Has anyone asked NJ what's happened to his fabled high press? Despite sacrificing every ounce of creativity I haven't seen us putting opposition defences under sustained pressure when they've got the ball and what's worse on the few occasions we've half heartedly given it a go we've been played through so easily its embarrassing. Time to accept the guy's a dud and move on.
Who would we get if we did sack him? We need stability.
I have no idea who we bring in. I just wonder when the inflexion point arises that Jones' (stability's) defenders start to ask the question....is it worth keeping a rubbish manager just in case we hire another rubbish manager?
We may indeed hire an equally bad manager but I'm willing to risk it because I'm absolutely certain (and have been for months) that we unquestionably have a rubbish manager now.
Jones was hounded out of Stoke and Southampton for playing the Panglossian village idiot whilst serving up football that's almost impossibly bad to watch. With every vacancy he fills, his success at Luton becomes increasingly mystifying and more and more of a stark anomaly as opposed to something we can be confident he will replicate given time. I'd love to call him a one trick pony but he's actually just pony. Our lack of Plan B is less concerning than a nine month tenure that has yet to produce a Plan A.
I'm not paying to watch any more of this dirge. I said after the Bristol Rovers game that Jones' 'style' of play could easily see us beat Brum 1-0 but equally make us highly likely to lose 1-0 to Exeter. I'm hardly Nostradamus but fans need to stop reading individual results and smell the coffee. What you're watching every week is unacceptable. Yes, his style of play means we will be safe from relegation. We will scrape together enough ugly points to stay up (we might even do it next game...it's not us turning a corner) but this team which he has put together, playing the football he wants them to play, are less creative than your average brick and he is entirely to blame for that. These professional players train all week to produce these performances, game after game after game, having taken all their instructions from him.
I can handle us struggling if we're at least trying to play football but I've no idea under what false illusions fans are still turning up at matches. We're going nowhere and there's not even a pretense of entertainment or excitement. If the reason for attending is loyalty to the club then it should extend to calling for this manager to be axed. I said it once and I'll keep parroting it, stability does not bring success, it is success that brings stability. There is no sense in obstinately backing the wrong man out of a faith in stability. There is no point in fearing change will bring about failure, when you've been watching nine months of seriously flawed failure under NJ.
Nail on head. I didn’t want t him in the first place. He’s a clown.
PWR, those who advocate sacking NJ, who do you suggest comes in? There is no outstanding candidate that I can see that's realistic. We keep changing managers on a far to regular basis, and it hasn't worked! We've been crap for years, we've tried up and coming managers, in Garner, Jackson, and Holden. We've tried old stagers in Slade and Appleton. We keep sacking them and their replacements, after a new manager bounce, then flop and off we go again. When NJ was appointed a large majority of fans were happy, me included, he dragged us out of the mire last season and we started this season quite well, albeit the football was poor, but we ground out positive results. Now we're playing poor and losing, so it seems our natural reaction is to shuffle the deckchairs again. What's to say another person at the helm will have any different outcome, only Bowyer, recently has had any success and that didn't last! We, apparently, have filthy rich owners, so why was recruitment so poor in the summer. We know NJ wanted at least 2 quality keepers, he didnt get them, what else did he want that he didn't get. No one, me included, knows the truth about May and Dobbo and why they left, CBT had gone before NJ arrived. My thoughts are to get rid of Scott, CM and Rodwell, get a proper DoF in and ask the owners to back NJ and the new DoF to get quality players in during January. Transfer or loan out, Docherty, Gillesphey, Anderson and Kanu, send A.Campbell, Potts back to whence they came. Bring in a leftsided CB to play alongside Jones and Ramsay, get 2 playmakers in to play in midfield, leave Hylton as a coach only, get in a proven young striker, and use the PL for quality loans. Give NJ the full season and have faith in him to deliver. Sorry for the long post, but we can't keep changing managers it's not worked, and as the old saying goes, 'If u keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results you've always got' (or words to that effect).
