. He clearly is getting less out of the squad than Manning (under whom I do think we played well more often, and played in a far more coherent and controlled manner. Even in defeat I felt like I could see how we were trying to win for the most part - e.g. Wigan away where we dominated the ball but were so wasteful and inept around their final third as they sat off and sensibly let us play around in front of them, that we opened ourselves up to be picked off). But I don’t buy that sacking Des fixes everything at this point.

I want to see us after a full pre-season under him. He’ll know as well as anyone that if we do fall out of the playoffs this season, and if we start poorly next season his position becomes incredibly jeopardised.
 
MustardYellow said:
We had a manager who had us 2nd averaging 2.13 PPG (usually enough for automatic promotion). He left, the new manager comes in, 4 months later we're 7th playing woeful football and averaging 1.16 PPG (which last season would've had us 18th). Some 'nuance' to that is that other than Harris, every player has regressed under said new manager.

As I said in a pervious post, it's excuse after excuse. It's gone from give him a few games to settle, to wait till the injured players are back, to give him a transfer window, and now it's the staffs fault (even though other than an assistant most roles have been filled).

Unless the suggestion is that us winning games under Manning was a fluke, then it feels like defending the indefensible. Even if you say we were 'overperforming' under Manning, we're now significantly underperforming under Des.

Having a team 'overperforming' is the sign of a good manager, right? So what do we call managers who have a team underperforming?
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Actually, yes I do remember thinking we got away with at least a couple of results under Manning, so yes I would probably describe them as flukes (injury time pen to secure a draw v Wycombe, the win against Bris Rovers (which was the Long, Bodin and Rodrigues show, looking at the match report . . . would they do that now? Also lots of mentions of needing smart saves from Beadle to keep us in games early on in the season) . By the same token, I think teams also get flukey wins (Port Vale in September) and draws (Blackpool in October) against us. How many times have we thought how did we win/lose that? There will always be results against the run of play. It's never as black and white as good team always wins (thankfully).

Over the average of a season, these things do (mostly) even out, and frankly we are about where I thought we'd be this season, based on our unconvincing performances (yes, even under Manning), imbalanced squad, injury problems, losing a manager 4 months into the season and bringing in a number of players to try and redress the injuries and imbalance in the Jan transfer window....and then somehow expecting them to all immediately gel and rediscover the over-performance we witnessed up to mid/end October.

Out of form players is a combination of over-played/exhausted players, players returning from injury, a change in coaching set-up (hey . . maybe some of those "out of form" are the ones that didn't want Des? - think I've made my views clear on them!). You can't seriously take any of those issues in isolation, they are all part of the root cause of why we are now under-performing and I don't think anyone is denying we are underperforming, it's just that a fair few are seeing that the reasons why extend further than Manning = Good, Buckingham = Bad.

Again, I don't think EVERY player has regressed under Buckingham. CamBran hasn't, Josh Murphy hasn't Tyler Goodrham hasn't. I'm not sure Elliot Moore has either, but his injury and omission for the squad of late HAS impacted on our ability to be organised and defend well. I would argue that Ciaron Browns dip in form is mainly due to Moore's absence. I don't think Greg Leigh has hit the heady heights of performance that he did prior to his injury either - maybe he was the most striking example of an over-performing player under Manning and what we're seeing now is more par for the course, especially with no Kyle Edwards in front of him. After all, Ipswich were prepared to let him go last season.

So, like I say - far more nuanced than it's all Des' fault
 
I know it's a bit 'if my auntie was my uncle' but anyone suggesting holding on to second place was fanciful should just let this sink in;
Hold on to two leads last week in home games against Northampton and Orient and hold on to two leads against relegation threatened Reading and we would now be second. Morale of this, get on the front foot when you have a lead and blow inferior opposition away. The buck stops with Buckingham and his unfathomable tactics - simple as that.
 
dickwalton1964 said:
I know it's a bit 'if my auntie was my uncle' but anyone suggesting holding on to second place was fanciful should just let this sink in;
Hold on to two leads last week in home games against Northampton and Orient and hold on to two leads against relegation threatened Reading and we would now be second. Morale of this, get on the front foot when you have a lead and blow inferior opposition away. The buck stops with Buckingham and his unfathomable tactics - simple as that.
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Hahahahaha
 
dickwalton1964 said:
I know it's a bit 'if my auntie was my uncle' but anyone suggesting holding on to second place was fanciful should just let this sink in;
Hold on to two leads last week in home games against Northampton and Orient and hold on to two leads against relegation threatened Reading and we would now be second. Morale of this, get on the front foot when you have a lead and blow inferior opposition away. The buck stops with Buckingham and his unfathomable tactics - simple as that.
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You may have a point, let’s see where we are in 11 games time before I hop on any Des out bus.
 
