Where did Adams go wrong?

[The Great Mass Debater]

So Adams was hardly a disaster, but it seems it was agreed by mutual consent that he wasnt performing well enough.

So now the dust has settled, what went wrong for him?

It seems he was largely backed by the board, was backed in the transfer market, didnt have his best players sold out from under him, inherited arguably the strongest squad in the division. he had some good results, but ultimately came up short. Why?

It seems he had a supportive 'football board', he was a club man, so probably had some respect for that, irrespective of his inexperience.

Was he tactically inept? Did he buy the wrong players? Did he lack the motivational skills to galvanize the playing squad? Did the players undermine him?

Seems everyone wanted him to do well. So why didnt things go to plan?  What do people think?

 

[Beauseant]

Successful managers are usually larger than life (Sir Alex, Jose, Klopp, ) or at least have a clear steel behind their apparent calm (Rodgers, O'Neill). Adams just came across as a nice bloke. I can't see how he would be able to motivate players or really crack down on a seasoned pro. I can see exactly how Neil would, however!

My opinion is that he got the job this season because the board felt guilty about dropping him in it at the end of the last one.

 

[Lake District Canary]

As long as we were doing well and at the top of the league, he was doing what was required.  The big test was always going to be how he reacted when things were not going according to plan - and it was only then that the penny dropped for a lot of people - including I suspect Adams.   He may have been unlucky - there were games we should have won easily but for a bit of luck - but the truth was that he didn't appear to react to poor results with anything other than "we'll try more of the same".  It wasn't until Wigan away that something different was tried - too little too late.

I was a little concerned after one game where he said he had given the players a rocket after the match - but it appeared to a lot of us that the team selection, formation and tactics were the main problem.   If the players thought that too, they wouldn't have taken kindly to being "rocketed" - and that wouldn't have helped the situation with the players. 

Overall, your question is answered by one thing - "inexperience".      A little naive of the board imo to think he was going to be able to cope with all the demands of the job, even with experienced help.   But - he's had a go at the job - given us some great results and was not a disaster - and lets face it maybe the right man wasn't available at the beginning of the season.   So maybe - if Alex Neil turns out to be a great manager -  Adams steadied the ship, got us near the top of the league and kept things going in readiness for the real thing.  I do hope so. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

You cannot blame him for taking the job at all. The board do things in their way and I don't believe  it is all down to cost. I think trying to retrieve the days when we just whistled up someone from the backroom and it worked played a part in it. The Norwich way was quoted so much during the close season. So they asked him and he thought he could do it. And just as Hughton will always have a chance to say, I would have kept us up, Adams can always say we were virtually in a play off spot when the world was told I fell on my sword.

And maybe therein lies the reason. He let the board off the hook. It now seems apparent that AN must have been in McNally's thoughts for sometime and the pressure got to Adams both on and off the pitch. Developing youth players does not have the same pressure. Turn out one for sale every 3 years and your job is safe. I guess he was manouvered into resigning and the reward was 6 months holiday and report back for pre season training to take up your promotional back step.

 

[Beauseant]

I don't think the 6 month holiday is a reward, more a reflection of his mental state. The resignation had more than a bit to do with stress.

 

[Yellow Fever]

IMO, there were difficulties and there were successes under Adams. To put it into context you could start by comparing City with other sides relegated recently: Fulham and Cardiff last year, Wigan and Reading from the year before. All of these are struggling in the bottom half of the table. We are one point off the play-off places. There is an adjustment required after relegation requiring a new attitude and new tactics. People keep saying that we have the best squad in this league. Do we? Teams like Bournemouth, Derby, Boro and even Ipswich have honed their teams and tactics to this league over the years. The departure of Robson didn't help, but the addition of Phelan did (eventually) and we took 10 points from 5 games in December.

Now we start all over again with a new manager, Frankie McAvoy and Gary Holt. We'll have to wait to see what effect the loss of Phelan will have but at least we've been fortunate to get through two transition games with maximum points, if not totally convincing performances. Neil has set about to sort this out, but it's hard to know what players feel about this change and how they will respond. Fans have taken to Neil in a big way, but will this continue if, say, we lose the next two games and are suddenly well adrift of the play-offs, never mind automatic promotion. I certainly hope that doesn't happen, and we come together as a team and push on. The signs are there and let's hope they continue.

On a brighter note though, Bournemouth lost at Leeds last night and poor old Ipswich are currently losing 3-1 at Brighton. Chris Hughton is a hero after all! 

 

[Suffolk Canary]

I know this doesn't excuse him for the seriously poor run we had before he left,  but at times it did feel like that anything that could go wrong for him did. Could possibly be seen as a victim of bad circumstances.

It all started when he took the temp job in April. He took over a sinking ship, with moral at a deep low and zero confidence. He had 1 game to turn it around (Fulham), where we played one of our best away performances of the season but were denied but some incredible saves by their keeper. And he couldn't do anything about Sunderland's ridiculous rise from the dead, which was a real freak event. So he already had a relegation to his name. 

