QPR 2-1 Bolton

guest66 wrote:Wanderlust, you say the most important thing is to get the wage bill under control.. well you could get any manager you wanted to do that. The managers job is to get the best out of the players he has, and earn results. Dougie is doing neither of those while also showing little signs of any sort of short or long term plan.

My reasoning is that if we don't start living within our means there won't be a team to manage and if we don't get rid of the players on silly contracts our ability - or rather any manager's ability - to trade our way out of this crisis is severely hampered. Completely disagree about the absence of a plan seeing as Dougie has sacked 8 players, sold 2, put 2 out on loan, tried to get rid of another (Mears) and brought in several prospects that have bolstered the U21s who are now playing much better. Plus he's indicated that he'll be moving others on when their contracts expire and is actively searching for affordable players "with the right DNA" whatever that means. Either way it sounds like  a plan to me.

wanderlust wrote:

Hipster_Nebula wrote:I think Dougie is fair game for criticism last night. 

Danns for me was proving to be a hand full and he was taken off. He also had the chance to take off maybe a Pratley and put Juke and C.Davies up top together but decided to go like for like.

I thought technically we were outclassed in the short section i watched, QPR's ability to pass and move was evident and our inability the same. 

Matty Phillips and Kranjcar were a real handfull.

Dougie is always up for criticism about his tactics and selections and like most armchair managers I frequently wonder what he's trying to do - I question most managers.
That's perhaps why he may not be the right choice for the longer term - we'll see.
However our club is in crisis and the job he does in the short term is the priority - perhaps a job that nobody else would take on?
I'm not too bothered about tactics and selections or even results this season as long as we survive - which I'm confident we will.
What IS really important is that we get our wage bill under control and move on the players who are draining our financial lifeblood without contributing as much to the team as their salaries suggest they should - and replace them with players we can afford who will serve us well in the long term.
On that front, Dougie has moved Ngog on - and even got a few quid for him - and tried to move Mears on and will hopefully shift a few more in the summer. Putting aside the loanees he's brought on board to keep us going through the transition, he's bought a few prospects and shifted a whole bunch of kids he doesn't think will make it. We'll have to see how that pans out, but I like White and there are others with similar potential. So it seems Dougie is doing a decent job in terms of crisis management which IMO is key to our survival.
Time will tell, but either way Dougie is in for a rough ride - but I wish that fans would put his perceived tactical weaknesses in the context of the bigger picture. Survival and sustainable transition first, tweaks to the first eleven second.

I agree with basically all of that, I can see the bigger picture. But solely in the context of the QPR game i thought certain things could have been different.

Personally I think Dougie was dealt something of a poor hand after the mismanagement of Lee, Megson and Coyle. However he did and still does have some players that we KNOW can perform much better than they are doing now and he isn't getting the best out of them by any means. I know this might be met with howls of protest because he's been a petulant brat over the move to Blackpool but why not put Mears back on the pitch?  Instead of having him draw a big wage for nowt make him earn it?With him at RB we could shunt back to the CB partnership that worked couldn't we? Put Wheater in too, he actually did OK with Knight imo when Cahill was out injured. Instead of cobbling a defence together and playing people out of position why not start putting them back where they do the best job and play a system that suits what strengths they have rather than trying to jam them into a mould they can't fit? Dougie keeps trying to play in a way that these lads do badly with and he needs to stop being so stubborn and accept that. He needs to realise that his "method" doesn't suit the players we have NOW and while he may well be able to use it later with different personnel he should be more concerned about the immediate future. For all the "positives" people took from last night it was a LOSS and leaves us precariously close to the drop zone with teams below us having a game in hand to boot. 

Something has to change and now. It's Dougie's job to make that happen but from where I sit he seems too stubborn to accept it and if he either WON'T or CAN'T see the problems and how to fix them when so many of us can then he needs to go and frankly Phil should go with him.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:Personally I think Dougie was dealt something of a poor hand after the mismanagement of Lee, Megson and Coyle. However he did and still does have some players that we KNOW can perform much better than they are doing now and he isn't getting the best out of them by any means. I know this might be met with howls of protest because he's been a petulant brat over the move to Blackpool but why not put Mears back on the pitch?  Instead of having him draw a big wage for nowt make him earn it?With him at RB we could shunt back to the CB partnership that worked couldn't we? Put Wheater in too, he actually did OK with Knight imo when Cahill was out injured. Instead of cobbling a defence together and playing people out of position why not start putting them back where they do the best job and play a system that suits what strengths they have rather than trying to jam them into a mould they can't fit? Dougie keeps trying to play in a way that these lads do badly with and he needs to stop being so stubborn and accept that. He needs to realise that his "method" doesn't suit the players we have NOW and while he may well be able to use it later with different personnel he should be more concerned about the immediate future. For all the "positives" people took from last night it was a LOSS and leaves us precariously close to the drop zone with teams below us having a game in hand to boot. 

Something has to change and now. It's Dougie's job to make that happen but from where I sit he seems too stubborn to accept it and if he either WON'T or CAN'T see the problems and how to fix them when so many of us can then he needs to go and frankly Phil should go with him.

Well LPP almost everything you say on there with the exception of Dougie was dealt a poor hand I agree with. He was actually dealt a pretty good hand but chose to fall out with and sideline players totally unnecessarily in my view. The Mears situation is a case in point. Though not a world beater, to have totally blanked and publically stated he's not his type of full back, when he knew the guy was 30 years old, on £25 a week and with little possibility of anyone taking him off us at that cost was just rank bad man management, especially since we've been desperate for even half decent full backs. Nobody knows if Freedman's kids will be any better than Coyle's or Megson's so let's not credit him with anything there just yet and focus on what we do know.

We know that not one player young or old has improved under him yet many have got worse. We know the football is tedious and arguably the worst seen at the Reebok in years. We know he is stubborn, inflexible and arrogant in regard to tactics and team selection. We know that we are heading South and probably will be in the bottom 3 this weekend. These things we know and it seems pretty likely that we also know if we don't jettison him now we'll be in Div 1 next year. As for this nobody else could do this job better rubbish, I won't even justify it with a response. Most of the trouble we're in is because of Freedman not the squad, the refs or even the money but because he's a clueless piece of rubbish.

^^^^What he said.