capt_oats

Just saw that shout on Steelmen. In terms of profile ie: age, playing experience etc he's in line with the sort of manager we'd go for IMO. The only question mark is transferring managing at Linfield to us. This is from an interview in The Guardian the other week:

The article in The Sun is pretty much just a re-write of the story that went out yesterday in the Finnish press with the quotes from the owner. It's possible I'm just a bit naive but I'd be surprised if we were at the interview stage and didn't have a ballpark idea of the compensation figure. Like, Simo's application's been in for a week and a half and we'd need KuPS' permission to speak to him it seems wild that no one on either side would have thought to at least broach the subject.

Someone flagged this on Steelmen but it's probably worth a mention. That was Kerr talking in his post-match about "We've seen real attack minded, fast flowing football going forward and that's how we want, as a club here, our teams to be playing." In and of itself it's a general platitude but given the post-Alexander messaging from Hammell and recently SOD about style it feels like it's something we're consciously leaning into. What that actually means or how it plays out IDK but it really feels like we're doing our best to distance ourselves as far as possible from Alexanderball.

100% Tbh, I half-wonder if Josh Morris has held on to his receipt and looking at the small print of his contract given he's almost certainly here because of his previous with Alexander. I mean, reading the statement about Dibble it's absolutely fair enough - the previous manager brought him in, circumstances have changed.

What's interesting about this to me is that it means whoever is getting the job has a completely clean slate when it comes to coaching staff which is pretty unusual for us. For the most part the incoming manager has inherited staff - as it stands there are vacancies for assistant manager, first team coach and now goalkeeper coach. Confirmed on the official.

LOLZ

There's a difference between signing a player with Gallagher's baggage and what a management role represents. By Burrows own admission part of the job brief is "representing the club, having the same mentality and ethos that we do about our community and our supporters. Someone who can lead, someone who can inspire". It'd take a hard neck to preach that then wheel out a racist, sexist anti-Semite as your new manager.

I don't know if it's a knock on from there not really being any betting markets outside of McBookie but it's been interesting that there have been few, if any, names linked/reported from the sort of managerial pool we've historically tended to look at ie: L1 in England - the McCall/Alexander sort of profile. As much as some folk on here are clutching their pearls about the squad and what not I genuinely don't see that the job would be any less appealing now than any other time it's been vacant. Not least as we're only two games (of which we've won 1 and lost the other in the 94th minute) into the league season and there are still 3 weeks of the window open for a manager to do a bit of business. Are those circumstances really any worse than being joint bottom of the table in January having been scudded 3-0 by Accies? Not for me, Clive.

Scott Burns has it as a shortlist of 4. Hammell, Simo +2 - no Lambert, no Ferguson and (thankfully) no Kevin Thomson.

Hmmmmm....

Craigan putting Lennon's name forward.

Tierney starting for the Young Team.

Aye. Like, I've generally got implicit trust in Burrows/the board to make the right decisions but there's something about this one that feels like there's a chance we're going to do something really, really fucking dumb. Which is a worry tbqh.

Being objective about it our options as reported are: Hammell - club legend with zero managerial experience whose role at the club until now has been largely strategic. Valakari - former fan favourite with 300+ games in his management career (avg: 1.78 PPG), 1 league championship and 3 cup wins in Finland whose side are currently top of the league and playing a European qualifier this week. Mystery box - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean, if our choice is Hammell, Valakari or the mystery box I'm probably on the Pro-Simo bus. Also, in terms of familiarity with the squad...

Looking at the squad this is pretty much where I am. It feels like it's actually built for a back 3, we had half decent results playing a back 3 at the end of last season so it was wild to see us just double down with exactly the same Alexanderball against Sligo. Allowing for Carroll and McGinley being injured for the foreseeable we definitely need a LB/LWB and I'd be inclined to see if Crypto Joe can't find fame and fortune at another club but broadly I'd say we're 3 definite starters short with maybe another 2 to add on top of that. Maybe I'm just being optimistic but I'd say the bulk of that's do-able with 3 weeks left of the window (assuming we've not been sat on our hands for the past month). If I'm drawing up a shopping list it'd be a CF, LB/LWB, CB, midfielder and a winger.

