Some interesting comments in this thread. Not Richie's I'm afraid.
I think the thing that lay behind my question which I didn't sufficiently spell out is that the thought experiment that still has Gareth Ainsworth at this football club in five year's time also inevitably includes at least one promotion. It's obvious, I think, that, whilst Gaz has genuine affection for the club he is also a reasonably ambitious man. So I really can't see him remaining at the club and us still being an upper fourth division (in old money) team. He would have had to (for his own professional satisfaction) achieved at least one promotion and we would have to be still achieving sufficient success for him to have resisted the inevitable offers from elsewhere.
To me then, the question "could Ainsworth conceivably surpass O'Neill?" would also have us, at least, established as a "sustainable" League 1 club, so not making huge losses and not desperately fighting to stave off relegation each year. It could even see us, dare I say it, flirting with the odd season in the Championship (crazy I know). In that scenario, the question I've posed would, surely, at least become a reasonable question to ask.
@Uncle_T I'm also late to the area and started coming just at the end of Gormania...so saw Brownie caretaking, got a ST for Lambert, Taylor, Taylor/Waddock, but missed two seasons until I got a ST for Gaz's first full season as a gift! After Torquay, I reinvested thinking no season could be as bad as that! Perhaps for the first time, this season has been excellent for confidence and attacking football, but I can also appreciate what GA has slowly built over his time in charge. I would be interested to see if he could translate that into success with a higher budget and dealing with larger egos...once we are in the play-off positions in League One.
Dev C has been roundly criticised but he does raise a point worthy of debate. At what stage do a manager’s previous successes count for little or nothing when results start to go wrong? Look at Arsene Wenger, the
most successful manager in the history of a great club like Arsenal yet still subject to some terrible abuse in recent years. Football fans are notoriously fickle and even Martin O’Neill had his critics in his time at Wycombe. I think GA has done a wonderful job and if we get promoted and he stays I would hope that people would cut him some slack if things didn’t work out so successfully in a higher division.
In relation to a reserve side or youth academy, im beginning to think that the way we pick up rejects as such is the way forward. All the money spent on an academy how much do we gain even with sell on fees. There will always be rejects from higher leagues and if we can improve them and sell on we will gain in the long run. Just my opinion
@glasshalffull 'It's a results business' and other cliches. In the case of some fans, yes...even some Gasroomers...good results are more irritating than bad. If we go up and Gaz stays and we're a few points off the relegation places by Christmas, do you think he'll get time to turn things around?
@glasshalffull I think that's always been the problem with people's memories of Sanchez. From what former players have said he wasn't the easiest man to get on with (Stuart Roberts might phrase that rather more strongly) and he very definitely lost it in his final season here, but that can't brush over his great escape season, nor the FA Cup run, which must surely rank among the greatest achievements ever in Wycombe history.
The problem with Wenger is since they last won the league, Chelski have changed their manager every three weeks and won it all while Arsenal have a couple of FA cups.
The Wenger-out Arsenal fans sum up the entitlement of the modern Premier league fan - they've won three of the last four FA Cups. Must be terribly hard for them.
@Wendoverman said:
glasshalffull 'It's a results business' and other cliches. In the case of some fans, yes...even some Gasroomers...good results are more irritating than bad. If we go up and Gaz stays and we're a few points off the relegation places by Christmas, do you think he'll get time to turn things around?
He clearly has a good relationship with the powers that be at the club so I don’t think he’d be under any pressure in that sense but whether some of our younger, less realistic fans would show such patience and restraint is another matter entirely.
@MindlessDrugHoover said:
The Wenger-out Arsenal fans sum up the entitlement of the modern Premier league fan - they've won three of the last four FA Cups. Must be terribly hard for them.
Agreed and that underlines the problem. Yesterday’s successes are tomorrow’s chip papers for some. You’ve only got to look at the ridiculous rate of managerial sackings every season to see how tough the job is in such demanding times.
