Okay fine I'll do one tl;dr about this if you insist!
Interesting question.
I'm a big sample size guy. I played poker and now I have a regular "business-y" job and in both situations I need a large sample of data before I draw any conclusions. 72o can beat AA a few times -- doesn't mean it's a better hand. Heads can come up 10 times in a row -- doesn't mean it's not a 50/50 chance.
So it's not that I don't think it's valid to discuss so much as I think people are jumping the gun. It's a debate with insufficient data (both pro and con) and that's never a good debate on either side. So we end up spinning our wheels and getting angry because neither case is that strong in terms of evidence.
Obviously I want to keep RM but not because I KNOW he's a great manager; I don't know yet one way or the other but I have some evidence he might be great (and some he might not be) and I don't think the risk of firing him (potentially losing a great manager) is worth the reward (starting over again with a new random manager) at this time.
We had a good-great year and this one is TBD (but heavily leaning toward a bad year granted). Sacking him now just seems absurd to me. It's not that I think it's impossible RM might not be the right fit.
I was Team VP so I am not that far removed from complaining about the fact RM got relegated.
Hell I'm not that far removed from getting vaulted for not wanting to hire RM by some of the people who want to sack RM now.
For someone to have ZERO doubts after some of the stuff this year would be fairly silly. Yes I have doubts ... I don't think it weakens my argument to admit that.
If I'm honest ... I'm not genuinely worried we'll be relegated. I'm very worried about the impact on our finances of finishing bottom half v. a top 7.
I don't think this year has been SO bad (yes it has been bad) that it has wiped out last year's positive elements. Even then, even if it did, then we're just back to neutral.
This year would have to be SO bad that it wipes out last year and then is so horrible on top of that that we want a manager fired. I can't imagine anyone genuinely thinking that is the case. We just aren't there yet. Anything else is crystal ball nonsense. Nobody knows. Go with what we know ... and what we know is: we don't know yet. So he stays and we support him until we know better.
He needs a third year. Yeah obviously if we were bottom at Christmas next year (or something really horrible happens this year) we'd not give him the full year but bar something extreme you need to give a manager at least three years (especially a guy who booked such a high points tally just a year ago).
Anything else seems short-sighted ... I said this when people wanted to fire Moyes: there really aren't a lot of good managers banging about. If there were we'd be finishing bottom half all the time because there are a lot of teams with more money than us who usually finish below us. We've had a better (albeit in both cases far from perfect) manager than they have for most of the last decade plus so we've finished higher than them. If it was that easy to hire a great manager we'd be in serious trouble.
Awww ... thanks! I miss this place too. I miss last year's vibe SO much. I think a lot (not all but a lot) of our angst is because last year was so much fun. Yeah we missed CL but overall what a year and what a come down this year has been. That said many people thought we'd have a dip in the league (didn't expect this though) but do really well in Europe (TBD ... god I hope so).
COYB! FFS please CO!