The board then did him no favours, by announcing to the world they were searching all over Europe to find the best manager possible. Fans were always going to resent Adams slightly when he got the job, and associate him with a lack of ambition. This instantly piled huge pressure on him to prove himself better than anything European management had to offer. 

And then we get to the football. As we became the early run-away team, opposition instantly tried to shut up shop whenever they faced us at home (which they didn't do against the likes of Ipswich, Bournemouth etc). Serious bad luck cost us the game against Charlton, which ended our superb run of results in the league. Rotherham put in a defensive masterclass against us. Two late goals (possibly through tactical naivety) denied us a great win V Forrest. And some ridiculous saves from Westwood cost us a win at Sheff Wed. 

Just to clarify, I'm not being paid by Adams to defend him  I'm just trying to point out he wasn't as bad as many people thought he was. It was always going to be a tough gig, with a tough crowd. I still think he could be our manager in the future, just not for the medium term at least. I still love the bloke

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Successful managers are usually larger than life (Sir Alex, Jose, Klopp, ) or at least have a clear steel behind their apparent calm (Rodgers, O'Neill). Adams just came across as a nice bloke. I can't see how he would be able to motivate players or really crack down on a seasoned pro. I can see exactly how Neil would, however!

My opinion is that he got the job this season because the board felt guilty about dropping him in it at the end of the last one.

Generally I agree with you about successful managers. I also feel goalkeepers need a personality and to be a commanding presence to do well at big clubs - just look at the keepers that have done well at Man Utd and the ones that havent.

But, as I agree with you, I have always wondered how managers like Arsene Wenger and Sven Goran Eriksson have been successful! (Mind you I cant picture SGE giving Ulrika one either...   )

I do agree that Adams didnt really have a 'presence'

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

As long as we were doing well and at the top of the league, he was doing what was required.  The big test was always going to be how he reacted when things were not going according to plan - and it was only then that the penny dropped for a lot of people - including I suspect Adams.   He may have been unlucky - there were games we should have won easily but for a bit of luck - but the truth was that he didn't appear to react to poor results with anything other than "we'll try more of the same".  It wasn't until Wigan away that something different was tried - too little too late.

I was a little concerned after one game where he said he had given the players a rocket after the match - but it appeared to a lot of us that the team selection, formation and tactics were the main problem.   If the players thought that too, they wouldn't have taken kindly to being "rocketed" - and that wouldn't have helped the situation with the players. 

Overall, your question is answered by one thing - "inexperience".      A little naive of the board imo to think he was going to be able to cope with all the demands of the job, even with experienced help.   But - he's had a go at the job - given us some great results and was not a disaster - and lets face it maybe the right man wasn't available at the beginning of the season.   So maybe - if Alex Neil turns out to be a great manager -  Adams steadied the ship, got us near the top of the league and kept things going in readiness for the real thing.  I do hope so. 

My concern with this is that if indeed it is a lack of experience, why have they replaced him with the second youngest manager in the league who has only 18 months experience? Still pretty inexperineced, relatively.

Doesnt suggest the board is learning from the mistakes of the past. You could argue Adams was Gunn mark 2

"Those who do not understand the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them"

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

IMO, there were difficulties and there were successes under Adams. To put it into context you could start by comparing City with other sides relegated recently: Fulham and Cardiff last year, Wigan and Reading from the year before. All of these are struggling in the bottom half of the table. We are one point off the play-off places. There is an adjustment required after relegation requiring a new attitude and new tactics. People keep saying that we have the best squad in this league. Do we? Teams like Bournemouth, Derby, Boro and even Ipswich have honed their teams and tactics to this league over the years. The departure of Robson didn't help, but the addition of Phelan did (eventually) and we took 10 points from 5 games in December.

Now we start all over again with a new manager, Frankie McAvoy and Gary Holt. We'll have to wait to see what effect the loss of Phelan will have but at least we've been fortunate to get through two transition games with maximum points, if not totally convincing performances. Neil has set about to sort this out, but it's hard to know what players feel about this change and how they will respond. Fans have taken to Neil in a big way, but will this continue if, say, we lose the next two games and are suddenly well adrift of the play-offs, never mind automatic promotion. I certainly hope that doesn't happen, and we come together as a team and push on. The signs are there and let's hope they continue.

On a brighter note though, Bournemouth lost at Leeds last night and poor old Ipswich are currently losing 3-1 at Brighton. Chris Hughton is a hero after all! 

Dont think it will take long for people to start saying he is 'out of his depth' if we go through a bad run...

 

[Personal Trainer]

I don't think the 6 month holiday is a reward, more a reflection of his mental state. The resignation had more than a bit to do with stress.

Think this may well be the case

Have a read of this http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/30854083for an insight into the problems an experienced player faced as a manager. 