I think the point is that, for me, there's an argument that SODs poor form, that he was taking a kicking from a section of the support for, can at least in part be directly attributed to what he was being instructed to do by the manager. It's becoming increasingly clear that if you didn't follow those instructions to the letter you were bombed out the team. @well fan for life mentioned it yesterday but the way Alexander wanted his full backs to play was the complete opposite of the things SOD is actually good at. It made sense that oftentimes GA seemed to settle on a centre back (Mugabi) and a more defensive minded player (McGinley) to play the positions and get better results from that because that's pretty much what he wanted his full backs to do. It's possible that I'm reading too much into this and he was just being nice but even Hammell commenting about Carroll's injury that he was "a big part of what we wanted to do" begins to feel like an acknowledgement that we're wanting to pivot to having attacking full backs or at least play to their strengths.

I don't disagree but surely with hindsight, reading between the lines, it'd have been a possibility that SOD might have been expected to move on if there's been a fall out regardless of the minutes he played last season. So we've went out and brought in McGinn who by all accounts seems to be a right back who'd do what Alexander wanted. He's not necessarily speaking about SOD here but it ties in with the quote attributed to Alexander when Woolery left: ""We have lost a couple of players but, not being disrespectful, we were comfortable with certain players moving on, because we felt we needed to trim the squad and redefine it a little bit." Obviously Sligo happened, Alexander got his jotters and SODs is back in the fold now - which is good. Taking a step back the scenario @Jim McLean's Ghost outlines above sounds entirely plausible IMO.

Ultimately the recruitment team is working on the instruction of the management though. Like, it's the same people who identified the likes of Slattery and Tierney. Both are technical players. It's really about context. Efford was signed as a punt on an 18 month deal and Alexander gave him every opportunity. He's probably reflective of the budget we had to spend at that specific point in time (or he was a placeholder in the squad to get us up to summer). Tbh, this is why the suggestion that Alexander's budget was curtailed is relevant. The players we've brought in this summer seem like straight swaps for the squad players who left at the end of last season which presumably means it was that sort of price point we were shopping. Spittal for Roberts, McGinn for Grimshaw and, I guess, Morris for Woolery. Also, after SOD's interview it pretty much explains the McGinn signing. It's not difficult to join the dots on that one now.

I mean, I'm not sure it's as overt as pro/anti but players like KVV and Morris are bound to be closer to Alexander than others simply because they've played for him prior to joining the club. Whether that means anything IDK. On the point about needing new players, it's kind of why I'm not as down on the squad as others. Had we been operating a similar strategy as we did when Robinson was here and we'd front loaded the signings which meant that what we have now is essentially our squad for the season I'd be worried but as it stands (if you take out the Young Team ie: Connelly, Johnston, Devine and, I guess, Mahon) our squad comes in at 20 players (with 1 long term injury in Carroll and McGinley TBC). To me a normal sized squad is probably around 23-24 so we're clearly short. Which kind of lends towards the thinking that we'd throttled Alexander's spending to see how things went (badly it turns out). That we never got around to adding the additional coach Alexander spoke about a couple of times speaks to that point as well. What's interesting to me is that you've had Hammell and now SOD pretty much emphasising the need for recruiting good players. Which isn't to say we don't have good players (we do IMO - Kelly, SOD, Slattery, Tierney, KVV etc) but it kind of feels like it's something that Burrows/the board/Daws can't really ignore now given the way it's being publicly highlighted.

The replies though. Actual adults replying to a club account is some laugh.

I know it's already been discussed on here but that SOD interview is interesting, not in so much that he's confirming the fall out with Alexander or that he's saying signing players is more of a priority than the manager but rather his emphasis on a 'style of play' and signing "good" players who "fit a profile" in order to help change.

That seems to be the plan. Interviews are this week. I'd imagine Hammell will probably take the team on Saturday though.

Just checked the Disciplinary list. It's 2 games aye.