Interesting little thread this. We all watched the same man do his job. All of us would claim to understand a bit about the game. But we seem to be split down the middle as to his ability. This is not at all unusual with Fans in general, yet there is never of shortage of applicants when a Managers job becomes available, Could it be that the main qualification to be a football manager, is not how many coaching badges you have, or even experience, but that you have to hide of a rhinoceros, to take the abuse?
It does help to have a thick skin mind! But not all do. Bruce was amazingly touchy, here and everywhere else.
I am sure it helps. It is rare for a coach to be universally liked. I was talking to a Liverpool fan who has never taken to Klopp. I reckon Johnson knew we were probably his best shot at a really big club, arrogant as I sound there. Oddly I think he would have found the championship easier than league one. Left us with a touch of class too. I have no problem if he comes and watches a game or two in the future.
Bruce had that 'one of the lads' pass with the media though. I don't think I've ever seen any criticism of him that hasn't come from fans.
Johnson was better than Parkinson (not hard) but he still failed twice with a squad strong enough to go up automatically. We were warned about the streaks and his 1st one came at the worst possible time. Sitting 3rd with 9 games to go, then taking 7 pts and limping into the play offs should have gotten him the sack. You could argue he should have been sacked when we shipped 8 goals in 4 days in South Yorkshire, losing 3 games in a row. The covid games were the death knell, he should have insisted we call them off instead of arrogantly thinking we could play with an under strength team (2 pts from 9 a a result) and no manager should survive what happened at Bolton that day. Overall his stats - 49.2% win (league games only) wasn't all that different from Ross (47.4), Parkinson (44.7) or Neil (50) but he lost games at key times and that is what cost him not to mention the ****ing verbal diarrhoea that spilled out his mouth at every opportunity and don't get me started on that peaky ****ing blinders cap
he filled a gap to get where we are, if he knew how to get teams to defend i think he would do well...dont mind the bloke, his 'attitude' spills over at times but his media talk was summit else.
Interestingly, he had a better win ratio with us than Alex Neil. It shows how fine the margins are. Fans are a peculiar bunch though. Johnson said buzzwords and Neil was miserable and to the point, which I think was a more determining factor than their football on how much they were liked (or certainly how much rope they would get).
For me it had little to do with the lingo bad as it was, it was the game management and touch line antics, on top of the fact that he just looked so out of date, he was laughable.The description snake oil salesman was not mine, but a one I totally agree with. a charlatan if ever there was one. Other than that he was OK
This was it for me. He wasn't interested in or didn't understand nor value the defensive side of the game. He seemed to tolerate defending only in so far as it was necessary to set up the next attack, rather than in and of itself, for stopping goals going etc. I think this explains the streaky nature of his results too. Depending on who you are playing you can go a few games in a row getting away with not defending well, but then you get caught out in a few.