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- Mar 22, 2014
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- Piracy on the High Seas.
You would be hard pressed to cite managers who went on to succeed at major clubs following a “rubbish” start, unfortunately.Is it not best that we started of rubbish with this manager as we can now only get better. Under previous managers we started of good and went worse which obviously resulted in them getting sacked. Now it’s the other way around so let’s have faith.
By and large, rubbish start leads to a rubbish rest-of-it, with very few significant deviations from a historical perspective.
Even those who oversaw a time-consuming and painstaking rebuild provided an initial bounce, a silver lining of sorts, something you could rally the troops around...
- Alex Ferguson: from 1.00 point-per-game in the league under Ron Atkinson to 1.48 points-per-game for the rest of the season with a 27.5% loss rate.
- Mikel Arteta: from 1.23 points-per-game in the league under Unai Emery to 1.48 points-per-game for the rest of the season with a 23.8% loss rate.
- Rubén Amorim: from 1.23 points-per-game in the league under Erik Ten Hag to 1.12 points-per-game thus far with a 50% loss rate.
While I don't envy Berrada, Wilcox et al for having to make difficult decisions, that is their remit and this summer offers us another chance to make a fresh start (with regard to the sporting director and head coaches positions in particular). Much like the summer gone by, where we failed to seize the opportunity with both hands and sealed the fate of this season before the ball had even been kicked. The higher-ups need to weight up all pros and cons, explore different possibilities, and think long and hard about the direction we want to go in. Because going in the wrong direction will have profound repercussions, now more than ever. No one will think less of them for going in a different direction, if that decision is ultimately vindicated.