Sky Sports - Tough on Cookie

"In his spell in charge Coleman recouped more than £5million in transfer fees and spent just £650,000 bringing players to the club".

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11710_6132696,00.html

I've read that sentence a few times now and really don't understand what they base it on, or what they're actually trying to say. They seem to be saying that he's only spent £650,000 on players since he arrived. But at a quick count we spent money on the following players during his tenure:

1. Gunnarsson
2. Westwood
3. Eastwood 
4. Bell 
5. McPake 
6. Clingan
7. McIndoe 
8. Cranie 
9. Wood 
10. Baker
11. Hussey 
12. Deegan 

So, they mean one of the following:

1) They're talking about additional expenditure on top of the £5 million he recouped.. which basically means the list of players above cost £5.65 Million in total. Blows the argument that Coleman didn't receive any money out of the water, doesn't it.

or 2) that those 12 players cost £650,000 in total, which is just plain mental.

If I'm acting like a horrendous boob and have missed something obvious, someone please pipe up and enlighten me.

As far as I can see, they're just making stuff up.

Very difficult to believe our manager actually set out at home to achieve a draw against the mighty Barcepool. He bloody well did though.

Following on from praising Swansea to the rafters and dismissing ourselves as a bunch of talentless prats (not in so many words), Coleman's build up to this game again focused on how the team that he's spent 2 years creating is actually no bleeding good at playing football, so we're just going to try well hard at kicking things and hope we get a clean sheet from the match. (Again, reading between the lines).

That's really going to install confidence in the team isn't it? He seems to forget that we'd won 3 league games in a row at the Ricoh, and were playing a Blackpool side who'd only won once in their last 5 so were hardly setting the league on fire.

Quite obviously, this never came into his thinking. This was best demonstrated by him deciding to persist with a formation from the Playing-away-at-Old-Trafford Handbook.

Leon Best got the nod to play up front. On occasions, you hope that a 4-5-1 formation will turn itself more into a 4-3-3. Listening to our manager prior to the match, the focus was very much on our one and only striker doing "a lot of unselfish running with no reward".

What this means in real terms is that our lone striker, in a home fixture (i.e. the one person who you'd really want to be selfish and being on the end of all the chances we would create) was being told that his job was not to bang them in the net - but to perform Coleman's favourite move; run around like a lunatic leaving no-one in the box.

Annoyingly, Best chose Saturday to have one of his most ineffective games of the season, so we didn't even get the lunatic side of things.

The first half was bad. None of the attacking players (and I use the term loosely) seemed to have a clue about where they were supposed to be playing. All except Bell that is, who impersonated a life-size table football man for the first 20 minutes of the match. This was essentially him patrolling an area no bigger than a pair of Jay Tabb's pants.

A slight ray of light was Carl Baker, who was at least trying to link up the midfield and attack in a hoof-less way. Chances fell to McIndoe and Best early on, but neither could finish. Even Baker was far too tentative though. Throwing him into the middle of the park and asking him to dictate the play of a Championship match seemed to be a bit too much.

For a team that has supposedly been working on making it hard for the opposition to create, we didn't do a very good job of hassling Blackpool. They looked confident, and stroked the ball around us with ease. While they were doing what all footballers are taught at the first day of football school (passing), our boys were playing as if they'd had that side of the game trained out of them. Every pass seems to be an effort to us this season. There's no eagerness to get onto the ball, and when we do get it, we soon run out options and end up giving it a way. I'd suggest this is a by-product of spending all our time focusing on how the opposition might hurt us, rather than looking at how we might attack them.

The second half should have been a different story. Again, Blackpool were the more attacking, with young Villa prat Barry Bannan looking like an absolute world beater for them. Then again, you could put Paul Trollope against Stephen Wright and I think he'd come out of it looking good. Unfortunately, while I'm making a joke of it, Bannan really was brilliant.

But things should have all changed when Ormerod got his marching orders for supposedly belting Gunny. Now, I didn't see it, but if our own player has to go off because of it, and our own fans around that bit say that he's been whacked - I for one believe them. I hear Blackpool have concocted about 4 different versions of what happened, but a bit of solidarity wouldn't go amiss from certain quarters (Clive).

Anyway, here's the "equation".

Coventry (11) v Blackpool (10) @ Ricoh Arena + more attacking formation + motivation = 4th home win in a row.

Simple maths.

Here's what happened instead

Coventry (11) v Blackpool (10... but still playing like 11) @ bewildered Ricoh Arena - home ambition - positive tactics + negative manager = EXACTLY THE SAME TEAM, TACTICS AND PERFORMANCE UNTIL WE CONCEDE AND HE'S FORCED TO ALTER HIS STANCE.

Seems to be a recurring theme of games just lately. No really drive to go and win.