Just to back up the fickleness of clubs and supporters is the extraordinary statistic that only one of the last eight premier league managers remained in post to start the season starting 15 months after they picked up the title. He (Pellegrini) wasnt fired until the end of that season.
Last manager to win the league then not win it for two seasons and stay in the job - arsene Wenger.
There's still a little section of our support that seems to be anti Ainsworth, despite this season going so far about as well as anyone could have expected.
They might be a little quieter recently, but it wouldn't take much for their re-emergence, as some fans simply get an idea stuck in their head and would move from it.
It is not only Clubs and Fans that are fickle. The days of loyalty to a Club does not seem important to many players. When the FA allowed TV to control matches the old style Fans/ Clubs/ Players became memories to the older fans. However it is great that Clubs like WWFC are still getting the young fans to be proud of their team. The Ups and Downs of Football will always exist but the loyal fan will stay with their "Team", having the odd moan now and again, but living the dream for many years after any successful period. COYB's
True Eric, ferguson retired. And actually Conte hasn't gone yet but few expect him to start next season.
Raineri, mourinho,Mancini, ancelotti all fired within 15 months, pellegrini got 24.
Hardly a testament to patience and loyalty is it?
Immensely proud that Wycombe Wanderers are committed to doing things a different way and showing that (relative) success (touch wood) is possible by supporting a young manager, with an assistant that isn't a name (outside Harrow Weald), giving him time, support and respect.
Plenty of Wycombe fans who will fight to keep the club on that path as well, even after Ainsworth departs.
@rmjlondon said:
Gary Waddock is ahead of GA as he got us promoted, GA needs to do so to surpass him first before you even talk about MoN
Gareth Ainsworth is a far superior manager to Gary Waddock. He’s taken us from the brink of disaster to the verge of promotion at a time of massive financial restraint.
That's a nice article. From the very start, I've thought Ainsworth was very smart to make a virtue out of the necessity borne of being penniless and to stress the need for togetherness. But the insight he has shown post-Torquay in progressively shrinking the squad while upping the quality has been of a different order - with the blend of wise heads and kids and a focus on the character of all the players, regardless of age.
Somebody else posted earlier (I crudely paraphrase) that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if all the players left over the summer because a new manager would want to get his own players in anyway. It feels to me that there is huge danger in that for the club. We haven't put the existential crisis so far behind us that we can afford to have one of those standard new-manager = new-squad experiments. So my preference would be to keep Ainsworth into his dotage, but if we can't, for the Board to lay it on the line to the next incumbent that the Ainsworth template is the club's template, because it's the one we can afford, and that it's the one he'd have to follow.
For the timebing though, I'll just carry on loving watching this team under this manager.
It's an odd one, trying to rate/compare the success of MO'N to Gareth. Personally I liken it comparing two swimmers. Easy in a swimming pool, just blow a starter and 1st to finish is the winner/better swimmer, simple.
Not so in this situation. Now compare the times of those two swimmers, one swimming with the flow of a river, one against over the same distance. That to me is comparing the two managers performances over their tenures at the club. Different times, different levels of opposition quality & different budgets. Both managers to me, are fantastic. GA & MO"N are great motivators, on that I think we can all agree. MO"N got us back to back promotions. GA had a "baptism of fire" when he took over, with a squad low on confidence, a few junior players that had to step into the front line, (and caught a few bullets), and a club that was in financial meltdown. As has been mentioned before, MO"N caught a club on the up. What GA has achieved since "The Great Escape", to me is nothing short of remarkable on a zero budget.
I would rate both as equals so far, for what it's worth.
@EwanHoosaami Totally agree Ewan. If Gareth had been given the advantages O'Neill had, I think he would have fared similarly, and that's no disrespect to what MON achieved.
@OxfordBlue said:
EwanHoosaami Totally agree Ewan. If Gareth had been given the advantages O'Neill had, I think he would have fared similarly, and that's no disrespect to what MON achieved.
We’ll never know. @our_frank alludes correctly that the latter day Ainsworth template has been shaped by our lack of resources. With a bigger budget he MIGHT have been a worse manager.
