| Paul Cook 10:51 - Apr 28 with 8325 views | clive_baker |
Does he deserve a bit of credit for being so ruthless with the previous group? I felt there was a case of some babies out with the bathwater and do wonder what might've been for a handful of those, but the huge reset he oversaw was long overdue here. If we were to rid the club of that culture of mediocrity and acceptance he had to be a bit brutal with it, and was. The Demolition Man. I'm glad he didn't come in as another yes man, called it as he saw it, fair play for that at least.
Results were terrible, awful start to the season but we showed some glimpses (Doncaster home, Wycmobe away). Ultimately never delivered a level of consistency under him, glad he moved on, but in his defense he at least signed Burns, Walton, Edmundson, Morsy, Chaplin, Burgess, Edwards. Evans to a lesser extent. Brought JD back in from the cold as well.
I'm being too generous aren't I? |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:17 - Apr 28 with 1227 views | Mookamoo |
I know there was a lot going on with the Palace bids, but imagine if Cook was a different type of manager and was able to turn the Downes situation around.
Morsy and Downes in the centre is a Championship top 6 combo. |  | | |
| Paul Cook on 11:19 - Apr 28 with 1215 views | RobTheMonk |
I think what he did was a necessary evil and paved the way for news ways of thinking.
He got it completely wrong, but in doing so allowed things to start being done in the correct way.
He was an obvious draw to some players (Morsy, Evans), but without the experience of his old backroom team, he was a bit clueless with regards to tactics. |  | | |
| Paul Cook on 11:19 - Apr 28 with 1220 views | tractordownsouth |
Yeah, too generous.
It’s true to say that Cook recruits like Walton, Morsy and Chaplin have been a big part of the team this season but I think any League One manager would have signed them if given the opportunity. We can’t credit Cook for any originality either because they were all established League One/Championship performers he’d known at other clubs. In contrast, Leif Davis was very expensive too but taking a risk on somebody with 30-odd career appearances is more innovative and a much bigger gamble on the part of McKenna and the recruitment team. |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:20 - Apr 28 with 1211 views | pennblue |
| Paul Cook on 10:58 - Apr 28 by J2BLUE |
You could kind of make an argument that several previous managers have, through no skill or talent of their own, made a small contribution.
Don't really want to get into it because i'm certainly not arguing that they were not 99% disasters but I think each previous manager added a very small piece to where we are now. Even Lambert completely exposing Evans may have helped the takeover go through.
I know some on here struggle with reading so let me again state I am not giving them major credit or rewriting history. More just saying that through their own self preserving actions each manager may have contributed to Evans' downfall. |
It seems to be common place to say any manager that did not win promotion was automatically a failure. That is a very simplistic take on things.
Of course Paul Cook should take a lot of credit and I am sure he would have had us right up there by now as well with the resources available.
I too think Paul Lambert stuck his neck right out, and called out Evans as to the state of the football club. He also recognised the importance of re-engaging the supporters, the team and the club.
To suggest these managers were bad for the club is ridiculous.
Paul Hirst however, I find it more difficult to give too much credit too, but he was working within a different set of financial parameters.
You also have to remember Lambert + Hirst had zero infrastructure around them. They had little to no support around them whatsoever, and I think we can all see how important that whole structure is. |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:21 - Apr 28 with 1196 views | Guthrum |
| Paul Cook on 11:13 - Apr 28 by surreyblue |
I think that is fair. Of the likely starters tomorrow, 5 are Cook signings, and only one is a Mckenna summer signing.
Perhaps we look on him in more favourable terms because of the dross that came before - unlike Keane, Hurst and Lambert I never felt like he did damage to the club, just wasn't the right manager to achieve our objectives (similar to Jewell). |
Tho if Marcus Evans had remained as owner, I fear Cook may have been given too much time beyond when things went wrong, thus become damaging almost by default, in much the same way as happened with Lambert (who would likely have been viewed less unfavourably without that last 12 months). |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:23 - Apr 28 with 1185 views | clive_baker |
| Paul Cook on 11:15 - Apr 28 by Churchman |
No, he doesn’t deserve much credit.
I’ve no problem with shifting out players you don’t rate and bringing in those you do or the reset. But the how you go about it is everything and his way of doing it looked wrong at the time. You can be relentless, determined, decisive and strong without going about it in the way he did.