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dickwalton1964 said:
I know it's a bit 'if my auntie was my uncle' but anyone suggesting holding on to second place was fanciful should just let this sink in;
Hold on to two leads last week in home games against Northampton and Orient and hold on to two leads against relegation threatened Reading and we would now be second. Morale of this, get on the front foot when you have a lead and blow inferior opposition away. The buck stops with Buckingham and his unfathomable tactics - simple as that.
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I know you keep saying it is as simple as that Dick, but it is clear that you are in the minority with that view, judging by the poll alone.

By the same token, nobody is denying that Buckingham is A FACTOR in our performance. Players not performing and doing stupid things/making individual mistakes is also costing us big time.....and thats before we get onto the wage-stealers who are supposedly not performing because they're sulking about the manager . . . .

Everyone, from top to bottom of the club needs to take a long hard look in the mirror, because many of them share the collective blame for our downturn.
 
Sheik djibouti said:
I know you keep saying it is as simple as that Dick, but it is clear that you are in the minority with that view, judging by the poll alone.

By the same token, nobody is denying that Buckingham is A FACTOR in our performance. Players not performing and doing stupid things/making individual mistakes is also costing us big time.....and thats before we get onto the wage-stealers who are supposedly not performing because they're sulking about the manager . . . .

Everyone, from top to bottom of the club needs to take a long hard look in the mirror, because many of them share the collective blame for our downturn.
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Perhaps it sounds like I'm over simplifying it but am I really ? We are talking about keeping a football out of the bloody net late on or putting a bit more pressure on some very ordinary opposition earlier on. Four absolutely winnable games when we had the momentum, it was all set up nicely. Long in, Burey out, Leigh up front, Brannagan operating from virtually the car park, Dale and Goodwin perform really well but don't get starts despite Harris desperately in need of a rest as Buckingham has often alluded to.

It's chaos. Complete chaos.
 
Common Villager said:
Out of interest, can one of the stato's confirm:

- Our xG under Manning vs our actual goals scored
- Our xGA under Manning vs actual goals conceded

- Our xG under Des vs our actual goals scored
- Our xGA under Des vs actual goals conceded

Thank you!
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Had a quick look and these are the figures I got.

Manning
xG 20.83 (1.39 p/g) scored 29 = overperformance of around 40%
xGA 18.27 (1.22 p/g) conceded 14 = overperformance of around 25%

Buckingham
xG 25.62 (1.35 p/g) scored 26 = almost bang on, slight overperfomance
xGA 25.26 (1.33 p/g) conceded 29 = close again, just over 10% underperformance

Plenty of people have said that we were overperforming in terms of goals scored under Manning and it wasn't sustainable which is backed up here, as others have said relying on Leigh to score a goal a game was likely to end in tears. For what it's worth if everything went according to this Manning's xG would have us 8th and Buckingham's 10th. Doesn't factor in difficulty of opponent, players available etc of course.
 
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dickwalton1964 said:
Perhaps it sounds like I'm over simplifying it but am I really ? We are talking about keeping a football out of the bloody net late on or putting a bit more pressure on some very ordinary opposition earlier on. Four absolutely winnable games when we had the momentum, it was all set up nicely. Long in, Burey out, Leigh up front, Brannagan operating from virtually the car park, Dale and Goodwin perform really well but don't get starts despite Harris desperately in need of a rest as Buckingham has often alluded to.

It's chaos. Complete chaos.
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I really think you are, yes.

