Cook is No Gamechanger Written by Stato on Sunday, 12th Sep 2021 14:05 I was 12 when we won the FA Cup so saw early success in my early years as a Town fan. How spoilt I was to see Beattie, Wark, Muhren Thijssen et al. How amazing was it when we beat a second-placed Manchester United 6-0 while also missing two penalties? So many amazing European nights with perhaps the best being the 4-1 win away to St Etienne who with Michel Platini and Johnny Rep were one of the European super-powers at that time. I’ve enjoyed watching teams managed by Bobby Robson, Joe Royle and George Burley but have seen tough times too especially during the Marcus Evans era. Paul Cook has delivered League Two titles for Chesterfield and Portsmouth and a League One title for Wigan but performances since he arrived have only been good in parts and results have been mostly dreadful. I’ll let the happy clappy brigade make the case for the defence but encourage the more pragmatic supporters to ignore the aggressive language they often use against anyone suggesting Cook isn’t the right man for the job. They embarrass themselves with statements like “get out of my clubâ€, “you must be a budgieâ€, “you’re only an armchair supporterâ€, and my personal favourite “anyone with any understanding of football will know it takes time for a team to gelâ€. The Bobby Robson analogy gets trotted out with every manager who starts in underwhelming fashion and it’s all highly predictable. These people refuse to acknowledge that TWTD is a forum for debate and they want to bully their opinions into general acceptance as if they were fact. The reasonable majority must continue to debate with good manners and personal insight. Good humour and banter is a great part of football culture but social media spitefulness is already an outdated phenomena and at times on here we see the worst of that. Many don’t like fans booing and say stuff like we need to get behind the boys like you are a traitor to the club if you dare criticise any player or the manager. You support your team by cheering them for the 90 minutes of the game. If you want to boo at the end then that’s legitimate as your way at the final whistle to communicate your opinion on that performance. Likewise making a negative comment on TWTD is often lambasted which is part of the happy clappy culture of applauding failure and resisting change. Most of our fans are amazing. I don’t know any of the Blue Action lads but I see their emergence as a real force for good and over my many years of travelling far and wide with Town it has to be said our away support over recent seasons is the best I have ever known and makes me so proud when we turn in full voice and such great numbers. When Paul Cook joined Town we were three points off the play-offs. The collective hope was that with his CV he would bridge that gap and we would at least have a crack at promotion. Performances didn’t improve, results were worse but morale was kept high because Mr Demolition Man told us that we would be getting rid of most of the squad and replacing those players with 'Championship' standard alternatives and most of us (including Cook) are delighted with the newly-assembled group. The backroom staff was also overhauled but some of our fans immediately pointed to a lack of experience in those ranks and no assistant manager was appointed with Leam Richardson taking the chance to manage Wigan. It's unfortunate to say the least that we’ve been plagued with just as many injuries as last season's crop of players, fitness levels aren’t very impressive (we certainly aren’t executing a high press) and Cook looks short of ideas and with no obvious foil to bounce ideas off (certainly during the game). Cook is insisting on playing 4-2-3-1 for every game, every opposition, home and away and has been shoe-horning players into that formation rather than adapting the formation according to opposition strengths or the best available starting XI. If that stubbornness had worked we would be singing his name not shaking our heads. Cook and the happy-clappy brigade say this squad needs time to gel. They all ignore the high numbers of recruits at some of the sides we have faced who Cook then lauds as being very good teams at post-match interviews. When I look at our squad compared to the teams we have faced I expected 'time to gel' to mean a scrappy 2-1 win rather than a fluent 3-0. I didn’t expect to see us being terrorised by Cheltenham throw-ins, conceding more goals than any other team in the league, and watching Cook bring on Kayden Jackson in two of those games in preference to the newly-acquired alternatives. Some fans have said they never expected us to get promoted this season but what an appalling lack of ambition that is. I don’t share Cook’s faith in Lee Evans, the defence looks like it needs a period of playing five at the back (until we stop shipping goals so heavily), Kane Vincent-Young doesn’t seem the player he was before Cook arrived and Woolfy has hardly blossomed. Tomas Holy could have done better than either of the two keepers and several of the new signings are yet to shine. I’m sure it will all come good but isn’t Cook’s skill meant to be to accelerate that process faster than you or I could manage and also to judge how quickly to introduce new members of the squad to the starting XI? Sam Morsy, Bersant Celina and Kyle Edwards were missing yesterday but to get promoted you need to perform regardless of injuries. The fixture list has been unbelievably kind to Cook and continues to look pretty favourable for the remainder of Septempber and to the end of October but in November we play Wycombe, Oxford, Sunderland and Rotherham in consecutive games and all are currently shorter priced odds than us to win the league. We are eighth-favourites to win the title (we were joint-favourites with Sunderland the day before the season started) and we are yet to face a team more highly fancied than us to win the league. I think now is the time to change Cook and hopefully bring someone in who will leave us as excited as was the case with so many of the summer signings. It has to be a possibility that our owners see it the same way but maybe they might be concerned about the PR damage of ditching Cook too soon. Chairman Mike O’Leary said Cook was the man the new ownership would have appointed, maybe he is the kingmaker for the time being. Or does the decision lie with Mark Ashton? I imagine the decision is taken by the owners but only after discussion with O’Leary who then works jointly with Ashton in drawing up a list of candidates. Another notable interested party is Mark Steed, the chief investment officer for the Arizona firefighters whose money we are spending. When news of the takeover first broke he wrote on Twitter “God have mercy on League One, because we won’t. COYB.†I wonder how long he thinks we should wait for the team to gel. 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