I do not believe he can be blamed if we get relegated but am not convinced he is the right man to take us forward. I never really understood his tactic of playing a narrow formation, especially Rapha, Harrison and James.
Seems harsh to judge him so early but there is a lot of rebuilding to be done this summer whatever division we are in, and the Championship is tough to get out of.
agree that this aint JM's team but i think most LUFC fans would argue had Marcelo stayed he would have gotten us safe as KP & Coops were almost off the treatment table.
That said JM sets the players up so our "narrow" formation is his call, I think playing DJ up top and giving rapha licence to roam automatically makes us "narrow", so that's something JM can / should fix.
There is not doubt tho that we have somehow "defended" better since MB's days, not that last Sunday was good example of that, jezz we were all over the shop especially in the first half and probably should have been 3 down, thankfully Brighton's shooting boots were left on the team bus.
I havent seen enough of what JM can bring to table as between injuries and suspensions he has fire-fighting in team selection so its probably a bit unfair to lambaste the guy that's not even here 4 months.
For me the jury is out on Jesse and i didn't think it was right of the section of the fans that were chanting sack the board last week, the Manager / team dont need to hear that when they are on the pitch struggling to score.
We need to stick together now more so than ever because "if" we go down we will lose a good 6-8 of our team, and a bounce back up as history has showed LUFC wont happen that easily.
Best thing in a storm sometimes is to sit tight, ride it out and wait for the clouds to disappear and then fix the problems,
Summer 2022 is when we need to repair the damage to our squad which it has been suffering for the past 12-18 months.
I agree that it's harsh to judge JM just yet, he's trying to cobble together a side on the pitch to play and is not being helped by some idiotic tackles that are decimating an already small squad.
If we assume the worst, then we should get around £80million as a parachute payment (last year was £83miilion). Unfortunately we would probably sell Rapha and Kalvin for about £30million each, so without any intervention by the board, we have around £140million to spend. Maybe the board would chip in £60million which would bring us up to a war chest of £200million. You would have thought that would be enough to rebuild the team?
I think Marsch has done OK with his points tally considering some of the teams we played.
One thing that has gone against us is the unexpected form of Burnley.
I think Marsch is a decent guy, but would prefer to see him play more to our strength, which for me is out wide. I do not think Bielsa would have kept us up. I wonder at the kind of analysis the board does when appointing a successor to Bielsa, for me Marsch is a bit of a gamble and a change made too late.
I do think a large part of our injury problems were down to over worked players coupled with a small squad.
I'm pretty sure MB would have kept us up. His teams always always treated the next game as a new challenge, and invariably picked themselves up. I never like seeing managers sacked in mid season, and that opinion is reinforced when you consider that five of the eight teams that changed managers currently comprise the bottom five. And of the other three, Man Utd are about to change manager again.
It's also been difficult on the players having to change tactics. It's quite clear they feel more comfortable when man marking than zonal. And as Bull says, the wide men have struggled when asked to go narrow.
I think it was the right call to pick a manager with a reputation for working with youth and for improving players. And that's exactly what we have got. I don't expect to see major changes in Orta's transfer policy, the emphasis will still be on acquisitions that can increase in value, eg Aaranson. There won't be any over 30s. It'll be interesting to see how JM handles pre season, will he retain the punishing schedule Biesla introduced?
This season is a clean slate for JM
It does not really matter if we stay up or go down. It is the first 8/10 games of next season that will define him.
I know he does not have the players that suit his desired system. Teams worked our man marking out and it cost us with heavy defeats.
I doubt MB would have kept us up and, in fact, I think we would be relegated now if we did not make that change. IMO it should have been done in December and we should have splashed the cash in Jan as Newcastle did.
I am still trying to fathom out what JM is trying to achieve other than be tight at the back and hope to score from a set piece.
So I think I will just pray to my God for help.
I listen to the square ball pod casts and have enjoyed them for a good few years, but since Bielsa went they have taken a turn for the worse. This last one was really toxic and in my opinion very anti Marsch, although they try to dress it up as not being.
They were moaning that JM hasn’t tightened us up at the back. At that point he had been in charge for 10 games and conceded 16 goals. No mention of February when we shipped 20 goals in 5 games. Also looking at points per game JM has managed slightly more than Bielsa.
I loved Bielsa and loved what he did with our club for 3 years , it was truly amazing. Having said that we are where we are now because of him. We got promoted because of Bielsa, we played amazing football because of Bielsa, we finished 9th in the Orem because of Bielsa. But it’s sad to say that we are also in a relegation dog fight because of Bielsa.
personally I don’t think Bielsa would have kept us up. The players looked broken by the time he left, they had No confidence and didn’t look like they trusted the system anymore.
@Richard Jackson The evidence suggests the opposite - that the players were gutted when MB was sacked. They even gave him a week long send off. Even ex-players like Nketiah have come out in defence of MB. It was only MOTD pundits like Shearer who speculated that the manager had lost the players support. You won’t find quotes by any of the players saying they lost faith in him. They loved him.
@The Smurf However, it's almost unheard of for any player to tell a departing manager he was a bag of ****. The players owed MB a debt for the changes he made and like us they loved him for it - that doesn't mean they wanted him to stay.
The interviews I saw - one with Bamford springs to mind - they couldn't get enough of JM's new training and his positive attitude which he said was really refreshing. MB didn't speak much to the players it turns out.
@The Smurf I can honestly believe that they were gutted when he was sacked and that none of them wanted him To leave. That doesn’t mean that they hadn’t lost faith in the football they were being asked to play. Take a look at the footage of them over the last month of Bielsa’s reign, especially when the goals were flying in and we were 3-0 down after 20mins of football. The body language says it all to me along with the look on Their faces.
