Reply With QuoteI think I agree with much of what you say. The final straw for me was the calling out of an individual player.Originally Posted by AfricanBluebird
Harris is under pressure and may be close to losing the dressing room.
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While we have all witnessed some absolutely awful managers I can't remember ever having a manager as cowardly as Harris.
He is odious and a coward.
Reading his interview after the Forest defeat was embarrassing.
Blaming a player, who is no longer with us, for conceding two goals against Wycombe is a cowardly act. The Wycombe game was last week and he should have been concentrating on the defeat against Forest this weekend. It's pathetic blaming a player who he doesn't have to look in the eye today at training. Leicester won't be loaning us players anytime soon, so there will be longer term ramifications of not using a loan signing and slagging him off the moment he leaves the club.
Also, nearly all of his comments and excused about the games we lose is about 'conceding a soft goal'. He rarely blames his teams inability to keep the ball, pass the ball, the poor tactics, the poor substitutions, lack of energy, lack of pace etc... why? because all of those things reflect HIS management style and approach... and it is easier for him to blame individual mistakes as it shifts responsibility away from his own failures and onto individuals.
I know people have pointed out the lack of managerial options out there to replace him, but surely there is a less cowardly manager available.
I think I agree with much of what you say. The final straw for me was the calling out of an individual player.
Harris is under pressure and may be close to losing the dressing room.
He blames his players. not once have i heard him say that he's the one that got it wrong. He's a footballing management equivalent of a snitch. 'Wasn't me boss'
He needs to go.
Yeah I agree. The dressing room cannot be a happy place knowing that some players get away with consistently poor performances and never seem to get dropped, while others know that a single mistake they make will provoke the manager to single you out in a post match interview.
Maybe it's just me but I always dislike managers who pick on individual players and blame them for defeats publicly.
If a player makes an obvious mistake that leads to a goal I think it's fine to say "yeah he made a mistake".. but to constantly blame them for defeats is really unacceptable.
Just out of interest, when a Play Off team ends up having the sort of season we are after not losing too many of the previous seasons players, what sort of proportion of the blame should be directed at the players, because it seems to me that ours are getting off virtually Scot free.
Bacuna doesn't look like he's trying. Trotting back into position, not getting tight enough and allowing the cross, zero urgency bravery to put himself in a position where he might get done, he doesn't want to know, look how easily players go past him. I know that he's not very good, but he's getting off lightly in my opinion with fans saying that he's not a right back. He may well not be, that doesn't stop him showing some commitment to the cause, he's even stopped kicking players. Looks to me like he's downed tools a bit.
Looking at the body language, the demeanour of the players, the lack of urgency and belief, the feeling that after 10 minutes the whole team has run out of ideas, tells me that something ain't right.
Adam Matthews and Dave Jones comes to mind.
Benkovic is gone though and he did feck up.
Some of them don't want to know in my opinion. Something doesn't seem right, an Harris's speech at press conferences is getting a bit concerning.
I think its clear how important Tomlin was for us.
Having him in the team also helped the likes of Ralls and Bacuna.
Yup, although we didn't lose that game just because of Benkovic, there was alack of quality and urgency throughout the team and the performance was awful. Wycombe matched us in every department and that's being kind to us.
Some players are getting off scot free for sure and I don't know why they are constantly being picked. If a player isn't performing well / making more than their fair share of mistakes, then deal with it internally, not blame them publicly for entire losses.
However, when the whole team is underperforming it is indicative that there are wider problems, rather than just individual players out of form.
I think the play off run, despite not being particularly attractive footballing-wise, did show that the team is capable of doing much better.
The team is not performing well despite some obvious and proven quality, and ultimately the manager has to carry the can, something Harris refuses to take responsibility for.
Do you think the current team available for selection has enough obvious and proven quality to be anywhere other than mid table?
I dont.
In fact some of the 11 are the quality that will take you down.
Regarding the OP, I was not a fan of that moment at all. Probably the worst thing he's done/said while being here.
Regarding players, I thought these tweets were interesting talking about Woods (formerly of Brentford now at Millwall) who has not been playing that well:
https://twitter.com/secondtierpod/st...1287036149761: Millwall midfielder Ryan Woods has come in for a bit of criticism recently.
Fans think he should be doing a lot better.
However @OmerMFC from @ThatMillwallPod doesn't think he should be scapegoated.The problem isn’t Woods it’s the players around him. Rowett needs time to build a team to fit his play style, which is difficult atmIsn't that exactly the same situation here? Threads about Ojo and Wilson not lighting things up, admission that they could be doing better but identifying that players around them aren't suited to playing the same style because they're from the former manager, the new manager needing time to build a squad to fit their style of play which is difficult at the moment.Exactly, been saying this myself. He’s still at large working with a Neil Harris squad!