Most of those players needed to be moved on. The culture and acceptance of mediocrity had to go. But you don’t have to blow a gasket on tv. You don’t have to bin the lot; the good and the bad. Bomb squad? Crude. It was wasteful and left us with no real team at the start of the season. Just a load of players (plenty of good ones tbf) thrown together.
Cook strikes me as an honest likeable man, but the job he did here was poor and it was never going to work. He had to go. |
Agree re. how he conducted himself. I won't name names but I spoke to one of those released players soon after, friend of a friend, and for someone who had been at the club since they were 7 or 8 and played 100+ times for us the courtesy he was extended was, frankly, disgraceful. Whether the decision was right in that case is one thing but the manner it was done was awful. | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:26 - Apr 28 with 1152 views | tractordownsouth |
| Paul Cook on 11:02 - Apr 28 by TractorCam |
Morsy himself said the only reason he dropped down to League One was for Cook. Not for Ipswich Town, for Cook.
For that one alone, absolutely. |
That’s the only thing that Cook can claim credit for even then I don’t think it’s particularly unique because a lot of lower-end championship managers would probably have done the same.
Just to give an example, if we’d appointed Paul Warne instead of Cook then he may have been able to persuade Matt Crooks to drop down and join us on a big wage when we were interested. I don’t think the recruitment is as a result of any skill on Cook’s part, he just knew some good players, whom most League One managers could identify were quality for the level, and was lucky to have the resources to pay for them. | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:30 - Apr 28 with 1127 views | Superblue95 |
| Paul Cook on 11:20 - Apr 28 by pennblue |
It seems to be common place to say any manager that did not win promotion was automatically a failure. That is a very simplistic take on things.
Of course Paul Cook should take a lot of credit and I am sure he would have had us right up there by now as well with the resources available.
I too think Paul Lambert stuck his neck right out, and called out Evans as to the state of the football club. He also recognised the importance of re-engaging the supporters, the team and the club.
To suggest these managers were bad for the club is ridiculous.
Paul Hirst however, I find it more difficult to give too much credit too, but he was working within a different set of financial parameters.
You also have to remember Lambert + Hirst had zero infrastructure around them. They had little to no support around them whatsoever, and I think we can all see how important that whole structure is. |
Your middle 2 paragraphs defending Lambert is utter guff.
He called out Evans as he wanted to deflect blame away from himself over how bad a job he was doing. Everybody already knew the state of how badly/cheaply Evans was running things.
With regards re-engaging he got bored of that after a couple of months, aside from buying a few beers. He banned Phil from pressers and then didn’t even bother doing any media work himself towards the end. He just whinged and moaned about everything like a petulant child while serving up crap football and adding to a squad of crap players and crap loans with even more crap players and crap loans.
His tenure was surely the most miserable in any town fans existence and while it wasn’t all his fault, enough of it was to comfortably describe him as bad for the club |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:32 - Apr 28 with 1115 views | tractordownsouth |
| Paul Cook on 11:30 - Apr 28 by Superblue95 |
Your middle 2 paragraphs defending Lambert is utter guff.
He called out Evans as he wanted to deflect blame away from himself over how bad a job he was doing. Everybody already knew the state of how badly/cheaply Evans was running things.
With regards re-engaging he got bored of that after a couple of months, aside from buying a few beers. He banned Phil from pressers and then didn’t even bother doing any media work himself towards the end. He just whinged and moaned about everything like a petulant child while serving up crap football and adding to a squad of crap players and crap loans with even more crap players and crap loans.
His tenure was surely the most miserable in any town fans existence and while it wasn’t all his fault, enough of it was to comfortably describe him as bad for the club |
I’m not even sure it was as complex as deflection, he just wanted to be sacked and collect his payoff. | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:33 - Apr 28 with 1109 views | Herbivore |
| Paul Cook on 11:20 - Apr 28 by pennblue |
It seems to be common place to say any manager that did not win promotion was automatically a failure. That is a very simplistic take on things.
Of course Paul Cook should take a lot of credit and I am sure he would have had us right up there by now as well with the resources available.
I too think Paul Lambert stuck his neck right out, and called out Evans as to the state of the football club. He also recognised the importance of re-engaging the supporters, the team and the club.