Freddy, Morrison and Deegan all came on to try and salvage the game for us. I'm still trying to work out what Leon Best has done in the last 2 weeks that suddenly warrants him now being booed off the pitch though. He may have had a less than effective game, but booing him? Very odd behaviour. Maybe I misread it and it was actually a booing of Coleman's tactics - I'd guess it's a bit of a mix.

Having moved Baker over the wing, we immediately looked threatening, and the goal came from him getting to the byline and pulling the ball back. Something that all good wingers should do. Neither of our current first choice wingers possess any sort of pace to be able to do this, so in normal circumstances, you'd be entitled to expect a change. Under the current regime, I can't see them looking beyond McIndoe and his new yellow boots with go faster stripes (which don't work).

All in all - unbelievable that we didn't look to take the game to them until we went a goal down. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but I'm gobsmacked by our management and ambition at the moment.

We've gone from having decent momentum over Christmas, gearing us towards a push up the table - to the immediate brakes and reins from our manager.

Needless to say he thought that the result against 10 men Blackpool team at home was "a point gained".

It beggars belief.

Disclaimer:
It's getting embarrassing writing much the same after every game. So for this, I apologise (sort of). I'm well aware that some fans enjoy optimism and the "keep the faith" attitude towards the club and its current progress, and I respect that. While I like to think I'm quite a rational person, I can't bring myself to congratulate consistently below-par performance and hold blind faith, as I genuinely think it does more harm than good. This is my angle when I write things in this blog - some will agree, some won't.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, even though it might seem it, I'm not the negative git.

Coleman is.

Haha, etc.

Coleman said: "I thought it was a marked improvement from last week although we were found wanting in defence yet again.

I thought in the main it was a much gutsier performance because we bossed it in the second half and could have scored more".

What game was that then Chris? I'm sorry, but that post-match analysis isn't going to fly with me, sonny jim.

Contrary to any of the nonsense you may have heard from Coleman over the last couple of days, we were yet again, completely and totally outplayed. Let's get that absolutely clear.

What makes this all the worse is that we were outplayed by a Derby team that was utter bullshine themselves, by anyone's recognition. That's embarrassing. At least it is for me. If Ward and Morrison's appearance on Soccer AM is anything to go by, the players couldn't give a monkeys.

But compound this with the fact that it was on Sky, and according to Twitter, the match was even being watched by a selection of celebs. Cricket's David "Bumble" Lloyd being one of them, no less.

The very shame of it.

Actually coming out and saying that we "bossed it in the second half" leads me to one conclusion; Coleman has gone quite, quite mad. Over the course of the 90 minutes we managed to string 2 passes together about 3 times. The only time we looked like we might come close to even scoring again after the early goal was in the final 5 minutes when Derby for some reason felt they needed to drop deep. This of course, giving us a bit more time to boot the ball into their keeper's hands.

Frantic, possibly. Bossing it? Never. Absolutely no chance.

Run through the team, and there were a mixture of mediocre performances scattered among a wide selection of utter tosh. I personally thought that the 2 centre-backs Barnett and Ward were the only 2 who had reasonable games. Granted, both had moments of utter lunacy (Ward's tackles in the first half for example), but at least I also saw moments of passion, strength and rather crazily for our players, quality.

Gunnarsson, Clarke, Eastwood gave fully useless performances however. Never coming close to the level of performance they should be giving.

But if they were bad, don't even get me started on Cork and Morrison. I've never seen such ineffective performances. Cork, once more playing like a frightened school kid, while Morrison did absolute bugger all throughout. I found myself wishing he'd actually given Savage a slap after Clarke was red carded, if only to get himself sent off too, and as far from the pitch as possible.

So quite where Coleman thought the "marked improvement" was, I'm struggling to see. I can only assume he forgot that the game was on TV and thought he could get away with pretending it was better than it was.

Don't worry, I'm not really cynical enough to actually believe he'd do something like that (I am).

What I really can't get my head around is what Coleman's intentions for our club actually are. I'd like to know what the plan is, because 18 months he has been here, and the only impact I see on the footballing side of things is how we're now playing very, very poorly, with players who have no desire to move the club on from the shocking level we're currently at...

and what's the most worrying is that he appears to be accepting (and encouraging) it.

It's not worth my time to whine about how poorly our players keep playing any longer. But Christ almighty, it's so difficult to find positives or even excuses for some of the performances just lately. The bar is so low and I'm very worried.

If you praise mediocrity Coleman, there's only one thing you're ever going to get.

Lack of urgency. Poor decision making. Hiding from the ball. No cutting edge. Lacking in quality.

Just a few sentences to describe the performance in the Reading game. All very similar to previous games this season.

Sometimes when things go wrong in football, it's all too easy to blame the manager. You lose a couple of games on the spin, and as a fan you lose all perspective of what that manager actually brings to your team.

