15-09-2020, 03:23 PM
(15-09-2020, 03:00 PM)Paplane Wrote:(15-09-2020, 02:21 PM)Salvatore Matrecano Wrote: After you have voted I would invite you all to cast your minds back 8 seasons to late 2012. We had Sean O ‘Driscoll in charge and he was doing a creditable job of getting reasonable results from a squad that included dross like Darius Henderson, Dan Harding and Matt Derbyshire. He had a sticky spell in late November and fan opinion mostly on social media, not in the stadium, started to turn a bit. Some of us didn't like his tippy tappy cautious approach and, seriously this was one of the reasons, his post match interviews were dull as ditch water.
Anyhow many people on here were members of a different forum before this fine place existed and similarly they had a poll as to whether or not to sack O’Driscoll. The poll result was a bit Brexit like if I remember but was narrowly in favour of getting rid. Of course a couple of weeks later those in favour got their wish because Fawaz, ever the crowd pleaser pulled the trigger on Boxing Day after the win over Leeds with Forest in 7th place in the Championship.
I am mentioning all of this because general consensus in the football World was that the sacking of O’Driscoll was a ridiculous mistake that scuppered our season. Surely no club would sack their manager that was doing pretty well? That came to be the opinion amongst forest fans too with hindsight and we conveniently blamed our former owner for being clueless.
The uncomfortable truth though is that an awful lot of us thought that O’Driscoll wasn't good enough for NFFC. Us fickle fans got what we wished for and 8 Years later on here we are sill in the Championship with the rest of the football world laughing at us.
There's also similarities with the Freedman era, who despite having Fawaz as his boss, no internal club infrastructure to assist, an injured Britt and an umbongo to deal with, kept us up. He set his team up to the squad's strengths, and sent the players out primarily to not lose. No one shed a tear when he was sacked but in hindsight I can see he did remarkably well in the circumstances.
Yeah not long after a glorious unbeaten run of admittedly mainly draws. Was disappointing given how bad the state of the club was at the time.
Although interesting that most of our former managers have not gone back into management since. Did we scar them or were they all just terrible appointments?! (Karanka aside now he's back at Brum, he'll either do well or fall out with the board again)
