The New Raith Rovers Thread

[SirJimmyofNic]

33 minutes ago, itzdrk said:

There was this. 

Yep, the one and only so far  

[Wee Sandy]

54 minutes ago, Kooz92 said:

Some laugh to see the panic yo-yo between "Why is the cladding no finished?" and "Why is the manager no announced yet?"

!!!.......ye couldnae mak it up!!   "So. is your preference to have a new Manager announced.......or the cladding finished?

Ehhhhhh....no shair!!!.....Could not make it up!!

[SirJimmyofNic]

45 minutes ago, CountryBumpkin said:

You've thought it was someone different almost every day. Tomorrow you'll be wondering if the new manager is perhaps the latest Chat GPT version. 

At least it gives me something to do wi my spare time

[Wee Sandy]

1 hour ago, Oberon43 said:

Will the club finally admit the best manager out there without a job is……

 

….Ian Murray

FOR ME?? TOTALLY!! ...........................................I HAVE LISTENED TO THE CEO....AND ......WITH THE GREATEST OF RESPECT....YES IT IS THEIR "BABY"..

.................HOWEVER I AM NOT TOTALLY CONVINCED WE WILL ACTUALLY GET A BETTER MANAGER THAN IAN MURRAY!!

[da_no_1]

3 hours ago, bagpuss said:

Someone at Stark's reads this forum. LED screen lit up like a Christmas tree when I drove past just now.

Pass by Starks every morning. The screen was working weeks ago before any cladding had started. Not much has happened the last week or so. 

[San Starko Rover]

17 minutes ago, da_no_1 said:

Pass by Starks every morning. The screen was working weeks ago before any cladding had started. Not much has happened the last week or so. 

Next rumour will be we’ve no paid the TV licence on the big telly  

[g martin]

33 minutes ago, Paco said:

The blue line is from 1st of January (not change in manager like the title says) and it clearly shows how performances dropped significantly in the second half of the season.

Without seeing the data, we could see as fans the performances had continued into the League Cup and the Airdrie match. 

Were we just meant to wait and hope it got better? It’s bold action certainly and time will tell whether it’s the right call. But the charts above showed what we saw from the stands last season - from January on, even when we were getting results, it was really because of individual moments (Vaughan at Ayr, Brown v Dundee Utd, O’Reilly at Dunfermline) rather than any coherent performance. 

Thanks for an explanation and some stats on reason for sacking - certainly more to talk about than the previous suggestions of watching the interview again or going to more games in person. However I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with sacking Murray if a better replacement is there in my original post that started this, I was just told my perceived reason for sacking below was wrong - 

7 hours ago, g martin said:

For the Murray (2nd in league and play off finals) sacking to make sense it has to be someone who has achieved promotion to the spl or is a current / former spl manager, and therefore on paper has the credentials to do better than Murray did? Therefore scott brown and many other names here lack the pedigree by a long way to be suitable. Or do raith fans think a more proven manager than Murray is no longer attainable and are now happy with Scott Brown or any similar unproven name?

Are you also of the opinion then based on these stats that the new manager doesn't have to have a better CV than Murray (with experience getting a club promoted / playing top tier football)? And would be happy with Scott brown, who has half a season in managing in scotland, getting 7th in the same league, or other even lesser pedigree managers with no experience above Murray's?
If the stats now improve but the final league placement is 2nd or below with no promotion is it a success?

[SerieA]

12 minutes ago, San Starko Rover said:

Next rumour will be we’ve no paid the TV licence on the big telly  

Imagine the electricity bill running that constantly 

[Wee Sandy]

20 minutes ago, g martin said:

Thanks for an explanation and some stats on reason for sacking - certainly more to talk about than the previous suggestions of watching the interview again or going to more games in person. However I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with sacking Murray if a better replacement is there in my original post that started this, I was just told my perceived reason for sacking below was wrong - 

Are you also of the opinion then based on these stats that the new manager doesn't have to have a better CV than Murray (with experience getting a club promoted / playing top tier football)? And would be happy with Scott brown, who has half a season in managing in scotland, getting 7th in the same league, or other even lesser pedigree managers with no experience above Murray's?
If the stats now improve but the final league placement is 2nd or below with no promotion is it a success?