Any new manager would do well to make us worse than we currently are , the players aren’t great but they’re better than the constant dross we’re served up . we are underperforming
PWR, those who advocate sacking NJ, who do you suggest comes in? There is no outstanding candidate that I can see that's realistic. We keep changing managers on a far to regular basis, and it hasn't worked! We've been crap for years, we've tried up and coming managers, in Garner, Jackson, and Holden. We've tried old stagers in Slade and Appleton. We keep sacking them and their replacements, after a new manager bounce, then flop and off we go again. When NJ was appointed a large majority of fans were happy, me included, he dragged us out of the mire last season and we started this season quite well, albeit the football was poor, but we ground out positive results. Now we're playing poor and losing, so it seems our natural reaction is to shuffle the deckchairs again. What's to say another person at the helm will have any different outcome, only Bowyer, recently has had any success and that didn't last! We, apparently, have filthy rich owners, so why was recruitment so poor in the summer. We know NJ wanted at least 2 quality keepers, he didnt get them, what else did he want that he didn't get. No one, me included, knows the truth about May and Dobbo and why they left, CBT had gone before NJ arrived. My thoughts are to get rid of Scott, CM and Rodwell, get a proper DoF in and ask the owners to back NJ and the new DoF to get quality players in during January. Transfer or loan out, Docherty, Gillesphey, Anderson and Kanu, send A.Campbell, Potts back to whence they came. Bring in a leftsided CB to play alongside Jones and Ramsay, get 2 playmakers in to play in midfield, leave Hylton as a coach only, get in a proven young striker, and use the PL for quality loans. Give NJ the full season and have faith in him to deliver. Sorry for the long post, but we can't keep changing managers it's not worked, and as the old saying goes, 'If u keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results you've always got' (or words to that effect).
I understand the desire to support NJ but a lot of the stuff you've outlined there that needs to change are his deliberate choices. No PL loans, no playmakers in midfield, bringing in the hopeless ex-Luton contingent, reinventing Docherty.
At the moment the excuse is ‘we have injuries’ & will be much better when they come back.
BUT by the time key injured players come back it will be Jan & I expect Leaburn & Small to leave in the up coming window.
Massive couple of weeks coming up. We need to beat Walsall to keep our season alive & we need to get results against Burton & Crawley to prevent relegation fears becoming a reality.
Burton have only won once out of 15 games all season. We simply MUST go there & win.
If we go back to the start of the season, we were solid, but drab and lacked one vital element, a creative spark. Since then, Leaburn has returned, which should have actually improved the forward line. Granted, we miss Jones badly, but a centre half being out temporarily, shouldn't derail a whole season.
Everything has fallen apart because we have never found that missing creative spark, it simply doesn't exist at the club at this time, due to terrible recruitment. You cannot win games if you cannot score a goal in the first half of a game, and are always having to come from behind, or waiting to bring on subs in the 65th minute of games.
Attack is the best form of defence.
But we simply cannot retain the ball in the final third. There is a disconnect between the midfield and forward line. It needed to be identified and fixed early on before the rot set in, before players started losing confidence and stop giving 100%. That didn't happen and we are now in a downward spiral with Jones clutching at straws.
Aside from 2-3 games we've been poor all season. Even when we were sneaking 1-0 wins early on in the season, there was always the nagging doubt 'this is ok whilst we're winning but what happens when the luck runs out or we concede goals'. And now that's happened.
Basically if we concede a goal then we're screwed because not once all season in the league have we won a game when we've conceded.
Agreed, but what I'm saying is that we had the basis of a side in those first few games. Defensively solid, pressed, worked extremely hard and seemed to be fitter than the opposition. But we all knew that we couldn't keep it up, that we had to start creating more chances and scoring more than 1 goal in a game. That lack of creativity has never been addressed, or even acknowledged as being a problem by Jones.
That would be my argument for ditching Jones. How can he expect us to be successful without some creativity, pace or skill in the midfield.?
Anderson and Taylor are the only ones who come close to fulfilling that requirement.
But he won't play Taylor and Anderson isn't ready yet.
Any new manager would do well to make us worse than we currently are , the players aren’t great but they’re better than the constant dross we’re served up . we are underperforming
If any new manager simply played a formation with width (I.e. wingers) & put players on their right side (small on the right wing was madness) we would create a lot more.
Despite having 10 men, we looked much better in the second half when Small went out to the left (he was unlikely not to get an assist when Leaburn headed just wide from his cross).
