Poll: Should Noel Hunt be sacked?

[linkenholtroyal]

No but only because he should be put back with the U21s, not sacked just repurposed.

[RoyalBlue]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

[South Coast Royal]

No but only because he should be put back with the U21s, not sacked just repurposed.

Once you have held the top job (and presumably a good salary to go with it) I'm not sure that reverting to the U21 role would be what he would want .
Having tasted the manager role I expect he would probably try to get a Div 2, National League or League of Ireland job.

[Hound]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

Yes that’s probably true - note I said it was an example of the teams failings rather than Doyle’s

He has worked hard and done ok generally - better option than Elliott imo - but still not the sort of returns I was expecting when he signed

[jonnyroyal1871]

[quote="Armadillo Roadkill"]Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

[jonnyroyal1871]

[quote="Armadillo Roadkill"]Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

[Clyde1998]

Tbh Doyle is a more obvious example of this team’s failings

He has managed 2 assists in 13 games (7 starts) where he managed 7 goals and 4 assists in 21 (15 starts) for Crawley last season

And tbh he has not looked like doing a whole lot more than he has

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

The FotMob stats suggests he's doing only slightly worse creatively at Reading this season as he was at Crawley (comparing League One per 90 stats) - 1.53 chances created vs 1.86. His expected assists (basically the quality of chances he's created that ended in shots) is basically the same - from 0.18 to 0.16; his assists are up from 0.17 to 0.22. His general passing is better too.

There are however clear differences: he's clearly shooting and scoring less and he appears to be involved more defensively - suggesting Crawley were playing him higher up the pitch than we have been. I'd imagine he'll benefit from playing in the hole behind a striker now we've moved to a 4-2-3-1, rather than a 4-3-3.

[Vision]

Should have had another assist to his name for Marriott’s sitter on Saturday!

He’s doing OK but agree he’s not quite had that spark as anticipated

In order to get assists you need your teammates to get into good goal-scoring positions. Maybe his Crawley teammates were a lot better at doing that. Maybe Crawley's tactics were more suited to that than the Hunt & co approach.

The FotMob stats suggests he's doing only slightly worse creatively at Reading this season as he was at Crawley (comparing League One per 90 stats) - 1.53 chances created vs 1.86. His expected assists (basically the quality of chances he's created that ended in shots) is basically the same - from 0.18 to 0.16; his assists are up from 0.17 to 0.22. His general passing is better too.

There are however clear differences: he's clearly shooting and scoring less and he appears to be involved more defensively - suggesting Crawley were playing him higher up the pitch than we have been. I'd imagine he'll benefit from playing in the hole behind a striker now we've moved to a 4-2-3-1, rather than a 4-3-3.

It strikes me we changed our whole system to 4-2-3-1 precisely to accommodate Doyle in his best position so he really does need to produce because the change has seen our wide players (full backs and wide forwards) get progressively worse.

Somebody earlier mentioned creativity with regards to Elliott and citing goals & assists. This isn't the only metric for creativity. Our best performances last season always seemed to coincide with Eliiott being influential in beating players in midfield and driving forward creating space for others because defences have to commit. This often leads to chances 2 or 3 passes later that don't show up on a Goals/assists chart.

The final pass and finish are definitely things he needs to improve on but to judge his creative contribution solely on that seems a little too simplistic to me especially when the players apparently ahead of him in the side are also lacking in production.

[morganb]

Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

After all this talk of a relegation dogfight, who do we think are going to be the four teams worse than us this season?

[Mid Sussex Royal]

Jacobson, Carey and possibly Couhig need to get Hunt into an office for a formal review.

Give him the standard performance review questions:

We’re not where we expected to be at this time of the season. Can you explain why?

What are you going to do to change the situation and get us back on track?

How long would you give yourself to change things around? A month? Two?

What would be your target? - what position should we be in or what number of points do you think we should have by date Y.

Are there any specific things we can do to help you achieve your targets?

We expect to see X amount of progress by date Y.

This is the bare minimum for me. I'm on the fence, edging towards a change. I want to look at recruitment, and talk budgets for a minute. It's entirely unclear to me 'why' we signed MOM. His record at Portsmouth was poor last season, his overall record is not of that as a league one starter. We know KE isn't a forward, and has dropped off. There was literally nobody else to play up front. That is poor, negligent recruitment. By all concerned. We got Marriott over the line late, because we were, frankly, in the sh1t. Anybody who is thinking he is in the 3-5k per week range rather than the circa 10k per week range, isn't paying attention.

He's a Curo/ALF type, and needs a foil. We don't have one. We looked at Cheek at Bromley, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. We were clearly in and around Cole too. Port Vale beat us to that, probably because of Geography. We wouldn't pay Bowler's price, maybe rightly, so we signed Lane (what has happened there?)

We have kept our excellent midfield from last season - but they have gone backwards. Individually, and as a unit. Why?

Fraser should be holding, Wing should be further up, with Savage creating too. But we literally have one striker worth the name in the entire club. Is that Noel's fault? Dunno. But the coaching (or lack thereof) is his fault. We'll sign a striker on loan in January, but my worry is we will be well into a relegation fight by the time they're up to speed.

Overall, disappointing, including the recruitment. Could somebody else get a better tune out of what we have? Possibly. It's a live conversation as a minimum for me.

We’ll review the situation on date Y.

This. Pre Christmas.

After all this talk of a relegation dogfight, who do we think are going to be the four teams worse than us this season?

MOM's record at Pompey wasn't that bad....3 goals in about 10 starts; suffered from injuries a bit.

Re who will finish below us, that's the issue the way we are playing. Burton have got form for surviving, and are above track for where they usually are by now and Peterborough, Blackpool and Rotherham I wouldn't put money on us finishing above any of them with the current coaching regime in place.

We've lost one in 8, great - only one of the 5 draws (Wycombe) could you argue we should have won. If we start getting "unlucky" we will be bottom in a month.