Sousa Sacked!

[The Voice From Above]

So it seems there's 3 names in the frame. Sven, Goran and Erikson.

 

[okie fox]

Martin Allen was not sacked for football reasons; Paulo was.

What crap players? Perhaps our worst player has been Michael Morrison who was a candidate for player of the season last year.
Possibly that Slovenian with too many consonents who I have not seen may be crap.. Possibly Lamey though he may just need time to adjust. Vitor has managed 20 minutes and is on loan so he cannot be sold.

From what little I have seen of him I do not believe that Moreno is a crap player. I think he is a talented player that needs to adjust. I would also guess that Abe is talented.

The season we went down Martin Allen inherited a very poor squad that had been flirting with relegation. He added some far worse players and destroyed the confidence of the one talented striker Matty Fryatt.. The players that Megson and Holloway inherited was the poorest Leicester squad I can remember. We had the January window with Holloway desperately trying to bring in strikers and wingers.

Whoever succeeds Sousa will inherit an excellent set of players who have been underperforming. What would Megson or Holloway have given for a midfield battler like Wellens, a winger like Dyer or a striker like Waghorn.

Agree with all this. The problem has been in fitting the players we have into Sousa's system instead of 4-4-2.

 

[homer]

But no one wanted Neil Warnock when we had the chance.

Some people did

But the good old Foxes Trust specifically told him that he would never be accepted by the fans

Cheers for that, lads

 

[Profondo Rosso]

Agree with all this. The problem has been in fitting the players we have into Sousa's system instead of 4-4-2.

Why are people so obsessed with formation?

Pearson played a 4-5-1/4-3-3 for much of the final third of last season and it was very successful. Whether we play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is not the be all and end all.

Oh, and "formation" does not equal "system". "Formation" is just a small section of "system." Formation is simply where players stand in relation to each other, there is far, far more to football tactics than that.

For example one problem I always felt with Sousa was that his full-backs pushed forward too much and Hobbs and Morrison are not players who are comfortable covering at full-back when the full-backs were still up pitch, neither are players like Waghorn or Dyer good at helping out the full-backs when overlapped. As such we were often caught out by teams taking advantage of the gaps often left in the full-back position.

Another problem was that we always seemed to play a much higher defensive line than last season, which can be very effective if you keep the ball want to attack as a team, but opposition teams just stuck pacey forwards trying to break the offside trap there and played long balls over the top allowing them to break through the defence, QPR in particular were good at this.

 

[fitz]

Some people did

But the good old Foxes Trust specifically told him that he would never be accepted by the fans

Cheers for that, lads

Yeah, but in fairness the man is a bellend. You just have to look at managers like Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough and Arse Wenger to tell that only nice people make good football managers.

 

[Filthy Rich]

If he didn't make so many stupid appointments he wouldn't be in the position where he has to sack people.

Rubbish Jeff. He actually made mostly very good appointments. Megson would have done a good if unpopular job, Pearson was exceptional. Holloway is clearly a very good manager as is Sousa. The only one he got wrong was Martin Allen and he nipped him in the bud immediately.

 

[NN Fox]

Rubbish Jeff. He actually made mostly very good appointments. Megson would have done a good if unpopular job, Pearson was exceptional. Holloway is clearly a very good manager as is Sousa. The only one he got wrong was Martin Allen and he nipped him in the bud immediately.

Please, please, please will somebody tell me why Sousa is "clearly a very good manager". It's clearly not his record so does speaking with a foreign accent make someone a good manager or what?

 

[Kingy_85]

Please, please, please will somebody tell me why Sousa is "clearly a very good manager". It's clearly not his record so does speaking with a foreign accent make someone a good manager or what?

Seriously, im as confused as you !

 

[Foxile]

Ooh, so why was he sacked then?

Soup.

 

[Jeff]

Rubbish Jeff. He actually made mostly very good appointments. Megson would have done a good if unpopular job, Pearson was exceptional. Holloway is clearly a very good manager as is Sousa. The only one he got wrong was Martin Allen and he nipped him in the bud immediately.

Megson won one of his seven league games. I saw no signs that he was improving things - his record was worse than Allen's.
Holloway was rubbish for us. His record before joining us was mixed - he took QPR down and took three years to get them back up again. And don't bring up what he's done at Blackpool - Holloway himself has said his year off after leaving Leicester made him change the way he does things, so there's no reason to think he would have been any good if he'd stayed here.
I'm not sure what evidence you have that Sousa is a good manager. He had a poor record at QPR, his Swansea team went on an awful run at the end of last season, which he continued here.