PWR, those who advocate sacking NJ, who do you suggest comes in? There is no outstanding candidate that I can see that's realistic. We keep changing managers on a far to regular basis, and it hasn't worked! We've been crap for years, we've tried up and coming managers, in Garner, Jackson, and Holden. We've tried old stagers in Slade and Appleton. We keep sacking them and their replacements, after a new manager bounce, then flop and off we go again. When NJ was appointed a large majority of fans were happy, me included, he dragged us out of the mire last season and we started this season quite well, albeit the football was poor, but we ground out positive results. Now we're playing poor and losing, so it seems our natural reaction is to shuffle the deckchairs again. What's to say another person at the helm will have any different outcome, only Bowyer, recently has had any success and that didn't last! We, apparently, have filthy rich owners, so why was recruitment so poor in the summer. We know NJ wanted at least 2 quality keepers, he didnt get them, what else did he want that he didn't get. No one, me included, knows the truth about May and Dobbo and why they left, CBT had gone before NJ arrived. My thoughts are to get rid of Scott, CM and Rodwell, get a proper DoF in and ask the owners to back NJ and the new DoF to get quality players in during January. Transfer or loan out, Docherty, Gillesphey, Anderson and Kanu, send A.Campbell, Potts back to whence they came. Bring in a leftsided CB to play alongside Jones and Ramsay, get 2 playmakers in to play in midfield, leave Hylton as a coach only, get in a proven young striker, and use the PL for quality loans. Give NJ the full season and have faith in him to deliver. Sorry for the long post, but we can't keep changing managers it's not worked, and as the old saying goes, 'If u keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results you've always got' (or words to that effect).
What you appear to be advocating is a rip it up and start again approach. But Jones assembled the squad that he wanted, and he's on record for thanking the board for fully backing him in bringing in the players that he wanted. I too do not want the managerial merry go round to continue. If Jones were to come out and say "on reflection, I got the recruitment wrong, but bear with me and we'll try to address that in the January window", then I'd be more than happy to stick with the guy and give him more time. But he refuses to acknowledge that there's a problem and does nothing at all to try to rectify the problem.
NJ may not be picking us up any points at the moment but at least we can take some positives in the way he has us playing. We just aren't getting the rub of the green at the minute and I feel we are just a game or 2 away from hylton/gass tearing this league apart once our creative midfield click.
NJ may not be picking us up any points at the moment but at least we can take some positives in the way he has us playing. We just aren't getting the rub of the green at the minute and I feel we are just a game or 2 away from hylton/gass tearing this league apart once our creative midfield click.
PWR, those who advocate sacking NJ, who do you suggest comes in? There is no outstanding candidate that I can see that's realistic. We keep changing managers on a far to regular basis, and it hasn't worked! We've been crap for years, we've tried up and coming managers, in Garner, Jackson, and Holden. We've tried old stagers in Slade and Appleton. We keep sacking them and their replacements, after a new manager bounce, then flop and off we go again. When NJ was appointed a large majority of fans were happy, me included, he dragged us out of the mire last season and we started this season quite well, albeit the football was poor, but we ground out positive results. Now we're playing poor and losing, so it seems our natural reaction is to shuffle the deckchairs again. What's to say another person at the helm will have any different outcome, only Bowyer, recently has had any success and that didn't last! We, apparently, have filthy rich owners, so why was recruitment so poor in the summer. We know NJ wanted at least 2 quality keepers, he didnt get them, what else did he want that he didn't get. No one, me included, knows the truth about May and Dobbo and why they left, CBT had gone before NJ arrived. My thoughts are to get rid of Scott, CM and Rodwell, get a proper DoF in and ask the owners to back NJ and the new DoF to get quality players in during January. Transfer or loan out, Docherty, Gillesphey, Anderson and Kanu, send A.Campbell, Potts back to whence they came. Bring in a leftsided CB to play alongside Jones and Ramsay, get 2 playmakers in to play in midfield, leave Hylton as a coach only, get in a proven young striker, and use the PL for quality loans. Give NJ the full season and have faith in him to deliver. Sorry for the long post, but we can't keep changing managers it's not worked, and as the old saying goes, 'If u keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results you've always got' (or words to that effect).
If we’re going down the line of giving somebody years to sort it out because we need stability I would much much rather go back to Jacko. Far from the finished article and not saying he’s who I’d want (Powell if you’re asking), but 100% take him over Jones.