I’ll settle for both being majestic in very different ways.
Comments
@rmjlondon I know it kills you, but will you say something positive about GA when (okay - sorry - IF) we get promoted?
Some interesting comments in this thread. Not Richie's I'm afraid.
I think the thing that lay behind my question which I didn't sufficiently spell out is that the thought experiment that still has Gareth Ainsworth at this football club in five year's time also inevitably includes at least one promotion. It's obvious, I think, that, whilst Gaz has genuine affection for the club he is also a reasonably ambitious man. So I really can't see him remaining at the club and us still being an upper fourth division (in old money) team. He would have had to (for his own professional satisfaction) achieved at least one promotion and we would have to be still achieving sufficient success for him to have resisted the inevitable offers from elsewhere.
To me then, the question "could Ainsworth conceivably surpass O'Neill?" would also have us, at least, established as a "sustainable" League 1 club, so not making huge losses and not desperately fighting to stave off relegation each year. It could even see us, dare I say it, flirting with the odd season in the Championship (crazy I know). In that scenario, the question I've posed would, surely, at least become a reasonable question to ask.
We can but dream.
@Uncle_T I'm also late to the area and started coming just at the end of Gormania...so saw Brownie caretaking, got a ST for Lambert, Taylor, Taylor/Waddock, but missed two seasons until I got a ST for Gaz's first full season as a gift! After Torquay, I reinvested thinking no season could be as bad as that! Perhaps for the first time, this season has been excellent for confidence and attacking football, but I can also appreciate what GA has slowly built over his time in charge. I would be interested to see if he could translate that into success with a higher budget and dealing with larger egos...once we are in the play-off positions in League One.
Dev C has been roundly criticised but he does raise a point worthy of debate. At what stage do a manager’s previous successes count for little or nothing when results start to go wrong? Look at Arsene Wenger, the
most successful manager in the history of a great club like Arsenal yet still subject to some terrible abuse in recent years. Football fans are notoriously fickle and even Martin O’Neill had his critics in his time at Wycombe. I think GA has done a wonderful job and if we get promoted and he stays I would hope that people would cut him some slack if things didn’t work out so successfully in a higher division.
In relation to a reserve side or youth academy, im beginning to think that the way we pick up rejects as such is the way forward. All the money spent on an academy how much do we gain even with sell on fees. There will always be rejects from higher leagues and if we can improve them and sell on we will gain in the long run. Just my opinion
@glasshalffull 'It's a results business' and other cliches. In the case of some fans, yes...even some Gasroomers...good results are more irritating than bad. If we go up and Gaz stays and we're a few points off the relegation places by Christmas, do you think he'll get time to turn things around?
@glasshalffull I think that's always been the problem with people's memories of Sanchez. From what former players have said he wasn't the easiest man to get on with (Stuart Roberts might phrase that rather more strongly) and he very definitely lost it in his final season here, but that can't brush over his great escape season, nor the FA Cup run, which must surely rank among the greatest achievements ever in Wycombe history.
The problem with Wenger is since they last won the league, Chelski have changed their manager every three weeks and won it all while Arsenal have a couple of FA cups.
The Wenger-out Arsenal fans sum up the entitlement of the modern Premier league fan - they've won three of the last four FA Cups. Must be terribly hard for them.
He clearly has a good relationship with the powers that be at the club so I don’t think he’d be under any pressure in that sense but whether some of our younger, less realistic fans would show such patience and restraint is another matter entirely.
Agreed and that underlines the problem. Yesterday’s successes are tomorrow’s chip papers for some. You’ve only got to look at the ridiculous rate of managerial sackings every season to see how tough the job is in such demanding times.
Just to back up the fickleness of clubs and supporters is the extraordinary statistic that only one of the last eight premier league managers remained in post to start the season starting 15 months after they picked up the title. He (Pellegrini) wasnt fired until the end of that season.
Last manager to win the league then not win it for two seasons and stay in the job - arsene Wenger.
They weren't all sacked though were they?
