The main mitigation for Ange is that the owner has badly mis-stepped and set him up with a dreadful situation. The whole Edu thing, when we have a had a strongly functioning back office for a couple of years, has been hugely disruptive, the relationship with Nuno, the throwing recruitment curveballs into the mix late in the window, and just a general sense (which I realise is speculative and likely to feature my biases) that when he sees a bit of glory in the offing he can't help but step in to try to claim it rather than letting professionals do their jobs, have blown up a very promising situation.
The problem is, does anyone think Ange is equipped to deal with it all and even if he is how long would it take? When your own fans are singing against you like that you look like a dead man walking. He has to win on Sunday to have any hope of clawing this back.
I saw the squirrel scampering along the touchline in front of the Peter Taylor. I said: "There's a squirrel on the pitch. It thinks it's all over..." but nobody got it.
Other matters in mitigation:
1. Nuno was having similar problems getting us to score in pre-season. Have we all forgotten 0-0 vs Chesterfield, Monaco, Estoril, Fiorentina and that Saudi side, 1-3 vs Fulham and 0-1 vs Brum?
2. Our home league form under Nuno had been poor for a while, including at the end of last season - 0-3 vs West Ham, 0-1 vs Chelsea, 2-2 vs Leicester, 0-2 vs Brentford and 0-1 vs Everton. Quite fairly, Nuno had some credit in the bank so that all got overlooked a little. Ange hasn't earned that credit yet so he's not getting the same leeway, but it's not like he came in and turned a winning side into a losing side. We've been on a losing run for some time.
Do you think that’s acceptable though for a club of that size? They were an embarrassment and if it hadn’t been for the promoted clubs being historically bad would’ve been in real trouble. That’s on him.
They took off Van der Ven and Romero at half time.
Obviously the players on the pitch were trying. It was just how they used the minutes of their best players. Most of whom were recovering from injuries.
I'm not being revisionist at all. Sabri's choke wasn't Marinakis's fault and up to that point Sabri was doing a really good job, even if we still can't quite figure out how. Hughton wasn't a great appointment but Marinakis fired him at the right time, when many were saying he should be given more opportunity; Cooper may have been Murphy's choice but the owner clearly trusted his man.
I'm not sure why it bothers you that he didn't / doesn't go to a lot of matches. Smuggling empires don't run themselves, and I suspect that if he did go to every match you'd complain that he was always breathing down the manager's neck.
The "owner's interference" that you reference of "just throwing signings at the manager" is now often pointed to as a model for newly promoted clubs to follow, so not sure where you're seeing the fuck up there.
Nuno was already trying to get himself fired, as was much noted on here prior to it happening. The fuck up there on Marinakis's part is probably bringing in Edu, but the jury is still out on whether that's going to end up being a good move or not.
I don't give a fuck about most of the rest of it and whether anyone's laughing at us. They weren't laughing at us when we were in serious contention for a Champions' League spot.
He is the most successful owner we have had since the old boys' club sold out, and it's not even close. Yes, I'd much rather have a pint with Nigel Doughty, but when an owner brings the kind of success we've seen over the last 4 years I don't really care how many cringey tattoos he has or how many self aggrandizing press releases he makes the club send out. Maybe what the nice guys were missing in order to be successful was the extra helping of hubris and ambition that Marinakis brings.
The fella we're all deifying as a martyr's last 12 competitive games? 3 wins, 3 draws and 6 losses. No clean sheets, despite solid defence apparently being his thing. Or maybe the 7 pre-season games where we kept 5 clean sheets, but only scored one goal. This goes beyond Postecoglou - the rot had set in well before he was appointed. Who are we going to appoint who is going to improve a malaise which has existed under two different managers?
This is overlooking the realities of modern football (intentionally bent argument, or genuine lack of understanding I don't know).
Last season we had a small number of capable players, (small squad, no depth) compared to established teams. So at the end of season after a high athletic load, and with end of seasons niggles and injury, and a target on our back, we ran out of steam (I don't subscribe to the 'found out' narrative), and teams started to defend deep against us like we were Manchester united (the old one, not the new one).
There's a tendency to think that coaches do all the heavy lifting, but ultimately the players have to do the work. If there isn't many of them, and they are tired and shagged out after a particularly long squawk, they are going to struggle against better squads. The best coach in the world couldn't get the IFC vets team scratching out results in the 'ship.
The problem with ange isn't that his players are shattered after his training (yet). It's that his setup looks all wrong. When I'm looking at a game I'm not judging it in terms of whether strikers take chances or we win or lose. I'm looking at it in terms of how we go about trying to score, and how we try to stop the opposition playing.
The problem with ange's team is not tiredness. It's standing in the wrong places. It's possible, if you had a squad with a sufficient quality surplus over the level, that you could overcome the inherent flaws in the setup. I don't think that it's going to happen. Having trodden the path with him it's worth taking the time to be sure (personally I'm sure).
This might comes as a surprise, but a team which is set up to try to win might not actually win. Football is not won on a whiteboard by putting all the players in the most aesthetically pleasing spots.
Similarly it might come as a surprise to you that a side that's set up to gamble to score, might not always score, and often wont score more than the opposition.
We all look for different things. Personally I like a football team to football both ways, not just one.