I don’t for a minute think any of them wanted it to end this way. But they also didn’t want to go out be spanked week in and week out. Run around like mad men for 90 mins and give everything they had in the tank, knowing that the tactics they were being asked to play would be their undoing.
I agree completely with what you say BB, except the first 8-10 games of next season will likely be extra important if we are relegated, so would like to see a clear understandable vision from JM that the players get too.
Spot on Richard
Richard - very accurate assessment
Marsch has a very poor record so far although he inherited a team that can't defend, had Kalvin out, had no striker and had to deal with injuries and suspension....
Out of 11 games he's only won 3 and 2 of them were relegation fodder Norwich and Watford and the other was Wolves, who looked set to beat us until they had a player sent off!!
We've somehow got to get this squad to perform above themselves on Sunday and get 'superstars' like Rapha to do the business on the pitch with the ball rather than the fake passion of abusing the officials and running after the ball when it's out of play to get the opposition to take the throw a bit quicker.... if he showed more football ability on the pitch like he did earlier in the season then we'd have been out of trouble by now.
The Marsh as our manager going forward is a strange one. He clearly can coach but his current performance has left alot of questions. I personally have not been happy with his team set ups thus far and understand that he does not have his style of players but if a team has 3 wing players and they are where all our goals are coming from then you change your play to match their strength.
Looking at things as they stand. How many new managers can take over a team and have 2 periods of 10 plus days with out a game and still not implement any of their systems.
Echo comments made by Richard - spot on.
Jesse Marsch plays a narrower system up top because he relies on fullbacks to give his teams width, whether you describe his formation as 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-2-2.
It is not lost on me that the issues recently have been at fullback (Dallas and Ayling) and he's using Rapha and Harrison in part to mitigate this.
JM's tactics can be very effective with attacking fullbacks (wingbacks) but the narrowness only works up top with a proper playmaking 10 - and look at what we have there?? Roberts or Rodrigo.
He's given Greenwood a crack in patches but he's very young for that responsibility.
In truth it would have been better had JM had January to get reinforcements in - and possibly stop Drameh's exit. In the mean time he's actually slightly better in goal difference and points to MB, despite being new and not having his own players.
Having time to implement his systems? He's been honest - he's trying to do so slowly so he doesn't overwhelm the players - remember they are tired and totally indoctrinated in man marking - changing that alone is a massive undertaking - no wonder we struggle to look coherent. I still have faith in him if he gets supported in the Summer in the right areas.
I'm of the belief that JM's current tactics and formations are dictated by the situation we are in and what's available. Pretty sure that there will be a sea change in our approach once all this is over, irrespective of what division we are in.
It's not rocket science to be able to change formations DURING a game.... we should have sorted out a better pattern of play so far especially as we've had 2 international breaks.
I'll give Jesse the benefit of the doubt until he has HIS team at the start of next season....
Myself and Hoddle would have been able to beat Norwich and fkn Watford....
In my boy's youth football we just used to shout to the holding midfielder to drop to a 3 at the back and the full backs pushed on 20yds to play as wing backs automatically .... we only had an hour to sort this at training on a Thursday night.
The fact that we finished bottom of the league for the last 6 years and the boy's have lost interest in football has nothing to do with it.... they actually enjoy sniffing glue at the back of the shops.
Bielsa took a mid table Championship side and worked miracles. In his fourth season he couldn’t do it again.
The players had hit their collective heads on a thick glass ceiling. Trained hard for 3 years, the squad couldn’t cope any longer without reinforcements.
In steps the new guy. First game is encouraging despite the result.
Just a few tweaks and we were looking more solid and attacking well.
But there is a but.
He kept tweaking and changing. The players have struggled to adapt.
The Leicester game for me was a bit of a false dawn. We haven’t played as well since.
Two managers have failed to get the team playing anything like before. MB had run them into the floor, and for me Marsch hasn’t got a system in place to suit our battered squad.
We we’re going down with MB.
IMO, Marsch hasn’t got the players or the ability to keep us up. We just seem reliant on others bogging it up.
MB has never been the manager of a relegated team. Never. Would I have more confidence in an MB team getting results in the run in? Damn right.
Would never have happened, we would have been relegated by the end of April. There was no Plan B because there wasn't any players around to execute it. January transfer window was our opportunity and we blew it.
Doing abit of rewatching of JM interviews from taking over and the one thing he stated very clearly was that was only going to do minor altercation to the side to tighten up the defence and take us away from man marking, more multi player zonal pressure . I not sure he has achieved that SIMPLE thing. He at times changed everything but nothing...
Was a bit surprised that the board went for JM, but more than anything,
I couldn't understand us offering him a 3,5 years deal.
Such a lengthy deal for someone with no experience or succes in the Premiership at all.
The sensible thing would have been to offer him a deal until the end of the season, → keep us up & we'll offer you a 1 or 2 year extension.
Anyway, there's a fairly decent chance we'll be paying up his contract a lot sooner.
In the, now likier event of relegation would he be the man to lead us out of the Championship?
He is Orta's pick.
He's American Daniel - much more 49ers pick before they bought the club outright.
Worth pointing out:
Bielsa Played 26 Points 23 GD -31
Marsch Played 11 Points 12 GD -7
Marsch's record would keep us up over a 38 game season - on track for 41 points. He's had no preseason, it's not his squad and he wasn't anticipating the role coming when it did.
We sit in the bottom 3 on goal difference.... where did that come from? (see stats above).
Our plight is as much down to Burnley and Everton getting better over the last month - they are both above mid table in the recent form guide.
I know we all look for confirmation bias, but the idea Bielsa would have kept us up and Marsh is a poor choice doesn't stack up with the reality. Marsch is on a hiding to nothing at the moment - if we survive it was luck or Bielsa's team, if we go down he took us down and Bielsa would have kept us up.....