• Nigel Adkins has been given the Tranmere job on a permanent basis signing until the end of the 25/26 season. Continue the discussion here.

Rovers v Donny

bigmart

bigmart
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Ian Muir
RLC, we will have to agree to disagree.

It will be interesting now to see who of the out of contract players we can get to stay with us for next season and maybe longer. Im fairly sure Zoom will go to a cluv in the championship but think Fon will stay and would probably like to see Mcgurk stay for another year despite his poor fitness record. Kay Black Harrison Amoo can be released for me.
 

SonkORLY?

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Eddy Sonko
Recently, Ronnie has set the side up with two big men up front but when the rest of the team have been hoofing it up, he hasn't changed it either by removing one of the two target-men or the players responsible for the aimless punt upfield.

It's understandable that Sidibe would be selected when fit. It's not JLAA's fault he's tall and he's certainly not a target man.

Replacing the players responsible for the aimless punts upfield? Please remind me the names of those wonderful passing footballers we have on our bench waiting for a game.

As an aside, what if Ben Burgess hadn't thrown in the towel and we'd not got Cassidy back for the first half of the season? It could have been worse...

The same bloke who signed Burgess also plucked Cassidy out of nowhere. Give some credit where it's due. Or maybe we should sack Ronnie Moore for finishing 7th again? Hmm.

Regardless of funding, this is a very weak L1. Sheffield United looked very ordinary and they are one of the money bags sides. Doncaster, Yeovil and Brentford haven't looked that much better than us. Walsall, with a smaller budget than ours are near level with us.

There is no "regardless of funding." Funding is everything. It's how you set your benchmarks. The fact that other sides with big budgets have looked "ordinary" is a testament to how well we have done in competing with them. Sheffield United certainly don't look "ordinary" compared to clubs of a similar size to ours who are languishing in the bottom half of the table.

sonkorly, you laughed when i said we would end up with 72 points and now that looks very optimistic you also said it mattered we were top at new year yet it hasnt.

You were completely right. We didn't have a big enough squad to compete once injuries hit. We couldn't bring a top striker to the club on loan, seemingly despite great efforts. Sidibe was our 4th or 5th choice but we had to make do because we're Tranmere not Sheffield United. You seemed to know that we'd find the second half of the season very difficult. And despite all this, you still manage to be completely and utterly shocked that we're now 7th. Make your mind up!

You can't have your cake and eat it. Our squad is small so that we can afford the luxury of relative quality players. That is the reason we hammered everyone early on in the season. With a bigger squad, able to cope with injuries etc - categorically - the overall level we'd be operating at would be significantly lower. The likes of Danny Harrison and Cole Stockton would be first choice players, a larger squad would then provide cover for those players. And everyone would be complaining that we were 13th, and how we're wasting our money on squad players like Akins, Raven, Tiryaki, Labadie...
 
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Jason Koumas / John Morrissey
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John King
RLC, we will have to agree to disagree.

It will be interesting now to see who of the out of contract players we can get to stay with us for next season and maybe longer. Im fairly sure Zoom will go to a cluv in the championship but think Fon will stay and would probably like to see Mcgurk stay for another year despite his poor fitness record. Kay Black Harrison Amoo can be released for me.

I would not disagree with that. Of the four you mention, I would think only Kay and Harrison have any chance of being kept on.
 

Boz

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Iain Hume
RLC, the o/s has Akpa Akpro measuring 6'0".

If people are content with what we've achieved this season, then that's fine, but to me, it seems that we could have managed more.

I disagree that it's all about the money. If that were true, to take just one example, Mark Hughes would have won the title for Man City and taken QPR into Premiership mid-table obscurity compatible with their levels of funding. Undoubtedly it's a factor, but no more than that.

Next the squad. Aside from the left-back options the squad that Ronnie has had to work on is arguably better than the one he inherited. It's not that much reduced from last season and other clubs for example Milton Keynes Franchise have actually smaller numbers than us. Yes, the richer clubs can have a bigger squad, but there are pros and cons to that in terms of player frustration etc.

What I do not accept is that our slump is due to injuries/small squad/lack of money/players ignoring instructions and that the manager is without blame in the decline. Taking the last option, if it were true (and I have no inside knowledge) then being ignored by your players doesn't indicate an ability to instill confidence in them. The question for the months ahead is can Ronnie learn from the mistakes he made this time round?
 
