Steve.... anybody knows that we had the success of the walker years because of Jack's cheque book. The influence of wealth : success is the same as it always has been. We had more money than anyone else and fortunately spent it wisely. Sure good Management by KMD etc was a major contribution but he wouldn't have come anywhere near without being paid a King's ransom and having more than any other club to spend on players. This is the current situation in attendance and ultimately income, it's skewed even more by the influence of 'sugar daddies' plus the parachute payments which would elevate at least 9 clubs in this division. All credit to Luton for managing to compete given their meagre income and as far as I know no sugar daddy either.
Championship 2021/2022 » Attendance » Home matches (worldfootball.net)
In the real world anything higher than 16th is an achievement. How do you think we'd have fared if we had been able to fend off interest in Armstrong last summer in the way that the two promoted clubs have done? Fulham managed to keep Mitrovic (64k pw) and tiny little Bournemouth keeping Billings and Solanke who are probably both earning more than a lot of Premier League players?
So if I was to assess Mowbray's 5 years I'd say that he has consistently punched over his weight, he's brought kids through and played good quality attacking football which is another of the fans favourites.
As far as my marks I mark on what I see from week to week. If ODB were to do it top marks every week would be for BBD and no doubt others have favourites too, but since AA left I see only Buckley, Rothwell and Kaminsky as ever having 'enough' to figure in a Premier League squad so why on earth people cannot see that too I don't know. WB asked if I thought we'd be promoted last Dec and I said NO, my opinion being obviously based on the above.
TM's marks reflect my opinions on each match. He isn't Klopp / Pep by any manner of means but I believe that for us he has been as good as it gets since Big Sam. Certainly miles better than that flakey eejit Coyle (Nicko's tip for the top back in the day rem), the totally clueless boring diamond shaped Lambert, whilst Berg, Appleton and Shithouse aren't fit to clean his bloody boots! Out of the Venky's crew the only one that did a decent job and who I have any respect for was Gary Bowyer. Maybe his motivational skills weren't enough but his eye for talent cannot be questioned. He steadied the ship in what were very stormy Shebby / Balaji waters and made BRFC a lot of money in the process. We binned him off whilst in the top half to great celebrations from some supporters and within two years we were kicking of the season with a thumping at Southend in League 1. Now some people with goldfish memories seek to repeat the process!
Fulham and recently Bournemouth illustrated how far their squads are in front of ours and next season I expect to see a number of Prem clubs doing to them what they did to us! Of the rest of the games since the New year I haven't seen us outplayed. Certainly if we'd made the play offs the only one that I would really fear would be Forest and even then not by much other than momentum since Cooper came. I see little difference between the Rovers and Sheff Utd, Boro, Luton, QPR, Coventry etc. In fact we have performed worse against bottom half clubs than top half ones. Poor results v PBoro, Barnsley, Bristol, Swansea, Hull have let us down plus what I would describe as sheer bad luck with key injuries, and match changing incidents. Two missed penalties and God only knows how many injury time goals and the odd og just revealed the old brittleness which somehow had been overcome during our great run in Nov and Dec.
One thing that has come to my ears is that a number of players are blaming TM for our fall off because of his constant tinkering with the team. Quite natural too as surely the £10m bounty for promotion offered by the owners when we were second would have raised hopes and as a rule when hopes are dashed scapegoats need to be found and who better than the manager? Certainly the players would never consider looking in a mirror at their own performances since NY would they?
