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O'Neil aka GONe

The Dude said:
It's the one thing I don't like about GON. From the very off he'd blame "the situation" rather than his own his managerial mistakes.

He also loves deflecting, finding talking points other than his own shortcomings. When we play well and win he'll still be on TV a week later talking about it, explaining his tactical masterclass...

When we underperform and lose he'll talk about anything else to avoid facing his fuck ups.

That said, I like him. I'm not sure I'd blame him for the injury time collapse, that's on the players who switched off thinking the job had been done...

I do however blame him for his needless juggling of personnel, his square pegs in round holes approach and total no show and disasterclass v Coventry.

We were shit Gary, own it.
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What deflection has he done?
 
Elephant Pyjamas said:
What deflection has he done?
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I'd say Liverpool at home, he went off on one about how it was because the players were used to just doing their own thing which a) doesn't tally with how we played under Lopetegui and b) realistically the single biggest factor was him bringing Doherty and Fabio on, it was like playing with 9 men and he didn't need to do either.

Broadly speaking I tend to agree with most of what he says after a game, whatever the result. There's not a manager on earth who will always come up with a totally fair and accurate assessment of the match, they'll always cover themselves or double down on their own error at some point.
 
Was it after Luton that he laid a lot of the problems at Lop's feet (without explicitly naming him)?

There was definitely a press conference early-ish on when he seemed to be ducking responsibility in a way that really riled me up.
 
Alan said:
Was it after Luton that he laid a lot of the problems at Lop's feet (without explicitly naming him)?

There was definitely a press conference early-ish on when he seemed to be ducking responsibility in a way that really riled me up.
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He's said some strange things about Lopetegui without explicitly naming him. He recently talked about how well liked Lopetegui was by the players though so it's not been 100% critical.
 
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I remember getting wound up by his comments after the Ipswich game but looking back I was probably more annoyed at us chucking a 2 goal lead away and looking like the team I thought we would be when we employed him.
 
Suppose he does sometimes deflect, personally don't care that much. If we start being shit consistently the media won't talk to him much anyway.
 
Lycan said:
He's said some strange things about Lopetegui without explicitly naming him. He recently talked about how well liked Lopetegui was by the players though so it's not been 100% critical.
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Yeah, don't think he's said anything since that's come close to that. Of course, we've been winning a lot more which softens everything.
 
I think giving Lop a bit of a kicking was fair game given how things have turned out, it didn't seem fair at the time though.
 
To be fair he did also say:

“We can move Rayan higher — but then we haven’t got Rayan lower,” said O’Neil. “We start Mario higher — which is fine, that is a solution (to attack) — but then we’re missing Mario lower.

“We took Toti (Gomes) off but then at 2-1 up it would have been really good to be able to put a defender on to help us see it out but there wasn’t one.

“So I played a part in helping us get back to 2-1 but some of that help is part of the reason why we ended up losing 3-2. I will have a good look at myself. I’m obviously responsible for winning football matches. My job was to win and I failed.”

Which I would say is fair enough, and we know the main reason we lost was because we had our entire first choice attack missing with no viable back ups to step in (we did also defend terribly and were uncharacteristically awful in possession, but you saw how Coventry melted in our only good 10 minute spell, if we have the quality at the top end I'm sure we'd have won regardless).
 
Alan said:
Yeah, don't think he's said anything since that's come close to that. Of course, we've been winning a lot more which softens everything.
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On the Coventry result -

“This result is an accumulation of where the club has got to over the last couple years and we find ourselves here with only one senior attacking player fit at a Premier League club, which makes it tough"

So nothing to do with team selection, formation and tactics? Funny, because to me it looked like those were the three biggest factors in such a gutless performance. It was Coventry FFS, at home. Arghh!
 
The Dude said:
On this occasion he's deflecting by feigning outrage at Robins' celebrations.
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He really didn't.

An answer to 1 question that took up a little amount of time which he basically said it was a twats move but be spoke to Robins about it and he agreed it was a twats move and said sorry being repeated by numerous media outlets does not make it a deflection. Just makes it a story for the 24/7 nature of the sport to focus on once the madness of the game has died down.
 
The Dude said:
On the Coventry result -

“This result is an accumulation of where the club has got to over the last couple years and we find ourselves here with only one senior attacking player fit at a Premier League club, which makes it tough"

So nothing to do with team selection, formation and tactics? Funny, because to me it looked like those were the three biggest factors in such a gutless performance. It was Coventry FFS, at home. Arghh!
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see above...
 
Elephant Pyjamas said:
I think giving Lop a bit of a kicking was fair game given how things have turned out, it didn't seem fair at the time though.
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IMO it was definitely fair (my feelings on Lop are known). It's just not what I want to hear from the coach.

Once you're the man in charge, the buck stops with you. Generally speaking, Gary is quite good about this now.
 
The Dude said:
On the Coventry result -

“This result is an accumulation of where the club has got to over the last couple years and we find ourselves here with only one senior attacking player fit at a Premier League club, which makes it tough"

So nothing to do with team selection, formation and tactics? Funny, because to me it looked like those were the three biggest factors in such a gutless performance. It was Coventry FFS, at home. Arghh!
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Interesting.

RAN who GON moved forward scored and then got an assist for a player GON brought on, seems like GON actually dug us out of a whole with his selection, formation and tactics?

Of course we ended up losing the game, but given the goals were down to individual mistakes im at a loss as to what GON should have done to prevent that?

Also, what starting 11 would you have gone with given what we had to pick from? I'm intrigued?
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
To be fair he did also say:

“We can move Rayan higher — but then we haven’t got Rayan lower,” said O’Neil. “We start Mario higher — which is fine, that is a solution (to attack) — but then we’re missing Mario lower.

“We took Toti (Gomes) off but then at 2-1 up it would have been really good to be able to put a defender on to help us see it out but there wasn’t one.

“So I played a part in helping us get back to 2-1 but some of that help is part of the reason why we ended up losing 3-2. I will have a good look at myself. I’m obviously responsible for winning football matches. My job was to win and I failed.”

Which I would say is fair enough, and we know the main reason we lost was because we had our entire first choice attack missing with no viable back ups to step in (we did also defend terribly and were uncharacteristically awful in possession, but you saw how Coventry melted in our only good 10 minute spell, if we have the quality at the top end I'm sure we'd have won regardless).
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If he'd only said that, I'd be fine with it. I can accept mistakes. I can accept poor decisions, shit happens.

But he's repeatedly alluded to the situation he inherited, whenever he's experienced a negative result and/or performance.

Just fucking stop it. This is the hand you've been dealt. Perform better in adversity.
 
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