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John King
RLC, the o/s has Akpa Akpro measuring 6'0".

Fair enough, but he is still not a target man, nor have we ever used him as such.

Football principally is 'all about the money'. Finances dictate the quality and number of players that are available which is the most important factor in determining a team's success. Do you think it is a sheer coincidence that of the top six clubs, five have the following budgets:

Sheff Utd (I estimate) £6 - 8 million
Bournemouth (I estimate) £5 million
Brentford (I know) £5 million
Swindon (I know) £5 million
Donny (I estimate) £5 million

Is it a sheer coincidence that Bury can't afford to play their players such are their financial constraints, and are bottom ?

I can only repeat that we reportedly have the second lowest budget in the division of £1.5 million. We are seventh. By any standard we have overachieved this season. Is it not completely absurd to berate our manager for 'failing' to win promotion when financially we had no right to be anywhere near the top of the table ?

MK Dons don't have a smaller squad if you exclude the numerous loan players that have stayed with us for a few weeks and disappeared, players that have been used to fill in cracks in our tiny squad. In any case, when compared to our permanent players they have better individuals in nearly every position - Chadwick, Gleeson, Potter, Lewington, Lowe, Bowditch, Powell - yet we have finished above them. Another example of our overachievement.

Our slump is fundamentally due to injuries and small squad size. Moore has not made fundamental mistakes and has nothing fundamental to learn. The approach to squad building this season will be applied next time. The only reason you are absurdly berating him for his 'failure' to win promotion is because he raised your hopes in the first place by being infinitely better at his job than his two predecessors.

Who would be a manager ? You give supporters their best season in years on a shoestring budget and they demand that you 'learn from your mistakes' in massively outstripping expectations. Other than playing Zoum at left midifeld for four games you have not explained what these massive 'mistakes' of Moore's were that wrecked our season. What would you have done differently ?

Some of our fans deserve the Parrys and Barneses of this world.
 
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Jason Koumas / John Morrissey
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John King
Next the squad. Aside from the left-back options the squad that Ronnie has had to work on is arguably better than the one he inherited.

Ronnie constructed that squad. So instead of praising him for putting together a better squad than Parry did, with minimal resources, you damn him for only finishing eleven places higher in the table (as it stands) than Parry ever achieved. Bizarre logic.
 

SonkORLY?

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Eddy Sonko
I disagree that it's all about the money. If that were true, to take just one example, Mark Hughes would have won the title for Man City and taken QPR into Premiership mid-table obscurity compatible with their levels of funding. Undoubtedly it's a factor, but no more than that.

Everything in football is benchmarked vs finance. The teams at the top of the football league system have the most money, the teams at the bottom have the least. This is no coincidence. Statistically there will be anomalies, with relatively small clubs like Wigan and Blackpool tasting Premier League success sometimes at the expense of relatively large clubs like Newcastle and QPR (barring a miracle), who have in recent years found themselves relegated. On a smaller scale, sides like ourselves and Yeovil will occasionally significantly outperform someone like Preston. But these anomalies never justify an argument that "money is just a factor", just that sometimes bad managers can do poorly with a lot of resources while good managers can do well with less at their disposal. Even if we fail to make the playoffs we definitely fall into the latter category and RM has outperformed the majority of managers this season pound for pound.

We are not the 7th biggest club in this league so finishing 7th would be a categorical achievement whichever way you choose to look at it.

Next the squad. Aside from the left-back options the squad that Ronnie has had to work on is arguably better than the one he inherited.

Precisely. It's definitely better than the squad he inherited. He signed those players. In previous years, with this budget, we've languished around the relegation area. With no extra investment we're now 1 place outside of the playoffs. Yet everyone is up in arms?

What I do not accept is that our slump is due to injuries/small squad/lack of money/players ignoring instructions and that the manager is without blame in the decline.

Our slump is due primarily to all of those things. I'm not saying RM is faultless - I think the XI we put out vs Portsmouth should have been capable of winning that game, for example. And we lost. Even with injuries we certainly should have picked up more points since the new year. But you're forgetting all of the points we picked up in the first half of the season that we really had no right to. You can't blame RM for what has happened recently without giving him a huge amount of praise for what happened in the first half of the season. I think what myself and RLC are arguing is the case for a balanced perspective on this season. We overachieved, then we underachieved. Form comes and goes for every team.