You make a lot of sense man. We will see in due course.

[Jilted John]

18 minutes ago, g martin said:

Thanks for an explanation and some stats on reason for sacking - certainly more to talk about than the previous suggestions of watching the interview again or going to more games in person. However I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with sacking Murray if a better replacement is there in my original post that started this, I was just told my perceived reason for sacking below was wrong - 

Are you also of the opinion then based on these stats that the new manager doesn't have to have a better CV than Murray (with experience getting a club promoted / playing top tier football)? And would be happy with Scott brown, who has half a season in managing in scotland, getting 7th in the same league, or other even lesser pedigree managers with no experience above Murray's?
If the stats now improve but the final league placement is 2nd or below with no promotion is it a success?

I was maybe a bit of a dick in the way I responded to your question. My understanding is that it was due to a regression.

Murray’s sole job is to coach the players and put a winning team on the park. Potter deals with the transfers side.

There's been quite a few big hitters in our squad last season who didn’t hit the heights they had previously reached whether it had been with us or other teams. Connolly, Stanton, Mullen, Hamilton to name a few. 
 

On top of that, we added to the squad in January and didn’t see any real benefit. Brown wasn’t an upgrade on Millen, who Murray fell out with. Ashcroft lasted 30 mins (can’t blame anyone for that). Rudden wasn’t any better than Gullan who he replaced and Turner wasn’t as consistently effective as we would have liked.

Fast forward to this season, in the friendlies, the cup games and the sole league game, despite adding a lot of good, experienced players to the same group that was there last season, we still weren’t seeing the players firing on all cylinders. They looked bored and disinterested. 
 

It’s very hard to argue with 2nd place not being a successful season, of course it was. But it’s also very difficult to argue against the fact that there has been an obvious regression with some players and the board felt that Murray wasn’t able to turn that around.

[renton]

So, we all recovered from that brief bout of whatsapp instigated mass hysteria then?

[g martin]

26 minutes ago, Jilted John said:

I was maybe a bit of a dick in the way I responded to your question. My understanding is that it was due to a regression.

Not at all, not everyone has time to give long answers to neutrals especially during normal working hours.

 

27 minutes ago, Jilted John said:

There's been quite a few big hitters in our squad last season who didn’t hit the heights they had previously reached whether it had been with us or other teams. Connolly, Stanton, Mullen, Hamilton to name a few. 
 

On top of that, we added to the squad in January and didn’t see any real benefit. Brown wasn’t an upgrade on Millen, who Murray fell out with. Ashcroft lasted 30 mins (can’t blame anyone for that). Rudden wasn’t any better than Gullan who he replaced and Turner wasn’t as consistently effective as we would have liked.

Fast forward to this season, in the friendlies, the cup games and the sole league game, despite adding a lot of good, experienced players to the same group that was there last season, we still weren’t seeing the players firing on all cylinders. They looked bored and disinterested. 
 

It’s very hard to argue with 2nd place not being a successful season, of course it was. But it’s also very difficult to argue against the fact that there has been an obvious regression with some players and the board felt that Murray wasn’t able to turn that around.

Thanks for the explanation, this all seems perfectly reasonable especially coming from a fan of the team. Again, I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with the idea that a new manager can help, provided there is someone that appears better on paper, experience in promotion to top tier football etc available, ie ruling out (in my eyes) many of the names being mentioned. If in fact as this post suggest the goal is simply to keep this finish 2nd / reach play offs level, or even stave off the worry of further regression, is this why some fans seem to be ok with the idea of taking a punt on Scott Brown for example (just as the most recent example) despite on paper having less credentials than Murray? Just to get someone fresh in to stop the decline? No problem with that if so, but some will likely still be confused if the next managers CV looks worse not better.