Basically somebody who has a brain, is likeable, committed, reflective and self-aware. Ie at Least the potential to grow and improve and build a team and a club who support him.
Nathan Jones is doing terrible. But I don’t want him sacked and we start yet another cycle.
For once, we go against our feelings and the modern football instant success lust and give someone some time.
It’ll be shit now, it might even get worse, but time, let’s give that a go now.
I don’t want the cycle , but you’re literally saying to keep someone who is clearly inept for the sake of not changing which
there is nothing absolutely zero to give us hope or indication that he can or will improve going forward
I’m saying he’s inept right now, but it’s still only been what 9 months? What’s to say there isn’t going to be an improvement if we actually back someone through a bad patch for once?
I’d asses it end of next season. I know it seems bonkers right now, but the managerial merry go round has to be stopped.
Leave it until next season and in league two we will dream of being in league one again.
We do the league 2 flap every season. It won’t happen, relax.
A poster on a Wrexham thread said “Wrexham will not finish above us, FACT”
Any new manager would do well to make us worse than we currently are , the players aren’t great but they’re better than the constant dross we’re served up . we are underperforming
Sometimes in life, you just have to put your hands up and say you are/were wrong, in this instance, I was wrong about Jones.
I had 100% confidence it was a good match. I never expected us to play liquid football, but I thought we would defend well, attack in groups, and have chances to score, especially from crosses and set pieces. I am seeing none of this, and tbh, we look mentally fragile. I don't know how it looked at the game, but from the box, the teams body language, and work rates were awful. They all look unfit, which is odd because Jones swore we would have a fit team, who play with a lot of intensity that we could be proud of.
If we lose to Burton on Tuesday night, I don't think anyone could complain too much about him getting sacked, if he follows that up with a loss away to a team in the league below, it's time to go.
Sorry Jones, I like you, but I love Charlton, and you're truly making me hate watching my team.
Nathan Jones is doing terrible. But I don’t want him sacked and we start yet another cycle.
For once, we go against our feelings and the modern football instant success lust and give someone some time.
It’ll be shit now, it might even get worse, but time, let’s give that a go now.
I don’t want the cycle , but you’re literally saying to keep someone who is clearly inept for the sake of not changing which
there is nothing absolutely zero to give us hope or indication that he can or will improve going forward
I’m saying he’s inept right now, but it’s still only been what 9 months? What’s to say there isn’t going to be an improvement if we actually back someone through a bad patch for once?
I’d asses it end of next season. I know it seems bonkers right now, but the managerial merry go round has to be stopped.
Leave it until next season and in league two we will dream of being in league one again.
We do the league 2 flap every season. It won’t happen, relax.
A poster on a Wrexham thread said “Wrexham will not finish above us, FACT”
Thats going well
You could get promoted and finish below Wrexham, they’re flying.
If we were going to 'have faith' with a manager, it should've been Jackson. If any of our ex-managers still have credit in the bank, they're Powell and Bowyer. It's not a coincidence they are also the ex-players (I'm conveniently forgetting Pardew for the purposes of this point). We all believe that Charlton is more than just a football club, that we have an identity, a certain style... logically it translates that someone has to 'get' the club, because there is something to 'get'. Go against this, recruit players that don't measure up to it, and you'll fail. You'll lose matches, lose the fans, lose your job. Of course it's sentimentalist to want Powell back, or even Jackson, but we've tried everything else, and every year it gets harder to see any sort of positive progress.
4 points from the next 2 games is the absolute bare minimum, and avoid embarrassment at Walsall, or Jones out.
Just because I’m saying we should stop sacking managers doesn’t mean I think many of you are completely wrong. There’s more than enough grounds to sack Jones, he’s spent money by the looks of things, Ahadme looks a sacking offence by itself.
I just think we’ve gotta give stability a turn, as grim as that sounds short term. I’ll hold my hands up if we end up finishing 17th again, or worse!
Oh saviour is a psychopath who has taken out team even further back than when he signed.... but I'd rather the money he'd be given to leave a 4 year deal, be spent in January on some players.