That happens at Arsenal when they go 2 or 3 games without winning. Carlo Ancelotti was under pressure after he lost his first game at Chelsea. I know plenty of Villa fans who are straight on Martin O'Neill's back whenever they lose. Even last season when Alex McLeish was leading Birmingham to promotion, there were question marks about his job every time they lost a game.

The thing about each of those scenarios however is that each manager has a strong case as to why they are in actual fact "achieving" what they set out to do in their jobs. A couple of defeats, while bloody annoying, shouldn't detract from that. Eventually after the dust has settled, everyone realises this.

Now, let's look at Coventry's situation after the match yesterday.

• We have just lost at home to a team who have the worst recent form in the Championship. (Their fans are overseeing arguably one of the most rapid falls from grace in the English Leagues over the last few years).
• Longer term, we've won 5 matches since 28th February. (8 months)
• 18000 is now considered a high attendance.
• We're currently 16th in the league.
• Last year we finished with 54 points (17th).
• Season before that, 53 points (21st).
• Season before that, 56 points (17th).

Those are the facts and figures - we're not doing very well at the moment and haven't been for a very long time.

I came away and listened to the phone-in and the usual discontent could be heard, whilst Clive Eakin tried his level best to defend the indefensible.

What intrigued me most was hearing the phone calls from fans who thought it was absolutely ludicrous to be calling for Coleman's head.

"You've got to give him time" proclaimed one.
"He's building something" cried another.

This argument got me thinking. Exactly what should it take for a manager to be sacked? Is there a benchmark which you can measure against, and if so, when should you apply it? Surely you have to take other factors into consideration too - how much money that manager had to spend; the application of the team; are their signs that things could change?

With all this going around in my head, I started looking a bit more at the stats and how the current team compares against it's previous incarnation (Dowie's tenure).

The following figures really jumped out at me :

Coleman (last 29 matches)
W 5
D 9
L 15
F 25
A 44

Dowie (final 29 matches)
W 10
D 4
L 15
F 34
A 43

29 games is an odd figure. But it's a long, long time. And it was apparently more than long enough for the board to look at Dowie's record and relieve him of his duties. You'd be entitled to ask yourself exactly where the real improvement on the Dowie team actually is.

If you felt those figures didn't do things justice and Coleman has been managing under tough circumstances, you may then wish to ponder over which manager had the best players to work with, and the most money to spend?

Coleman wins on both counts don't you think?

Funny thing is, I couldn't give a monkeys about all these stats providing there was real proof coming from the club that they were making efforts to improve and bring success to the footballing side of things. I don't want to see managers sacked all the time - tis bullshine.

But there are no signs that they are trying to improve the footballing side of things. And if there are, then they're trying in ways which are cryptic to me.

What winds me up the most is how there is such a lack of pressure at the club to actually succeed. I understand the need to protect the players, but all we hear after every match is more and more strange explanations as to why we played so badly. Coleman has even gone as far now to basically encourage it when we play poor football, because he believes that's the way to succeed in this league.

Let me tell you this, that is simply not possible.

No team in the Championship will get promoted on running around and passion alone. Agreed, not all of them will play "pretty football" like West Brom, but any successful team will be able to balance hard work and graft with an ability to win games by playing well.

They're not mutually exclusive elements. The formula is pretty simple: effort + quality = success. You won't get anywhere with just one of them, and I firmly believe that.

I assume when Coleman dreams of this as a route to success, he is imaging us playing in a similar fashion to Cardiff and Sheffield Utd who came to the Ricoh and absolutely battered us physically last year. I fear what he's neglected to acknowledge is that while those teams did destroy us and blitzed us with some no-nonsense tackles and defending, they were also very effective footballing teams, with real cutting edge.

The Reading game was the most stark indication so far of the team that Coleman is fast turning us into.

I don't want us to sack the manager. My first choice is for that manager to do things to turn things around. I just want one that is hard on the players, strives for quality, and isn't content to work towards what many of our fans are happy to deem "improvements".

Over 2 years, incremental improvements of a point a season are not acceptable. He's really got to up his game and realise that what he's currently doing just isn't enough. For any Championship team.

And he can't blame injuries or the quality of the players - we've seen enough of each of the players he has available to him in the squad to know what they're capable of producing. Even the kids. They can still play to a good enough standard to beat Reading at home.

It's Coleman's job to a) pick the right players and b) develop a style of play that is capable of winning games regularly. Until he does that, he's no different to any of our previous managers. And it's not unrealistic to expect that. You only have to look at some of the other clubs that are in the top 10 and some of the players they have playing for them.

He really needs to start giving us real footballing improvements.. and pronto.

According to the Coventry Telegraph website, Wardy has said he's more than likely going to be leaving in January or the end of the season, because he doesn't feature in the manager's long-term plans.

You ruddy plonker, Coleman.