[McGuigan1978]

1 hour ago, g martin said:

Thanks for an explanation and some stats on reason for sacking - certainly more to talk about than the previous suggestions of watching the interview again or going to more games in person. However I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with sacking Murray if a better replacement is there in my original post that started this, I was just told my perceived reason for sacking below was wrong - 

Are you also of the opinion then based on these stats that the new manager doesn't have to have a better CV than Murray (with experience getting a club promoted / playing top tier football)? And would be happy with Scott brown, who has half a season in managing in scotland, getting 7th in the same league, or other even lesser pedigree managers with no experience above Murray's?
If the stats now improve but the final league placement is 2nd or below with no promotion is it a success?

In the long term, I'm not sure the next appointment's cv, (if we ever make one that is,)is hugely important. 

The only thing it absolutely dictates, is how initially pleased or otherwise the fans are when it's announced. 

Jimmy Nicholl had zero managerial experience when he arrived at the club but seemed to do pretty well.

Gordon Dalziel presumably pointed out at his interview with the board that he'd won the Second Division title with Ayr, finished second in the First Division, and got them to the League Cup final and the Scottish Cup final, and yet I will absolutely argue that his Raith Rovers side was worse than Claude Anelka's. 

John McGlynn had only ever been a caretaker before coming to ourselves and took us to a Scottish Cup semi final and second place in the First Division, and what about John Hughes sparkling cv?

He'd had Falkirk and Inverness Caledonian Thistle flying high with the former finishing runner up in the Scottish Cup, and the latter winning it and getting to a League Cup final, surely there's no chance he'd fail to clear up Gary Locke's ludicrous shenanigans? 

As much as I'd like the next manager to have a lot more successes than failures under their belt, we've seen more than enough examples to know that it doesn't really work like that. 

Edited August 19 by McGuigan1978

[CountryBumpkin]

1 hour ago, Paco said:

I can understand why neutral fans were bewildered and it took most of our own support, myself included, by surprise too. However I’ve seen these do the rounds and I think it displays exactly what was meant by regression.

.

The blue line is from 1st of January (not change in manager like the title says) and it clearly shows how performances dropped significantly in the second half of the season.

Without seeing the data, we could see as fans the performances had continued into the League Cup and the Airdrie match. 

Were we just meant to wait and hope it got better? It’s bold action certainly and time will tell whether it’s the right call. But the charts above showed what we saw from the stands last season - from January on, even when we were getting results, it was really because of individual moments (Vaughan at Ayr, Brown v Dundee Utd, O’Reilly at Dunfermline) rather than any coherent performance. 

After a deeper dive into Statsbomb, deep progressions are passes/dribbles into the final third of the pitch. Deep completions are passes completed within 20 yards of the box (why not the same final 3rd as the other one, probably because they didn't get the results they wanted when looking at the final 3rd, as I said, nonsense). Like most football stats, they're nonsense made up by bored statisticians to keep them in a job which I thought peaked with npxG and PPDA. 

It looks like, if we're going by this, at the turn of the year we progressed into the final 3rd more, had more shots from open play but completed less passes around the box than we did during our successful period early season, which highlights just how necessary a lot of those late goals were in covering over cracks as broken down by these stats.

I guess that brings up an interesting question. What is success for the new manager? Murray was lauded when he obtained 41 points in the first half of the season and sacked after achieving 28 in the 2nd half. Is the manager doing well if he gets between those two markers in each half?

What about performances? What is acceptable in the eyes of the board? Given they judged Murray on these too, surely they must have some metrics on this if it can it be quantified? 

[ayrunitedfw]

2 hours ago, Kirkcaldybanjo said:

Longer this goes on the more I think its Gary Bowyer.

That would be a decent appointment imo. If we were to lose Brown he’d be pretty high up on my list. 

[MICMAC]

With nothing coming out about a Scottish manager, I'm starting to think the new manager will come from elsewhere in the UK.

Don't think it'll be Bowyer, he wasn't exactly treated well by Dundee. 