I get my rather rambling post has upset or annoyed some people and I understand your counter arguments. All I would say is when do we stop the managerial merry go round? Yes NJ has made mistakes, I don't deny that, but unless someone has a standout name to come in and turn it around were kidding ourselves. If, and it's a big If, there is a standout candidate, then I guess in a few months time we'll be calling for yet another change and it'll go on and on. We missed 2 absolute sitters yesterday and AMB is a keeper I have no faith in. Anyway it's a forum and we have different opinions and I respect others pov's. Perhaps because of my illness I'm more tolerant nowadays, so I'm currently prepared to give NJ time, I can't say how long that'll last though!
Was pretty impressed when we brought him in and was the best coach we'd appointed in ages but what a massive disappointment he's turning into. We've not improved at all since he came in.
Questionable transfers Hopeful negative tactics
He gets until the end of the season at least as we can't keep on the merry go round, and hope that things start to turn around, he'd have had a season and half by then but honestly, don't see much changing on the pitch he's too stubborn. We'll settle nicely in midtable, shake hands and part ways.
PWR, those who advocate sacking NJ, who do you suggest comes in? There is no outstanding candidate that I can see that's realistic. We keep changing managers on a far to regular basis, and it hasn't worked! .
Not sure where I am on the Jones stay or go point at present other than his results are not good enough and antics on the sideline come across as petulant rather than passionate when the chips are down.
But on this specific point - I've never really thought it is relevant what fans think....most of us aren't in a position to know who is available/ would come in. I am Charlton through and through and follow everything about the club but have a full time job and very little time to follow/ study the ins and outs of the football league.
Point being we have a well paid (I expect) Senior Management Team for which an integral role is succession planning and maintaining an ongoing and up to date shortlist of whom is available/ may be interested and when...or should do given how high managerial turnover is is the modern game.
Keeping a poor manager because us fans don't know who would replace them isnt really a material factor. At the same time it relies on having a management team capable of making such appointments which let's face it is a lottery nowadays whether you look a Charlton or behemoths like man united. I think it is just a dice roll and lotto and today's hot property soon becomes yesterday's man after a failed season or too in football.
Millwall and Palace have recycled and changed managers with one knocking on the door of Championship playoffs having rehired a previous club hero and another spending their umpteenth season in the premier league whilst we languish in our increasingly natural home of league one.
I would never have got rid of Powell or Jackson and think Holden was probably given too little time but am agnostic about all of the other departures other than them in the last 15 years.
Whether we should stick with an underperforming manager who has assembled a mediocre squad that is playing turgid football and not winning week in week alienated the league's top scorer and believes Tyreece Campbell is a striker and a bunch of Luton old boys are the answer is a separate question....but absence of fans' knowledge in who is available/ would be better isn't really a consideration as it is one that should be the sole responsibility of the people running the circus. It is literally their job and responsibility to ensure they are all over this given that the manager is perhaps the most important role at a football club.
Knee jerk sacking managers when the team are on a poor run seldom results in a positive change. But ... we need to consider these questions:
- is the team under performing based on money spent?
- has the team been under performing for a sustained period of time?
- were the new players in the team selected by the manager?
- are we playing the style of football that is unlikely to keep the fans on board?
- could there be a problem with the players not 'getting' the manager?
- does the manager appear to not be handling the pressure very well?
- has the manager failed to accept there is a systemic problem?
If some of those questions result in a 'yes' then there is a potential problem. If ALL of the questions can be answered with a 'yes' then there is almost certainly an insurmountable problem.
You could answer yes to all of those. Like you, I’m not a fan of sacking managers every five minutes but there comes a point where you have to accept it’s not working.
Comments
When NJ was appointed a large majority of fans were happy, me included, he dragged us out of the mire last season and we started this season quite well, albeit the football was poor, but we ground out positive results.
Now we're playing poor and losing, so it seems our natural reaction is to shuffle the deckchairs again. What's to say another person at the helm will have any different outcome, only Bowyer, recently has had any success and that didn't last!
We, apparently, have filthy rich owners, so why was recruitment so poor in the summer. We know NJ wanted at least 2 quality keepers, he didnt get them, what else did he want that he didn't get. No one, me included, knows the truth about May and Dobbo and why they left, CBT had gone before NJ arrived.
My thoughts are to get rid of Scott, CM and Rodwell, get a proper DoF in and ask the owners to back NJ and the new DoF to get quality players in during January.
