Shrewsbury are pissed

No idea, Hampy. If I had to speculate, Dozzell? He's joined Bart recently in coming out with digs at Hurst to the press. The guy on TWTD wouldn't say who it was, understandably. He could of course be making those specific examples up, but he's considered a reliable source on there and he has disclosed validated information before. Also worth noting when these negative stories starting circulating I was one of the first to doubt them, but time has proven me wrong on that front! And I believe it was a coach (not hired by Hurst) who leaked the team sheet. Again, allegedly and no names.

 

Well for a start the form was abysmal at the end of last season too, Hurst was given hardly any budget and no time at all to build on a very poor set of players. The gamble was made to get Lambert in, who to my mind is virtually waste of space. That's where we are now.

I don't think it was man management, I think it was a combination of tactics and team selections in the early part of the season that were the difference between drawing and winning games. But we were hard to beat and matched most sides we came up against and we were not stranded at the bottom.

The evidence so far is that Lambert is doing no better in managing this group of players.

 

Have a good idea but won't be naming on a forum sorry.

 

May I ask why you have that opinion of Lambert?

Pre him coming I wasn't keen - but he's been very decent to date with all things I'd say. Very happy with him so far.

 

His track record is poor.

His post match comments are poor.

The defending against Reading was absolutely dire. The performance against West Brom was absolutely dire.

That's all we have to go on so far.

 

Indeed Mick wasn't without his players having a public pop at him. Celina last season on social media, on several occasions was pretty damning of Mick and how he wouldn't start him in matches. Another off the top of my head is Tommy Oar, the Aussie winger, who extensively criticised Mick and his style of football, albeit shortly after he left the club.

 

Well Tommy Oar really should have done his homework pre coming - and re him based on living in Australia and asking a good 20 / 30 people what they made of Tommy Oar - not a single Aussie had a good thing to say about the lad.

Celina - get that. Must have been frustrated no ends to not be playing - however played the ball in dumb areas at times. Naive - but a talent. Like Celina! That goal v Leeds.....

 

So runners and riders (ruling out all Hurst permanent signings):

Bart - VERY high probability.
Gerken - low probability
Spence - high probability
Kenlock - high probability
Chambers - no chance
Knudsen - no chance
Skuse - no chance
Edun - possibility
Graham - VERY high probability
Dozzell - low probability
Bish - low probability
Sears - low probability
Rowe - medium probability
Downes - medium probability

My money would be on Bart. The reason? He got dropped.

 

I agree that the decline has been apparent for a couple of years now, I made that point on a recent thread and I'm not denying that. I also don't forget we finished four points off relegation only two seasons ago. I'm debating your man management angle and how it isn't / hasn't played a role in our league position. It clearly has. If there are players publicly coming out and criticising Hurst (such as Bart and Dozzell) and there are multiple negative rumours and leaks from the club and the squad about Hurst and Doig's management and coaching style, then that has clearly affected the squad on some level. Imagine if people at your business where coming out complaining about your methods and how you speak to staff? It wouldn't help morale. I'm presuming you're a good manager, therefore you wouldn't have these difficulties. But as somebody who has worked under bad managers before, I know negativity can filter down, as I'm sure we all do.

You can debate the morals of leaking the information about Hurst and about players being willing to discuss it openly in the media. You can have sympathy with what Hurst had to work with and his desire to change things, as I do. He had a tough job, no question. But the uncomfortable truth is that Hurst misjudged his team, was not been able to effectively manage his group of players, unnecessarily alienated players, mistreated individuals at the club, and fostered a negative atmosphere around the ground. That clearly did not and has not helped a technically limited team overachieve in a competitive, tough division.

 

Another rumour I remember floating around is that after Hurst found out he was leaving, he deleted all of this season's performance data on all the Ipswich players. The data was only recovered because a coach had made a back up copy.

 

Wrong. Everybody has to manage difficult people. Humans are humans. This type of behaviour, if proven, would be gross misconduct and should result in termination of the contract but the reality is you have to manage it as best you can until they leave or you can move them on. I had somebody walk out on me a few years ago because, he said, of the way I spoke to him. He was unhappy that we weren't going to do his idea, pretty sure if we had done his idea he would have had no problem with how I spoke to him. Good luck to him.

I have had plenty of success in my career and enough people tell me it's the best place they have ever worked to not to get a complex over one or two problem people.

 

This was another issue, everybody knew for about two weeks that he was leaving and he had to go through the motions against QPR and Leeds, the way this was handled at a crucial point in the season has devastated our chances of survival.

 

Okay, but as I stated before in this thread, a few problem players (or employees, for the sake of this analogy and your anecdote) complaining about the management is not as condemning as the reports of many players (or employees) expressing dissatisfaction and concerns about the management. And the likes of Bart and Dozzell are not your typical “difficult players”. They’ve been dropped before under McCarthy and held their tongue then.

 

According to reports, again uncorroborated, Hurst was given the ultimatum to sack Doig and for the club to appoint a more experienced assistant to help him. He is reported to have said that he and Doig came as a package. He was fired a week later.

 

If that's true then it's to be admired.

 

The difference is that a) McCarthy wasn't bottom of the table and b) the players had an easy ride.

Also, you told me it was one player.

 

One player who leaked this information to the guy on TWTD, allegedly, but that information continuously referred to unhappiness at the club, among players and staff, over the past two months. How many of those stories have we seen leaked over the months anyway, from a variety of people? I dismissed it orginally, but when you have that many people coming out with rumours, you’ve got to question how accurate they are. Also, two players have publicly come out to criticise Hurst in the media.

I think saying that the players had an easy ride is a bit harsh. You don’t get in the play offs by having an easy ride. Mick was clearly a better man-manager than Hurst here, and as lax and complacent as the squad apparently were under Mick, they never went on a poor run of form like Hurst’s Ipswich side did.

 

The happiness that the players talk about now is going to be short lived.

I've not heard anything out of the ordinary apart from what you and Westy telling me, Bart's interview and Jason Dozzell's comments (and I don't think it's that extreme anyway).

I think what we have now is a divided squad - we have players who admire and are loyal to Hurst listening to him being slagged off by their 'teammates' and we have others blaming everybody else but themselves. A recipe for disaster. I bet Jon Nolan's not too happy at the moment but he will have more about him than whoever this was.