Graham Clark":3192xbb4 said:
Sorry but l got to disagree with that opening line.
That promotion was one of the strangest promotions as a fan l’ve experienced. You go back to the games we won. Games like Accrington Stanley. They destroyed us at HP. Played us off the park. Yet we came away with a win. There were too many of these experiences that season which is why the promotion was flat compared to others. Remember the Tuesday night games at HP. Leyton Orient, who were in free fall, coming down to destroy us. They were being beaten week in, week out. The signs were there about how we couldn’t cope with pace. I remember that night thinking Macey had three or four players around him and yet he just ran through us. We just stood off players. Never tried to tackle. These tactics were seen the next two seasons in league one.
Anyhow, l wasn’t convinced. You kinda of have a gut feeling about a manager after two seasons. I was in the minority even after we finished 7th in Adams 3rd season. What made me realise is that it was the beginning of the end for him was the Charlton away game which was a dent to any playoff aspirations we had that season. If you go back to the synopsis the things l mentioned in that game were the same things that ended up getting us relegated the following season. The reason lm saying this is because this myth about the third season. It was a decent season in terms of where we finished. Yet the bad habits we did as a team that season weren’t rectified and caused what we witnessed in Adams fourth season.
He said some very strange things. His after match thoughts about games that we could see we got outplayed. Yet he kept trying to convince the fans we had been the better team. I remember him saying how he doesn’t like 3 at the back systems. Only for him to be using them when we had poor results. If you don’t believe in them, then your not really convinced of the system your trying to play. He once tried to say the kit wasn’t right under the floodlights and we couldn’t pick out teammates. It obviously wasn’t watching Saturday 3pm games then because we had the same issue in daylight.
I know we finished 7th the season before but the warning signs were in place. The terrible start to the 3rd season. When Bradley wasn’t playing the defence failing to pieces. The way he kept using Lameiras as the scapegoat when things didn’t work out. In and out of the side. Only to repeated the following season. The heavy reliance on Carey. What happened last season was his very high standards dropped and so did Argyles results.
If you look back the writing was on the wall. That third season we were one of the lowest goal scoring teams away from home. He still played with forwards isolated from the rest of the team the following season. Being 7th masked the issues we had. Yes we went on a great run but down to individual performances. As a team unit we just didn’t function that good. Nobody, thought we had an issue at the back with a lack of pace. Or that we sat too deep, too often in games. Yet all these small things from seasons before that Adams didn’t fix finally caught up with us.
It’s just my opinion. For me, it was painful watching Argyle try to scrape 2-1 wins by holding out on regular basis in league 2. I thought well maybe we would evolve. However, we tried to do the same tactics against better teams and with better players in league one we got punished. You can’t just surrender the ball like we did. That’s why l admire what we trying to do now because if we got the ball opposing teams can’t score. Ok, it’s not going great at present. Yet l look at other teams who got relegated. Scunthorpe, Walsall and Bradford. All have 3 decent managers who proved themselves at this level. None of them have any more points doing than us currently. So it shows how difficult it is to change things quickly with a new manager at the helm.
Basically, what lm saying is it’s the fact nobody did challenge him or argue about certain aspects of his coaching or tactics in those first three years. Who knows if everyone didn’t keep sweeping issues under the carpet then it might not of lead to such an embarrassing season last year. Maybe if people within his coaching staff did argue with him or at least challenge him he might of done something about the issues we had. Instead we played the same way. Used the same tactics. Did the same things eg pre season and this resulted in the same mistakes still happening in his fourth season as Argyle manager.