To suggest these managers were bad for the club is ridiculous.
Paul Hirst however, I find it more difficult to give too much credit too, but he was working within a different set of financial parameters.
You also have to remember Lambert + Hirst had zero infrastructure around them. They had little to no support around them whatsoever, and I think we can all see how important that whole structure is. |
Lambert and Cook led us to our worst finishes as a club in over half a century. They were largely hopeless when it came to the main part of their job, which is winning football matches. |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:34 - Apr 28 with 1097 views | Vic |
Agree with the general gist of this. I'll never agree with the way he went about things, it was needlessly aggressive and showed a total lack of respect to some players who deserved better, and I don't think helped some of the younger ones.
However, we did need that sort of reset, and no one can argue with the players he brought in. Of course there were some duds, but in 20 odd signings no one is going to get everything right. Sadly he was not able to coach them into a cohesive unit.
So yes, some credit for the signings, but two downvotes for the way he went about things and his failure here as a coach.
I note that he's not done too bad since he's gone back to Chesterfield. |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:35 - Apr 28 with 1097 views | Steve_M |
| Paul Cook on 11:23 - Apr 28 by clive_baker |
Agree re. how he conducted himself. I won't name names but I spoke to one of those released players soon after, friend of a friend, and for someone who had been at the club since they were 7 or 8 and played 100+ times for us the courtesy he was extended was, frankly, disgraceful. Whether the decision was right in that case is one thing but the manner it was done was awful. |
I think Cook his behind the players when he failed initially and then tried to do so again with new players as he failed a second time, the money Gamechanger spent was far more critical in that recruitment than Cook, except for Morsy and Chaplin, and there have been a lot of expensive duds in there too.
Definitely far too much credit in your OP I think. |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:44 - Apr 28 with 1084 views | Garv |
100% - the best thing he did.
Morsy wouldn't have signed for anyone else anyway but he definitely wouldn't have signed had Chambers still been there as skipper.
Cook only got one or two wrong in terms of who he shifted out, Wilson being the main one that springs to mind.
Edit: if by ruthless you mean actually how he went about the clear out - the minute long meetings with senior players etc, then maybe he got it wrong. But if you simply mean the ruthlessness of deciding to get rid of them at all, then he was bang on. [Post edited 28 Apr 2023 11:55]
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| Paul Cook on 11:46 - Apr 28 with 1082 views | itfcjoe |
I don't see it still, I think it is forgotten just how many players were out of contract that summer, that could have gone without all the demolition man spiel and the need to throw the baby out with bathwater
That summer - we could/would have released the following at end of contract:
Chambers, Huws, Judge, Sears, Skuse, Ward, Wilson, Nolan
We offered new deals/took option on
Nsiala, Donacien
Plus lonas:
McGuinness, Harrop, Parrott, Matheson, Thomas, Bennetts
Muutal consent release
Oli Hawkins, Dai Cornell
Sold
Dozzell, Lankester, Drinan, Gibbs Bishop, Downes
I'm sure there are players in the first couple of groups you could say wrong decision made on - James Wilson to go, Toto Nsiala to stay. Had we released Donacien that would have proven to be a mistake - but realistically had all those out of contract players gone then would have still been a massive rebuild required
Just think we didn't take enough care in the sales section:
Dozzell - wanted to go and had a release clause - didn't really miss him
Lankester - Not sure fee we got for him, but if was next to nothing think he is a player we could have persisted with for one more season as he was under contract
Drinan - I always found him a decent option, ironically he'd have probably been more use this season than he was in 21/22
Gibbs - A clear mistake, but think there are extenuating circumstances as one that got lost in between regimes....but if demo man not in full swing would more care have been taken
Bishop - Time may have come for him to move on, but a player I'd have loved to have seen at a time when we were investimg more in medical department - but prob damage had been done with the career stall
Downes - the big mistake for me, especially when you Dyer talk about him. If we could have got him into that McKenna team he'd have been very special and worth serious money
Also Kayden Jackson was in the bomb squad - that would have been a mistake to let him go
Myles Kenlock there too - instead we paid him a wage for a season to not be in squad when he could quite easily have played the role the totally ineffectual Matt Penney could have done
Had we just done the obvious thing - released everyone we could, and took a bit of care over the rest, then i think we'd have been in a better position as a club, and would have meant not started the season so slowly and may have changed a lot - but Cook totally screwed himself over with his approach and cost himself the job |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:49 - Apr 28 with 1061 views | itfcjoe |
| Paul Cook on 10:57 - Apr 28 by portmanking |
No, I think you're being fair. Cook could certainly spot a player, of that there is no doubt.