How does Sir Alex Ferguson retiring "back up the fickleness of clubs and supporters"?
There's still a little section of our support that seems to be anti Ainsworth, despite this season going so far about as well as anyone could have expected.
They might be a little quieter recently, but it wouldn't take much for their re-emergence, as some fans simply get an idea stuck in their head and would move from it.
It is not only Clubs and Fans that are fickle. The days of loyalty to a Club does not seem important to many players. When the FA allowed TV to control matches the old style Fans/ Clubs/ Players became memories to the older fans. However it is great that Clubs like WWFC are still getting the young fans to be proud of their team. The Ups and Downs of Football will always exist but the loyal fan will stay with their "Team", having the odd moan now and again, but living the dream for many years after any successful period. COYB's
True Eric, ferguson retired. And actually Conte hasn't gone yet but few expect him to start next season.
Raineri, mourinho,Mancini, ancelotti all fired within 15 months, pellegrini got 24.
Hardly a testament to patience and loyalty is it?
Immensely proud that Wycombe Wanderers are committed to doing things a different way and showing that (relative) success (touch wood) is possible by supporting a young manager, with an assistant that isn't a name (outside Harrow Weald), giving him time, support and respect.
Plenty of Wycombe fans who will fight to keep the club on that path as well, even after Ainsworth departs.
And you are a most boring predictable turd
cheers Tewks
Gareth Ainsworth is a far superior manager to Gary Waddock. He’s taken us from the brink of disaster to the verge of promotion at a time of massive financial restraint.
That's a nice article. From the very start, I've thought Ainsworth was very smart to make a virtue out of the necessity borne of being penniless and to stress the need for togetherness. But the insight he has shown post-Torquay in progressively shrinking the squad while upping the quality has been of a different order - with the blend of wise heads and kids and a focus on the character of all the players, regardless of age.
Somebody else posted earlier (I crudely paraphrase) that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if all the players left over the summer because a new manager would want to get his own players in anyway. It feels to me that there is huge danger in that for the club. We haven't put the existential crisis so far behind us that we can afford to have one of those standard new-manager = new-squad experiments. So my preference would be to keep Ainsworth into his dotage, but if we can't, for the Board to lay it on the line to the next incumbent that the Ainsworth template is the club's template, because it's the one we can afford, and that it's the one he'd have to follow.
For the timebing though, I'll just carry on loving watching this team under this manager.
As usual @our_frank absolutely nails it
Amen
It's an odd one, trying to rate/compare the success of MO'N to Gareth. Personally I liken it comparing two swimmers. Easy in a swimming pool, just blow a starter and 1st to finish is the winner/better swimmer, simple.
Not so in this situation. Now compare the times of those two swimmers, one swimming with the flow of a river, one against over the same distance. That to me is comparing the two managers performances over their tenures at the club. Different times, different levels of opposition quality & different budgets. Both managers to me, are fantastic. GA & MO"N are great motivators, on that I think we can all agree. MO"N got us back to back promotions. GA had a "baptism of fire" when he took over, with a squad low on confidence, a few junior players that had to step into the front line, (and caught a few bullets), and a club that was in financial meltdown. As has been mentioned before, MO"N caught a club on the up. What GA has achieved since "The Great Escape", to me is nothing short of remarkable on a zero budget.
I would rate both as equals so far, for what it's worth.
@EwanHoosaami Totally agree Ewan. If Gareth had been given the advantages O'Neill had, I think he would have fared similarly, and that's no disrespect to what MON achieved.
We’ll never know. @our_frank alludes correctly that the latter day Ainsworth template has been shaped by our lack of resources. With a bigger budget he MIGHT have been a worse manager.
I’ll settle for both being majestic in very different ways.
How many managers have we had since joining the league who have kept us in the same league for their entire tenure?
Alan Smith!
All of them except O’Neill, Taylor, Waddock and Adams isn’t it?
Also:
Neil Smillie
John Gregory
Lawrie Sanchez
John Gorman
Paul Lambert