The question for the months ahead is can Ronnie learn from the mistakes he made this time round?

Like what specifically?
 

Boz

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Iain Hume
RLC said in the Pompey Post-Mortem thread (I'm not computer-savvy enough to quote across threads, so cut and pasted)

"The major causes of our decline are the injury problems and small squad size, as has been discussed on here ad nauseum. However, I can't help but feel that a lack of tactical imagination and variation in the last couple of games has finally put the nail in the coffin: like for like substitutions, with no change of shape. Admittedly, with Robbo out and McGurk apparently not fit enough to feature today, our options were severely limited."

I entirely agree with your sentiments here, but have you now revised your opinion of the high-lighted part?


I can only repeat that we reportedly have the second lowest budget in the division of £1.5 million. We are seventh. By any standard we have overachieved this season. Is it not completely absurd to berate our manager for 'failing' to win promotion when financially we had no right to be anywhere near the top of the table ?

MK Dons don't have a smaller squad if you exclude the numerous loan players that have stayed with us for a few weeks and disappeared, players that have been used to fill in cracks in our tiny squad. In any case, when compared to our permanent players they have better individuals in nearly every position - Chadwick, Gleeson, Potter, Lewington, Lowe, Bowditch, Powell - yet we have finished above them. Another example of our overachievement.

Our slump is fundamentally due to injuries and small squad size. Moore has not made fundamental mistakes and has nothing fundamental to learn. The approach to squad building this season will be applied next time. The only reason you are absurdly berating him for his 'failure' to win promotion is because he raised your hopes in the first place by being infinitely better at his job than his two predecessors.

Nowhere have I berated Ronnie Moore for his failure to win promotion.

The Franchise squad example highlights the risk of the small squad strategy. I agree on a like-for-like basis they are stronger, but with a lot of key players out, they haven't done as well as expected and I think there were occasions when they played without a full bench. On balance, the small squad approach works better than having one full of Danny Harrison equivalents.

It would be a mistake to think that any manager has nothing to learn.
 
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Goodison
I've being following this thread with interest since the Doncaster game (which I went to) and the analysis/arguments have made entertaining reading! None of the debates have descended into name calling which is what sets this site apart from the other Tranmere fan sites, I'm going to put forward where I think the problems have arisen this season and what I thought of the Donny game.

Against Doncaster we were outplayed for the first 45 mins, but they never really looked like scoring. Our midfield in particular struggled to get a foot on the ball, whilst the defence seemed reluctant to push out. Upfront Akpa-Akpro offered nothing in terms of movement, challenging long balls or holding the ball up - I don't think their centre backs will have had an easier game all season. In his 5 minute cameo at the end, Goodison caused their centre backs more problems than Akpa-Akpro had all game.

In the 2nd half we started brightly and were on top for the first 15 minutes, then we predictably switched off from a set piece (a problem all season) and they scored. After that we huffed and puffed but never really looked like scoring, whilst Donny threatened on the break. To me the team looks jaded - we've struggled to get round the back of teams for some time now as our midfield seems to lack the intensity to keep pressure up. We didn't deserve to get anything from the game, I wouldn't go overboard on the shots on target stat, as whilst we lacked creativity - so did Donny as it was a very scrappy game. Unfortunately they were fitter and more organised when it mattered, which was the difference between the sides.

As for what has caused our downturn of form I would point to several reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, the season ending injury to Wallace massively disrupted our midfield. Any team would suffer from losing the best central midfielder in the division. Without Wallace we've lost our creativity in central midfield, and the ability to calmly keep the ball under pressure. When Wallace was in the team we were frequently getting over 60% possession.

Secondly Cassidy's imprisonment at Wolves has left us short upfront for the second half of the season. Whilst his form had dipped toward the end of his stay, I believe he would have got 20 goals if he had played a full season for Rovers. People keep citing Yeovil's finances but in Madden and Hayter they have two goal scorers - that is the difference. With Cassidy and JLAA in form we could have matched them.