Each of those individual examples you cite (defending properly, not attacking/applying pressure early on, Brannagans positioning - actually I think he was trying to protect a very shaky defence) - unless we know for certain that this is something that Buckingham has explicitly told them to do, then it IS down to players AND manager as a whole to work out why that happened.
 
Sheik djibouti said:
I really think you are, yes.

Each of those individual examples you cite (defending properly, not attacking/applying pressure early on, Brannagans positioning - actually I think he was trying to protect a very shaky defence) - unless we know for certain that this is something that Buckingham has explicitly told them to do, then it IS down to players AND manager as a whole to work out why that happened.
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You know how it works though, the manager will always carry the can and rightly so. The players are never going to step forward, they will always hide behind the manager - that's the nature of the beast. If he has explicitly given them instructions and they aren't executing those instructions then there's clearly a breakdown. Whichever way you turn, the buck will stop with Des.
 
dickwalton1964 said:
You know how it works though, the manager will always carry the can and rightly so. The players are never going to step forward, they will always hide behind the manager - that's the nature of the beast. If he has explicitly given them instructions and they aren't executing those instructions then there's clearly a breakdown. Whichever way you turn, the buck will stop with Des.
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And that last sentence of yours perfectly sums up your one-eyed vindictive view of a man struggling with circumstances beyond his control. When did he first rattle your cage?
 
dickwalton1964 said:
You know how it works though, the manager will always carry the can and rightly so. The players are never going to step forward, they will always hide behind the manager - that's the nature of the beast. If he has explicitly given them instructions and they aren't executing those instructions then there's clearly a breakdown. Whichever way you turn, the buck will stop with Des.
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I know you don’t grasp lower league football considering you are a massive armchair Man United fan but even by your standards Baldy you are making yourself sound more stupid by each post.

I see you chose to ignore the post about the facts of XG which shows we were over performing, this was also highlighted on the football league highlight show at the time.

It is fanciful if you thought we would keep up the form of 8 wins out of 10 all season.
 
Steve Gilbert said:
I know you don’t grasp lower league football considering you are a massive armchair Man United fan but even by your standards Baldy you are making yourself sound more stupid by each post.

I see you chose to ignore the post about the facts of XG which shows we were over performing, this was also highlighted on the football league highlight show at the time.

It is fanciful if you thought we would keep up the form of 8 wins out of 10 all season.
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Ssshhhh! He’s watching the Man Utd match on tele. …
 
Joey said:
Had a quick look and these are the figures I got.

Manning
xG 20.83 (1.39 p/g) scored 29 = overperformance of around 40%
xGA 18.27 (1.22 p/g) conceded 14 = overperformance of around 25%

Buckingham
xG 25.62 (1.35 p/g) scored 26 = almost bang on, slight overperfomance
xGA 25.26 (1.33 p/g) conceded 29 = close again, just over 10% underperformance

Plenty of people have said that we were overperforming in terms of goals scored under Manning and it wasn't sustainable which is backed up here, as others have said relying on Leigh to score a goal a game was likely to end in tears. For what it's worth if everything went according to this Manning's xG would have us 8th and Buckingham's 10th. Doesn't factor in difficulty of opponent, players available etc of course.
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Not disputing the xG figures (and appreciate you are just replying to a query) but how did you calculate the 8th and 10th places?

If, for example, we beat Shrewsbury 3-0 with an xG of 1.04 for, and 0.82 against - did you put this as a 1-1 draw? Obviously in said scenario, had we not been 3 up then we may well have pushed for goals - increasing our xG.

In fact, if our 'excess' xG goals under Manning came against (for example) Exeter, Shrewsbury, Fleetwood - then those goals truly were excess - they didn't effect the result. If we scored 3 worldies from a low xG, it would be remiss to penalise Manning's xG for not pushing for more chances and increasing the xG - we didn't need to!

xG is good for analysing individual games, but if a team has scored 2 or 3 goals without knocking on the door relentlessly, why should they continue to try to?

It's a bit like the stats under KR last season - bossing possession against sides that were already cruising to victory against us.

If Manning and Buckingham had both been in charge for 3 or 4 games apiece, maybe the xG argument carries some weight.

But both have managed enough games to give the credit where it is due (and withhold where it isn't).

Even if that's uncomfortable for some to hear.
 
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