Unfortunately, he simply falls into the Paul Jewell category of being a good talent-spotter and a poor coach. |
I think you could give any League 1 manager the budget we had last summer and they'd sign some quality players for this level - it was almost fantasy football like.
One of the reasons why I think he got the tin-tack was that he was trying to push more players out in January (including ones we had just signed) and sign even more players - that's not talent spotting, it's just taking the easiest route | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:52 - Apr 28 with 1044 views | clive_baker |
| Paul Cook on 11:35 - Apr 28 by Steve_M |
I think Cook his behind the players when he failed initially and then tried to do so again with new players as he failed a second time, the money Gamechanger spent was far more critical in that recruitment than Cook, except for Morsy and Chaplin, and there have been a lot of expensive duds in there too.
Definitely far too much credit in your OP I think. |
Probably. Time is a bit of a healer too innit, I think back to some of those performances under him and we looked so clueless tactically. The recruitment off the field was disgraceful too.
I just posted it as a discussion point really, I'm feeling contrarian.
Jewell though, he was bloody good wasn't he? | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:53 - Apr 28 with 1039 views | Pique |
| Paul Cook on 11:49 - Apr 28 by itfcjoe |
I think you could give any League 1 manager the budget we had last summer and they'd sign some quality players for this level - it was almost fantasy football like.
One of the reasons why I think he got the tin-tack was that he was trying to push more players out in January (including ones we had just signed) and sign even more players - that's not talent spotting, it's just taking the easiest route |
Yes, but (for example) Keane was given a decent budget at Championship level (albeit not as significant as Cook's relative to the rest of the division) and largely wasted it. Being given a big budget is no guarantee. |  | | |
| Paul Cook on 11:54 - Apr 28 with 1037 views | itfcjoe |
| Paul Cook on 11:30 - Apr 28 by Superblue95 |
Your middle 2 paragraphs defending Lambert is utter guff.
He called out Evans as he wanted to deflect blame away from himself over how bad a job he was doing. Everybody already knew the state of how badly/cheaply Evans was running things.
With regards re-engaging he got bored of that after a couple of months, aside from buying a few beers. He banned Phil from pressers and then didn’t even bother doing any media work himself towards the end. He just whinged and moaned about everything like a petulant child while serving up crap football and adding to a squad of crap players and crap loans with even more crap players and crap loans.
His tenure was surely the most miserable in any town fans existence and while it wasn’t all his fault, enough of it was to comfortably describe him as bad for the club |
If he really cared about the club and the infrastructure and getting it changed he'd have called that out on the back of his 5 year deal - the fact he waited until he was close to the sack before he did it shows this | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:55 - Apr 28 with 1028 views | Churchman |
| Paul Cook on 11:34 - Apr 28 by Vic |
Agree with the general gist of this. I'll never agree with the way he went about things, it was needlessly aggressive and showed a total lack of respect to some players who deserved better, and I don't think helped some of the younger ones.
However, we did need that sort of reset, and no one can argue with the players he brought in. Of course there were some duds, but in 20 odd signings no one is going to get everything right. Sadly he was not able to coach them into a cohesive unit.
So yes, some credit for the signings, but two downvotes for the way he went about things and his failure here as a coach.
I note that he's not done too bad since he's gone back to Chesterfield. |
Agreed Vic, but you, me, anyone conscious could see we needed a reset and I don’t think any of us could have gone about it much worse than he did - and given my knowledge of football management the bar can’t get any lower.
Yes a lot of the players he brought in were good and that does him credit, but the scrambled way in which it was done was awful. The same applied to the recruitment of his coaches. He may have known who he wanted and planned it the way it turned out, but it looked a mess. He just wasn’t very good.