In terms of where it started to go wrong this season, I would argue it was the MK Dons home game where we lost 1-0. This game took a lot of belief out the side as prior to it, they had approached every game with huge confidence. After this game we drew 4 games in a row - Walsall 0-0 at home, Stevenage 1-1 (away), Portsmouth 2-2 (home), Sheff Utd 0-0 (away). In this run we should have won all 4 games, against Walsall we were massively under par and created very little - none of the top 6 won on this day, an opportunity missed to build a gap. Against Stevenage we let in a last minute goal, against Porstmouth we failed to hold a lead against what was then probably the worst team in the division, finally against Sheff Utd we outplayed them but failed to take advantage (Palmer noticably missing from 6 yards out).

After this run we fell 5-0 to Swindon thanks to some tactical naivety and appaling performances from everyone except OFW. We then managed to win the next 4 games, but ran out steam as we approached the 30 game mark. If we had gained those extra 8 points from those 4 draws, we would have had much better points base to fall back on. I think it was inevitable we would run out of steam around the 30 game mark due to our small squad size and the make up of the players in the squad.

When you look through our squad only OFW, Zoom, Taylor, Goodison, Robinson, Harrison, Zoom and JLAA have played a full season at this level in the first team before. The others have either spent time on loan at various places, had injury problems or only come into sides for half a season. Unfortunately this lack of full season experience has cost us, as of those 8 players, only Robinson has played in a team which has won promotion at this level.

The squads inability to grind out 1-0 wins, or draw 0-0 rather than lose 1-0 as the season drew on (we've lost 9 games by 1 goal, nearly double the number by 2 goals - 5) has being shown by this. At the moment we have won 19 games and lost 15, with a bit more experience and some fresher legs - I would bet at least 5 of those losses would be draws, this would make a huge difference.

Finally our short term loan signings have not had the desired impact - Corry, Sidibe, Daniels, Mcginty, O'Halloran, Jervis and Eccleston have contributed little or nothing to this season. Most of them have served to disrupt the team rather than improve it. Unfortunately this is the risk you take with a small squad, you need short term loans to ensure you have 18 players in your match day squad! A lesson to be learned for next season could be to research potential loanees more thoroughly. I'm not going to criticise Ronnie for signing loan players however, as the nature of modern football means small teams like Tranmere have little choice but to take a gamble and sign them.

In summary I would say that Wallace's injury, Cassidy's return to Wolves, failing to win those 4 games after Mk Dons, the lack of full season experience in the squad, the small squad size and the failure of loanees to have a positive impact have caused our collapse this season. Some people have suggested that Ronnie's tactics have caused problems in the last 10 games, whilst I would agree this is this the case, our problems this season run a lot deeper than what substitutions have/have not been made.

Ultimately this season has been a disappointing success. If you had said last January that next season we would lose 2 of our first 24 games, be 7th with 3 games to go, and score 5 goals away from home twice you would have said you were mad. Hopefully next season we can retain the core of this side and try to challenge for the play offs again. Hopefully our squad will be a bit more "street wise" next season having played a full season. My biggest fear however is that expectations will have been over hyped by this season, and that this time next year Ronnie will not be manager.

We've still got 3 games to go however so its not all doom and gloom just yet, we need to get behind the team and hope for the impossible. A typical Tranmere will win the next 2 games and then have to win the last game to get in the play offs (sound familiar?!).

If we fail to get in the play offs, this season has still being brilliant and at times, heroic by the team, ultimately money does talk to an extent in football and this is the main culprit this season - if you look across all 4 divisions, the top teams are generally the ones with the biggest budgets and squads. We can be proud of this season even if it ultimately ends outside the top 6.
 
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Jason Koumas / John Morrissey
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John King
"The major causes of our decline are the injury problems and small squad size, as has been discussed on here ad nauseum. However, I can't help but feel that a lack of tactical imagination and variation in the last couple of games has finally put the nail in the coffin: like for like substitutions, with no change of shape. Admittedly, with Robbo out and McGurk apparently not fit enough to feature today, our options were severely limited."

I entirely agree with your sentiments here, but have you now revised your opinion of the high-lighted part?

I have not revised my opinion at all, but you will notice that I was referring to only two games, not 22. I also qualified my comment by highlighting our lack of options. I still don't believe RM has made fundamental errors to contribute to our decline.

I am glad that you share my opinion regarding small squad + loanees versus larger squad.

Hopefully Swindon will lose tomorrow night and at Sheff Utd, we will beat Hartlepool and this whole debate will become academic. :wink:
 
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