However, it wouldn't surprise me if someone like Gordon Stachan or Mark McGhee fancy another crack at a managers job.

[g martin]

1 hour ago, McGuigan1978 said:

In the long term, I'm not sure the next appointment's cv, (if we ever make one that is,)is hugely important. 

The only thing it absolutely dictates, is how initially pleased or otherwise the fans are when it's announced. 

Jimmy Nicholl had zero managerial experience when he arrived at the club but seemed to do pretty well.

Gordon Dalziel presumably pointed out at his interview with the board that he'd won the Second Division title with Ayr, finished second in the First Division, and got them to the League Cup final and the Scottish Cup final, and yet I will absolutely argue that his Raith Rovers side was worse than Claude Anelka's. 

John McGlynn had only ever been a caretaker before coming to ourselves and took us to a Scottish Cup semi final and second place in the First Division, and what about John Hughes sparkling cv?

He'd had Falkirk and Inverness Caledonian Thistle flying high with the former finishing runner up in the Scottish Cup, and the latter winning it and getting to a League Cup final, surely there's no chance he'd fail to clear up Gary Locke's ludicrous shenanigans? 

As much as I'd like the next manager to have a lot more successes than failures under their belt, we've seen more than enough examples to know that it doesn't really work like that. 

Thanks for the additional insight, I wouldn't claim to know as much about Raith's history especially going back to the 90s. However I can agree that their are many examples across all clubs of managers with previous success at something failing to achieve it again. What getting someone with more experience / credentials does do however is give the board some deniability if it goes wrong this season. It's much easier to say "we did everything we could when making the appointment, (insert name) had achieved this promotion or this higher level success, on this evidence of results we believed he was a more qualified candidate than Murray was, we paid a considerable sum over the season for this experience to drive for promotion." 

Rather than "we believed that (insert name) would do a better job than Murray as we liked what we saw them doing in league 1, despite lack of work history evidencing they could achieve our goals at a higher level, oh well at least they were cheap."

Of course oftentimes this doesn't matter if the team has just vastly underperformed over the season, got relegated etc - lets get literally any other body in for a punt, it can't be worse. In this case with a second place finish and play off final (regardless of stats showing decline in form, ongoing decline in perceived team performance) any choice here is going to be under a lot more scrutiny in my opinion, and there is less leeway if we are down the list to Scott Brown or even further to Liam Fox etc. So I'm still hoping they have some cracking candidate lined up with a good CV that is just taking a while to be extracted from their current club /sign up etc.

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, MICMAC said:

 

However, it wouldn't surprise me if someone like Gordon Stachan or Mark McGhee fancy another crack at a managers job.

 

[RaithRovers1883]

Interesting interview here with Josh Mullen, where he shows how highly he and other players apparently viewed Ian Murray: https://www.fifetoday.co.uk/sport/football/raith-rovers-star-explains-flat-early-season-form-which-led-to-ian-murrays-shock-sacking-4748527?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0AOVjMKTt-b_Ki1bHyMwZEPWzWwbcHVYXCjfQMMtYuW27Qv9APz6FmpaY_aem_ui68MOmCVp0nW_E6qfviuw#Echobox=1724084728

Edited August 20 by RaithRovers1883

[TxRover]

15 hours ago, bagpuss said:

Can't see us stumping up money to pay off Murray and also compensate Ayr. That would be a pretty penny. This board does have the capacity to surprise though.

Brown may also be pretty happy where he is given their start. I think the comment on his sacking at Fleetwood is fair. That club was a basket case last season so it may be more of a reflection on those running  the club rather than Brown's performance.

I could see a scenario where if it was Brown though nothing gets announced until after Saturday's game

I couldn't. A manager who has agreed to join a new club managing his old club against the new club would be a nightmare from the possible misconduct aspect. Ayr lose/Brown threw the match...Ayr win/Raith threw the match...draw/someone threw the match. The bookies would go apeshit if Brown was announced to Raith and any talks occurred before this weekends match.