As for giving Lambert praise, I can’t imagine why anyone would do that. Utterly hopeless bag of wind. How he conned a five year contract is beyond me. A five minute contract was six minutes too long. Darren Bent’s view of him says it all. |  | | |
| Paul Cook on 11:57 - Apr 28 with 1015 views | Steve_M |
| Paul Cook on 11:52 - Apr 28 by clive_baker |
Probably. Time is a bit of a healer too innit, I think back to some of those performances under him and we looked so clueless tactically. The recruitment off the field was disgraceful too.
I just posted it as a discussion point really, I'm feeling contrarian.
Jewell though, he was bloody good wasn't he? |
The thing about Jewell was that he was a streaky manager, his good streaks were really very good but the bad ones…. At Bradford and Wigan he just manned to drag those streaks out (although us messing up in 2005 obviously helped him). | |
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| Paul Cook on 11:57 - Apr 28 with 1011 views | bournemouthblue |
I don't think Cook is a terrible manager by any means but he did seem a bit one dimensional, always going for 4231
History will tell you, when tends to get it to click, his sides generally build momentum and finish strongly, as you can see with Chesterfield this season
But maybe he is missing his former assistant, maybe League One and Two are about his level, McKenna has a higher shelf and is clearly a very good coach |  |
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| Paul Cook on 11:58 - Apr 28 with 991 views | pennblue |
| Paul Cook on 11:30 - Apr 28 by Superblue95 |
Your middle 2 paragraphs defending Lambert is utter guff.
He called out Evans as he wanted to deflect blame away from himself over how bad a job he was doing. Everybody already knew the state of how badly/cheaply Evans was running things.
With regards re-engaging he got bored of that after a couple of months, aside from buying a few beers. He banned Phil from pressers and then didn’t even bother doing any media work himself towards the end. He just whinged and moaned about everything like a petulant child while serving up crap football and adding to a squad of crap players and crap loans with even more crap players and crap loans.
His tenure was surely the most miserable in any town fans existence and while it wasn’t all his fault, enough of it was to comfortably describe him as bad for the club |
" he wanted to deflect blame away from himself over how bad a job he was doing"
I don't really care why he did it, my point is, he did it, and that was the trigger to getting Evans to sell imo
I did not say his motives were always 100% for the club, but his actions were significant, he really called Evans out like no-one else had previously done. | |
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| Paul Cook on 12:02 - Apr 28 with 913 views | pennblue |
| Paul Cook on 11:54 - Apr 28 by itfcjoe |
If he really cared about the club and the infrastructure and getting it changed he'd have called that out on the back of his 5 year deal - the fact he waited until he was close to the sack before he did it shows this |
"If he really cared about the club and the infrastructure and getting it changed he'd have called that out on the back of his 5 year deal"
Yeah maybe he did not give a damn about the club, it was all deflection and a ploy to negotiate a great deal for himself.
Regardless, I still think his actions were helpful in forcing Evan's hand. | |
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| Paul Cook on 12:04 - Apr 28 with 890 views | pennblue |
| Paul Cook on 11:33 - Apr 28 by Herbivore |
Lambert and Cook led us to our worst finishes as a club in over half a century. They were largely hopeless when it came to the main part of their job, which is winning football matches. |
You can't dispute those facts, however context is important | |
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| Paul Cook on 12:05 - Apr 28 with 886 views | clive_baker |
| Paul Cook on 11:57 - Apr 28 by Steve_M |
The thing about Jewell was that he was a streaky manager, his good streaks were really very good but the bad ones…. At Bradford and Wigan he just manned to drag those streaks out (although us messing up in 2005 obviously helped him). |
I think what we tend to forget as well is the environment in which these managers have had to operate.
I would never and will never defend Lambert, I can't stand him and think he went about things terribly here. He checked out months before he left, had little to no professional pride or relationship with players and was a complete car crash. Not to mention the way he carried himself publicly. Utter disaster.
What I would say though is we were going down regardless, and then in L1 there was so much wrong off the pitch that made his job really difficult. On paper it was a squad that should've been better than mid table, but in reality when we've got a top of the table clash in November at home to Charlton and he's having to start Brett McGavin and 9 year old Gibbs in centre mid against Shinnie and Jonny Williams, because nobody else was fit. It was like being given a mid-range super car at Brands Hatch with a flat tyre. Pretty depressing being overtaken by a 12 year old Fiesta, but to some extent inevitable. And poor old Lee O'N. That was so dark. | |
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