Benny's not up to much these days either.
It is a monumental balls up by the club again. Sexstone and Fletcher obviously aren't singing from the same hymn sheet with regards to what the DOF will be responsible for. He's either going to have input into the team selection and tactics or he isn't, as Peter Taylor seems to have found out to our cost.
If Peter Taylor was genuinely interested in a role at the club then to let him slip through the net because he is basically expected to be an office assitant to the exceptional individual that is Carl Fletcher is frankly beyond belief.
Fletcher was a good player in a shit side for a couple of years, but he was on the slide even under Reid in League 1.
Reid was royally shafted by the old regime when he agreed to take over the reins. The team sold off one by one for peanuts, with none of the money reinvested in players. A 10 point deduction finally sealed his and our fate and we found ourselves in the basement league with no side left other than Walton, Fletcher and Bhasera who were all too expensive for other clubs to take.
Reids hands were tied to an extent that no-one would've blamed him if he had walked, but he stayed and tried to make something of a ragtag squad of kids and everyone elses cast-off's. Then who was it who plunged the knife into Peter Reid? Ridsdale publicly but apparently Fletcher behind the scenes.
So an ageing midfielder who's legs were going takes over the helm and nothing much changes except under him the players start to get paid, always a winner for productivity in my book, and then the financial backing of Brent who gave him the funds to sign players so we could survive another drop down by the skin of our teeth.
So onto this season. Fletcher has the chance to trim the squad of all the crap but doesn't feel comfortable getting rid of players he knows, even though they made up a lower League 2 side at best.
His dealings in the loan market have been baffling to say the least, he seemed to have a thing about wingers who he then never played
He's also done the same with Guy Madjo who everyone would agree is no superstar but if you had to place a bet on who would score more goals in this league out of Madjo, Feeney, Chadwick and Griffiths the result would have been Madjo by a wide margin, probably as wide as Chadwick usually misses the goal by.
Fletcher has a contact at Bournemouth via Eddie Howe, and that's it. So he grabs Moseley who looked a great player for his first couple of games and through his Bournemouth contact gets the loan period extended, then leaves him on the bench.
Joe Lennox, another of our many wingers brought in to keep each other company, scores a great equaliser against Exeter and gets praised to high heaven by Fletcher, but then finds himself on the bench again.
Chadwick plays over Madjo due to his defending from corners, yet we seem to concede lots of goals from crosses. So instead of wasting a striker just because they can defend, why not get a new defender? It's not bloody rocket science is it?
His tactics are baffling, his substitutions equally strange, but the big thing for me is that I doubt very much that he even knows his best XI. The players must dread hearing the side for the game because they must also be in the dark about who's in and who's out.
His communication skills are rudimentary at best. His interviews are embarrassing. Now you don't have to be a trained brain surgeon to become a football manager but even by the standards of David Beckham and Harry Redknapp, Fletcher sounds as though he struggles to grasp the English language. Worse than that is his constant use of excuses for piss poor performances. The bounce of the pitch, the wind, the rain, the referee, the distance travelled, luck even, and of course the lads always work their socks off. Do they though? Do the players really put in a shift every game?
For some bizarre reason Fletcher is admired by James Brent and seems to be safe from the chop, to the extent that Brent's admission that Fletcher has been given a budget capable of gaining promotion, yet halfway through the season we are three points off a relegation spot and teams below us have at least one game in hand.
If he is still in his job due to financial restraints, then why are we looking for an office junior to help him? The people interviewed won't come cheaply so that makes two big salaries instead of one, and as he is on a 12 month rolling contract it will always cost 12 months wages to get rid of him. It doesn't add up at all.
Even the superfans don't like Fletcher, hence no mural for him but one for their bestest buddy Pursey, who is available to leave now if he can find another club. Now I might have missed it but I can't remember Fletcher saying that he doesn't really want Purse to go but his hands are tied, because they're not.
There are several crap players that could be let go that would mean Purse doesn't have to, but to me Fletcher is woried about deja vu and Purse leading the revolt against the manager leaving the opportunity of being asked to fill in as caretaker until the end of the season, where he might get given the gig full-time.
We are short of several players, short of coaching staff with experience, short of a manager who is capable of something better than 20th in League 2 and yet we are able to let a former England manager, albeit briefly, a successful England U21 manager who would know exactly how to nurture the young talent, and a proven lower league manager who has also managed at the very top who would have contacts coming out of his ears?
Something is not right in all of this, just like there is something wrong with Argyle from top to bottom. And yet there are still fans who wouldn't want to upset him, to hurt his feelings by displaying banners or chanting that want Fletcher out?
Welcome to Plymouth Argyle 2012, under the man who saved the club, James Brent.
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Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:20 am