Question then becomes whether Harris is capable of taking a jump away from what he was doing at Millwall or whether we're never going to be a team that a former Brentford player can work in. Answer may be in what Harris has been saying in his slightly less pressurised press conferences: i) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50459523
ii) https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/...-neil-17843939
Still, it seems unlikely Harris is the man for us now, but still interesting to read those statements as they give clues to what board is looking for in a manager and what may come next.
Mourinhos not afraid to stick the boot in.
Delle Alli , Luke Shaw.
Something has changed at Cardiff in recent months. Harris came in and turned around an underachieving side, but twelve months on, we seem to be back where we started. We can all see what's wrong with the team, so there's no doubt that both Harris and his players can see it as well. So what do they need to do?
From where I'm sitting, I look at the team on paper, and it looks like a pretty good team - one that should be competing at the top end of the table. Individually, we have a good set of players, but they don't seem to be gelling very well, and they aren't able to produce the results that the line-up would suggest are possible.
The same can be said about any of our defence, defensive midfield too for that matter.
We have conceded some really poor goals this season, something that wasn't there, or if it was it wasn't obvious, last season.
Too many people unwilling, or not knowing how, to get a block in or stop a cross.
That could be down to the fact that Bacuna is a right sided midfielder and not a natural right sided defender which has disrupted the defence in general, but I doubt it as he has put in some good performances this season.
Unfortunately, the depth of quality there and in other key positions that most saw as a potential problem early on, is playing out.
I have to agree with the OP (lthough not having seen the interview myself so taking it as written) to blame a player, who has now left us, in a game that happened before the latest loss is a cheap shot, but an understandable one from a man who seems to be staring down the barrel, again.
I don't buy the idea that our players are awful or relegation quality. The majority of our current strongest XI got us into 5th last season. 3 were key players in our promotion campaign, 2 are Welsh internationals who will certainly be going to the Euros in the summer. The keeper is widely acknowledged as one of the best in the division. Its not a bad side at this level
I picked up on bacuna because it look so obvious. Anyone that has played the game at any level knows that when a fullback stands off a wide man and allows the cross, it usually means that he doesn't fancy the 1 on 1, doesn't want to put himself in a position where he gets done, Bacuna does it quite often, with the thinking that he'll just push the problem a little further down the production line (centre backs defending the cross) sadly, quality control (Morrison and Nelson) aren't picking up on things at the moment. Bacuna's biggest problem at right back is that he has no turn of pace, he is done easily on the outside and that isn't compensated by a central defender pulling over to help him, he can't tackle either.
We are poor all over the pitch, when the quality runs dry (which is often the case at our club) then workrate, honesty and character are the traits that we've relied onto get us through, although those attributes seem to be abandoning us at the moment as well, which is very worrying in my opinion, because we are massively reliant on those aspects of the game.
Yes, the Tomlin of last season has been a big miss and I agree about Ralls especially who I'd say is having his worst season for a while.
We've 'strengthened' in every department except centre midfield - the engine room of a side. With Tomlin absent there's nothing there to trouble teams.
Joey Barton
Seriousness though, I agree with every word you have written here. I want him gone asap. Who do we replace him with though? Any decent European managers out there?
I agree entirely with your second paragraph. At the moment we're poor at the things we're usually good at, that's why I brought up the matter of the players getting away with things - I would have thought Neil Harris would have been taking things like that for granted at the start of the season.
Can I ask you as someone who has a better idea than most of us of how pros feel about the game given your time with the club, would there be any resentment at having to play in what is still a pretty regimented manner for a side that gives the impression at times that it does not want to have the football week in, week out, season in season out? If it was me, I'd hate having to play like we do all of the time, but then I've only ever played the game for enjoyment, do those who play it for a living have an attitude which says they pay my wages so I do what I'm told unquestioningly, or do they look at other clubs that play in a more progressive and entertaining manner and think that could be me?
Yes, but isn't that because he's NOT a full back and he's doing his best to cover a position he's been asked to fill in for?
He knows he'd get beaten if he closed in on his man all the time so he's doing the next best thing and trying to close him down a bit and still stay active in the play.
Can't blame him for that. I think he's done well covering there on the odd occasion but he shouldn't be expected to do it every week.
The only thing re Matthews is that we now know that he was quite unprofessional and plenty of players told him to sort himself out. Gabbs spoke about it on Elis James' Feast of Football openly. He really should have kicked on, and perhaps Jones was exasperated with him. Jones rarely dug anyone else out (I could be wrong about that, it was 10 years ago!)
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