But I wasn't just talking about his record at Leicester, but also at Portsmouth. He made lots of bad appointments there too. Maybe sometimes he sacks managers too quickly (would MON have lasted past the Sheff U game if MM had been here then?), but he has to take the blame for employing them in the first place.

 

[glyn]

Please, please, please will somebody tell me why Sousa is "clearly a very good manager". It's clearly not his record so does speaking with a foreign accent make someone a good manager or what?

Hear hear. I couldn't understand at the time of the appointment where his reputation came from.

 

[Mawsley]

Please, please, please

...let me get what I want this time?

 

[Brown Nose]

All we have left to do is get some hypnotherapy to erase the last three months from the history of the football club.

Dreadful man, dreadful manager. Time to forget.

 

[Stevie Lynex on the wing]

I might get shot down in flames but I honestly believe that PS should have been given atleast another 6 games to get it right, I am sure if he was still in charge tomorrow Scunny would be thumped as some team was due it sooner or later.
The championship is a difficult and unpredictable league and anyone can beat anyone ie: bottom team beating top team (Yes I know we lost to QPR).

I blame some of the players more than the manager, just like some of our so called fans certain players have never accepted PS and his style of play.

It's all so easy to think Nigel Pearson was god and yes he did a great job getting us promoted at first time of asking which I am indebited to him for doing so.

Pearson also did a good job last season getting us to a whisker of promotion to the Prem but he had an element of luck along the way winning games in the last few minutes that we would normally lose.

It wasn't pretty to watch but I know you are all thinking that todays game is a results game and Pearson was the right man for that, but I am a purist and like to be entertained so believe given just a bit longer PS might have just about got it right.

Whoever the next manager is (be it Sven, MON etc) under Mandaric will have a mountain to climb and could well put our great club back a step, remember 2008/2009.

 

[Brown Nose]

I might get shot down in flames but I honestly believe that PS should have been given atleast another 6 games to get it right, I am sure if he was still in charge tomorrow Scunny would be thumped as some team was due it sooner or later.
The championship is a difficult and unpredictable league and anyone can beat anyone ie: bottom team beating top team (Yes I know we lost to QPR).

I blame some of the players more than the manager, just like some of our so called fans certain players have never accepted PS and his style of play.

It's all so easy to think Nigel Pearson was god and yes he did a great job getting us promoted at first time of asking which I am indebited to him for doing so.

Pearson also did a good job last season getting us to a whisker of promotion to the Prem but he had an element of luck along the way winning games in the last few minutes that we would normally lose.

It wasn't pretty to watch but I know you are all thinking that todays game is a results game and Pearson was the right man for that, but I am a purist and like to be entertained so believe given just a bit longer PS might have just about got it right.

Whoever the next manager is (be it Sven, MON etc) under Mandaric will have a mountain to climb and could well put our great club back a step, remember 2008/2009.

Absolute lunacy.

What style of play? Did you see any of our last few defeats? There was nothing pissy-passy about what I saw. More headless chicken, to headless chicken followed by panic punt.

The players hadn't got a clue what to do on the pitch. Why was this ever going to improve?

 

[okie fox]

Why are people so obsessed with formation?

Pearson played a 4-5-1/4-3-3 for much of the final third of last season and it was very successful. Whether we play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 is not the be all and end all.

Oh, and "formation" does not equal "system". "Formation" is just a small section of "system." Formation is simply where players stand in relation to each other, there is far, far more to football tactics than that.

For example one problem I always felt with Sousa was that his full-backs pushed forward too much and Hobbs and Morrison are not players who are comfortable covering at full-back when the full-backs were still up pitch, neither are players like Waghorn or Dyer good at helping out the full-backs when overlapped. As such we were often caught out by teams taking advantage of the gaps often left in the full-back position.

Another problem was that we always seemed to play a much higher defensive line than last season, which can be very effective if you keep the ball want to attack as a team, but opposition teams just stuck pacey forwards trying to break the offside trap there and played long balls over the top allowing them to break through the defence, QPR in particular were good at this.

Thanks for setting me straight, I always thought that the manager just said "OK lads, we're playing 4-4-2 today, you know where to stand".

