We had 4 pre-season games for that, or are they just a fun afternoon out for the players and coaches?

It's getting Agaresque with the misuse of preseason games, leaving a sub unused warming his ar$e on the bench. What next? "For 's sake (insert name here). Get him off" caught on camera at a TV game?

what so 4 games is enough to give game time to 30 odd players & the 19s, to find out our best squad & having them gelled to hit the ground running on day 1 of the season?

Seeming to have a firm grasp of what our problems are, but being unable to rectify them?

it's more than enough he's just a crap coach

That might have been less of a challenge if he'd played the first team squad for any length of time in any of the pre-season games.

What a new coach tends to do is get an idea in his head of who his best team is. He then gives that team the first 40 in at least two of the pre season games. He then uses the 2nd halfs to get ideas of how the other players are performing and also giving them a chance to stake a claim for a starting spot.
Radford however had the benefit of seeing and working with the majority of the squad first hand all last season.

It is also hard for players to gel (especially halfbacks) if they are not given a good run of games.

Still it seems we are not much further on from "us does well in training".

they are getting game time now & most are going through the motions...he's naming them & trust me people think he's there mates but if he has to swing the axe he will...he knows this coaching job could last 6 months or 6 years..but he will do what no other coach as dared to do..drop household names in our squad. Then that's upto them to knock his door down with the right attitude or move clubs..this is unfair to say he should go after a small amount of games..with a squad he's inherited with no class pivots,a few risky signings,& the loss of 1 of the best British wingers in the game.

1, The squad he inherited finished 6th and got to 1 of the 2 finals on offer in the game.
2, I am presuming he had input on those risky signings, yet I would say the best signing so far has been Thompson who was signed by Gentle IIRC.

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I agree, yet the 2 Salford games have now become massive games for Radford and the team. Pearson is not known for resting on his laurels when it comes to changing managers. He mentioned that he wanted us back at the final this year, if we suffer defeat against Salford he may start getting an itchy trigger finger.

Like i have said before, give him till midway through the season before making a rash decision.

Every game is important imo as we are not the dead cert top 6 club people think we are, "or we should be beating these sort of teams" the team picked as got to turn up & put an 80 minute performance in each week regardless of who or where we are playing, & from what I have seen we haven't managed 40 minutes, bad execution/poor discipline/ wrong options..we've had it all but concentration!

Good post agree re players and hope you're right re Radders.

The fact remains that Gentle got us to a major final and a sixth place finish, but still got the sack because that wasn't (presumably) deemed to be good enough. Radford needs to do at least as well as Gentle did, or it was utterly pointless sacking him.




Not the old "it's not his squad" chestnut, please. He's been involved for a couple of years now and was responsible for many of our off season signings. I'm not saying he should be sacked now, but I'm far from convinced he'll see the season out.

We did get to a final but the team failed to turn up, same at huddersfield in the play offs, & its not his squad, his first signing would have been a decent halfback or two, & seen as he took over when the available layers had left the market i still think his signings have been the best of the bunch so far, barring ellis & westy, Tickle & Briscoe are huge losses also imo.

i said in my posts last year think we got rid of gentle to early defo worth another year imo, still thats gone and whilst i still have doubts about radford he will get my full support , i really hope he is a success as i love fc and just want us to do well

Gentle finished 6th in his first season without his own squad.

good to see the resident apologist keeping the faith