Stayed away from this til now as I knew the anger would be overwhelming, and for good reason, that was a truly depressing performance at the end. That said, I do think we need a measure of restraint. It’s still early days in the season, we’re not miles behind (though we deserve to be with the way we’ve played), I just hope we’re in a slump and this was the low point. Sacking Ole now might give some short-term satisfaction but without a clear plan it would be futile. What’s that old line about groups reorganizing themselves in the face of a challenge so they feel they’re doing something? Every noise we get from the insiders is that there is a long-term plan — they’re not great at sharing it and it can be hard to see the fruits of this in the way we‘re playing, but if there is a plan and process, we need to let it roll for bit before replacing Ole. If there’s a long term target now managing Ajax or PSG, fine, I would think there always should be a view of future that can see beyond the current coaching team, but I doubt we can expect the club to air this. The general anger here is also aimed at the apparently ‘thick’ board who people like to imagine are clueless etc but you can be sure that they are seeing what we‘re seeing on the pitch, I am hopeful that they also see a bit more. So I suspect the immediate term attitude is to see if we get through the group stage of the CL and how we play in next month or so of the PL. I think it will take a continuation of today’s level of play over that length of time for the board to do anything significant. And if we do get through to the knock-out stage and are within shouting distance of the league come December, playing in relatively coherent way, Ole will be seen to have weathered the storm. Lots of IFs, I get that.
I do look at the coaching team and wish we could add some nous there but that’s another discussion. Anyway, a poll about the manager after that game is about as reliable as a weather forecast. Today was dire, but we fight on and oh look, guess who’s coming to play next week….