Yes, I have said elsewhere that the full backs were pushing forward too much and leaving too many gaps. That is pretty obvious from the QPR and Norwich games. Sousa's system was akin to Newcastle's 'suicidal system' under Kevin Keegan where both full backs would push up at the same time. This left a back two.

By 4-4-2 I meant the team should have a flat back 4, which would not leave gaps in the RB and LB areas, 4 in midfield to make the team hard to break down, and Waghorn closer to Howard instead of on the wing. 4-3-3/4-5-1 either means playing Howard and keeping Waghorn on the wing where he is somewhat wasted, or dropping Howard and playing Waghorn by himself in the centre where he is outmuscled when the ball is passed straight to him. City need to stop the rot defensively and score more so 4-4-2 seems the better option at the moment.

 

[Profondo Rosso]

I might get shot down in flames but I honestly believe that PS should have been given atleast another 6 games to get it right, I am sure if he was still in charge tomorrow Scunny would be thumped as some team was due it sooner or later.
The championship is a difficult and unpredictable league and anyone can beat anyone ie: bottom team beating top team (Yes I know we lost to QPR).

I blame some of the players more than the manager, just like some of our so called fans certain players have never accepted PS and his style of play.

It's all so easy to think Nigel Pearson was god and yes he did a great job getting us promoted at first time of asking which I am indebited to him for doing so.

Pearson also did a good job last season getting us to a whisker of promotion to the Prem but he had an element of luck along the way winning games in the last few minutes that we would normally lose.

It wasn't pretty to watch but I know you are all thinking that todays game is a results game and Pearson was the right man for that, but I am a purist and like to be entertained so believe given just a bit longer PS might have just about got it right.

Whoever the next manager is (be it Sven, MON etc) under Mandaric will have a mountain to climb and could well put our great club back a step, remember 2008/2009.

How is that luck? Surely that is the exact sign of good management? Players regularly pointed to Pearson drumming into them the importance of playing til the final whistle.

We also had our fair share of bad luck last season: Weale's howler vs. Derby, a wonder goal by SheffUtd, a couple of wonder goals by Bristol City, a penalty not being given for a bulldozer vs. Doncaster, a Cardiff player rugby tackling Vaughan and stopping a certain goal etc. etc.

Over the season, it definitely balanced itself out, we finished 5th on merit, absolutely not by luck.

Have to agree with Brown Nose on this one, I really think there was very little difference in both Pearson's and Sousa's style of play and I think some people just bought into Sousa's media nonsense. I wouldn't say we "weren't pretty" under Pearson at all, we played standard Championship mix and match stuff, I never found the style of play boring at all myself and at times is was electric. I honestly think all we played under Sousa was similar Championship mix and match stuff, the "passing game" was used in stints, yes, but so it was under Pearson. People just noticed it more under Sousa because of how he kept banging on about it, there was hardly much difference in our style of play to my eyes though, as much of it was direct as it was under Pearson.

I think your idea of being a "purist" or wanting to be a purist has led you to buy in to something that wasn't really there.

 

[Stevie Lynex on the wing]

Absolute lunacy.

What style of play? Did you see any of our last few defeats? There was nothing pissy-passy about what I saw. More headless chicken, to headless chicken followed by panic punt.

The players hadn't got a clue what to do on the pitch. Why was this ever going to improve?

No been out of the country on holiday so misse Cardiff, Qpr and Pompey games.

Yes was surprised at the amount of changes to the first eleven but put that down to injuries, suspensions and the fact that PS was still experimenting (trying to find his best team). Still believe he would have got it right but just like most clubs these days chairmen and fans don't give managers time.

Remember O'Neil was on the brink of being sacked and he turned out to be our most succesful manager to date.

 

[Cate Fox]

I dont recall that many injuries, just a Manager with an obsession for tinkering...

 

[Hazzman]

Anyone saying Pearson was 'long ball' and all that jazz clearly hasn't played a game of football. One of the things which impressed me most about Pearson was the homework on the opposition, it was by far the best I'd seen by a City manager in my shortish time of support. Secondarily, the team evolved as the season went on and really you had Kermorgant who he insisted on.

Sousa appeared to do little and then struggle to convey how he'd want to change it during the game. Unless he improved his English, that was always going to be a problem. The style he insisted on was far, far too slow build up in this division. It's all about tempo at this level and the main reason why foreigners struggle to an extent.