Just look at a picture of Adams when he took over and then one when he left. He has aged almost as much as Lambert at Villa.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

The constant scrutiny and the feeling the whole of Norfolk is criticizing you, talking about you and generally dissecting your stools to see what you had for breakfast (and no the irony of this comment in this thread has not been lost on me) must be awful. I know I wouldnt be able to handle it

 

[eatonparkboy]

Why do so many want to give it a go then? Is it the money, the power or ego? Adams would have  been well aware of the feelings toward Hughton and his five game reign in the Prem. And the criticism he got and the general feeling of most that he could be out of his depth leaves me little room for sympathy other than I wouldn't wish stress or depression on anyone.

He tried and failed. We move on to the new era with a guy who doesn't appear as if he would react the same under pressure. 

 

[Beauseant]

It's called backing your ability. I find it hard to criticise, or fail to empathise with anyone who shows the balls to do that. Football gets in your blood. I was lucky enough to play at a decent level of non league and kept going until my mid thirties and was then offered a chance to manage, which I saw as the next best thing to being able to play, so I can see where he was coming from. To start with it's great and you don't feel pressure, but as time goes by you do, and clearly much more at the level he was working at.

 

[eatonparkboy]

It's called backing your ability. I find it hard to criticise, or fail to empathise with anyone who shows the balls to do that. Football gets in your blood. I was lucky enough to play at a decent level of non league and kept going until my mid thirties and was then offered a chance to manage, which I saw as the next best thing to being able to play, so I can see where he was coming from. To start with it's great and you don't feel pressure, but as time goes by you do, and clearly much more at the level he was working at.

I can see what you are saying and it must be the natural progression for those who wish to stay in the game. Obviously there are some who are in it to play and some of those see it as a means to an end, and management isn't for them.

But is management just about football? Footballers are commodities which ever way you name it but we do forgot they have their lives away from the game. Wives, families, gambling debts etc. Does the modern manager still deal with the players on a personal level or do clubs have specialists? We are led to believe that Ferguson was the patriarch at ManU and that was the reason most of his players walked the straight and narrow. But he had the personality for that. Did Adams? Without speaking ill, I still believe Mike Walker inherited that squad from Dave Stringer and I am led to believe that he had very little control over the players. Certainly during his second term, the stories were rife of players doing as they pleased so his ability was very narrow.

With so much importance placed on results, even in L1/L2, ask Ronnie Moore, is it fair to ask a manager to do anything other than coaching and putting a squad out on match day?

 

[eatonparkboy]

In fact, today's BBC site has a very timely story.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20496189

 

[Beauseant]

I think modern management in the pro game is incredibly demanding. The pressure of producing results is bad enough given the increasing short patience of owners and the huge amounts of money involved, but a club in the Prem or the Championship is a major and complex business, which is why so many managers now have limited briefs and leave other stuff to Directors of Football, or in our case the football committee or whatever David McNally's inner circle is called.

To me Adams suffered doubly because not only was he was painfully inexperienced, but also because he was running a club he genuinely loves. I think he was wrong to take the job, but I fully understand why he did and certainly don't blame him for backing himself.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Why do so many want to give it a go then? Is it the money, the power or ego? Adams would have  been well aware of the feelings toward Hughton and his five game reign in the Prem. And the criticism he got and the general feeling of most that he could be out of his depth leaves me little room for sympathy other than I wouldn't wish stress or depression on anyone.

He tried and failed. We move on to the new era with a guy who doesn't appear as if he would react the same under pressure. 

Its that we dare to dream though isnt it. When we picture ourselves as football managers its basically us being Jose Mourinho, holding aloft the Champions League trophy, adored by fans, players and the media alike.

I doubt very many of us imagine what it must be like to be called a wally with a brolly, turnip head or any of the other things. Jason Lee probably dreamed of holding aloft the FA cup after scoring the winning goal at Wembley. He probably didnt consider being mocked on TV and ridiculed at every ground for his hairstyle.

Craig David probably dreamed of winning a MOBO award and being number one. He probably didnt anticipate being charicatured and people spending the next 15 years going up to him in the street and saying  "Crrrraaiiigg David - Bo Selecta!"

I think we rarely imagine how awful things could be, we're seduced by the dream

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

I think modern management in the pro game is incredibly demanding. The pressure of producing results is bad enough given the increasing short patience of owners and the huge amounts of money involved, but a club in the Prem or the Championship is a major and complex business, which is why so many managers now have limited briefs and leave other stuff to Directors of Football, or in our case the football committee or whatever David McNally's inner circle is called.

To me Adams suffered doubly because not only was he was painfully inexperienced, but also because he was running a club he genuinely loves. I think he was wrong to take the job, but I fully understand why he did and certainly don't blame him for backing himself.

I think you could quite fairly say exactly the same thing of Gunn

 

[eatonparkboy]

It is nice to see that any animosity that surrounded Gunn's ill fated tenure is finished and he is firmly back in legend status. And I think Adams will be welcomed back in July. And if we get promoted this year, it will just be a distant memory.