It wasn't guilt by association it was a collective failure from a team of poor coaches. Very easy for someone to be shite at coaching Premier League prima donnas but amazing at managing a team of lower league players.
The point is you don't know that he was shite, you just say that he was because of the outcome but with a coach there's always more nuance as it's an under the radar role where the lines of responsibility aren't totally clear, the influence isn't totally clear. That's why I find it so bizarre that our fans fixate on staff when there are legitimate targets that have clear responsibility.
We have very little information to go on and that was my defence of quite a few staff members that garner far too much attention. It was as if the man who is chiefly responsible for footballing performance (the manager) and owners who setup the whole structure had become such a boring topic that we had to find new, unjustified targets for criticism.
McKenna might have been good or shite but it's hard to say. If he does well at Ipswich I would say it leans more towards the former. Managing is a bloody hard job, it would suggest he has good ideas and can handle players and was caught up in a maelstrom of shite which was us at the time. He's got a good reputation in the game, I don't think that comes from nowhere.
It's kind of like as a worker, sometimes there's feck all you can do about the company going down the shitter even if you're highly competent and do a great job. It could even be that your department is performing crap but individually you perform well.