Transfer or loan out, Docherty, Gillesphey, Anderson and Kanu, send A.Campbell, Potts back to whence they came.
Bring in a leftsided CB to play alongside Jones and Ramsay, get 2 playmakers in to play in midfield, leave Hylton as a coach only, get in a proven young striker, and use the PL for quality loans.
Give NJ the full season and have faith in him to deliver.
Sorry for the long post, but we can't keep changing managers it's not worked, and as the old saying goes, 'If u keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get the same results you've always got' (or words to that effect).
we are underperforming
At the moment the excuse is ‘we have injuries’ & will be much better when they come back.
BUT by the time key injured players come back it will be Jan & I expect Leaburn & Small to leave in the up coming window.
Massive couple of weeks coming up. We need to beat Walsall to keep our season alive & we need to get results against Burton & Crawley to prevent relegation fears becoming a reality.
Defensively solid, pressed, worked extremely hard and seemed to be fitter than the opposition.
But we all knew that we couldn't keep it up, that we had to start creating more chances and scoring more than 1 goal in a game.
That lack of creativity has never been addressed, or even acknowledged as being a problem by Jones.
That would be my argument for ditching Jones. How can he expect us to be successful without some creativity, pace or skill in the midfield.?
Anderson and Taylor are the only ones who come close to fulfilling that requirement.
But he won't play Taylor and Anderson isn't ready yet.
Despite having 10 men, we looked much better in the second half when Small went out to the left (he was unlikely not to get an assist when Leaburn headed just wide from his cross).
But Jones assembled the squad that he wanted, and he's on record for thanking the board for fully backing him in bringing in the players that he wanted.
I too do not want the managerial merry go round to continue.
If Jones were to come out and say "on reflection, I got the recruitment wrong, but bear with me and we'll try to address that in the January window", then I'd be more than happy to stick with the guy and give him more time.
But he refuses to acknowledge that there's a problem and does nothing at all to try to rectify the problem.
Basically somebody who has a brain, is likeable, committed, reflective and self-aware. Ie at Least the potential to grow and improve and build a team and a club who support him.
Thats going well
4 points from the next 2 games is the absolute bare minimum, and avoid embarrassment at Walsall, or Jones out.
If, and it's a big If, there is a standout candidate, then I guess in a few months time we'll be calling for yet another change and it'll go on and on. We missed 2 absolute sitters yesterday and AMB is a keeper I have no faith in.
Anyway it's a forum and we have different opinions and I respect others pov's.
Perhaps because of my illness I'm more tolerant nowadays, so I'm currently prepared to give NJ time, I can't say how long that'll last though!
Questionable transfers
Hopeful negative tactics
He gets until the end of the season at least as we can't keep on the merry go round, and hope that things start to turn around, he'd have had a season and half by then but honestly, don't see much changing on the pitch he's too stubborn. We'll settle nicely in midtable, shake hands and part ways.
Not sure where I am on the Jones stay or go point at present other than his results are not good enough and antics on the sideline come across as petulant rather than passionate when the chips are down.
But on this specific point - I've never really thought it is relevant what fans think....most of us aren't in a position to know who is available/ would come in. I am Charlton through and through and follow everything about the club but have a full time job and very little time to follow/ study the ins and outs of the football league.
Point being we have a well paid (I expect) Senior Management Team for which an integral role is succession planning and maintaining an ongoing and up to date shortlist of whom is available/ may be interested and when...or should do given how high managerial turnover is is the modern game.
Keeping a poor manager because us fans don't know who would replace them isnt really a material factor. At the same time it relies on having a management team capable of making such appointments which let's face it is a lottery nowadays whether you look a Charlton or behemoths like man united. I think it is just a dice roll and lotto and today's hot property soon becomes yesterday's man after a failed season or too in football.
Millwall and Palace have recycled and changed managers with one knocking on the door of Championship playoffs having rehired a previous club hero and another spending their umpteenth season in the premier league whilst we languish in our increasingly natural home of league one.
I would never have got rid of Powell or Jackson and think Holden was probably given too little time but am agnostic about all of the other departures other than them in the last 15 years.
Whether we should stick with an underperforming manager who has assembled a mediocre squad that is playing turgid football and not winning week in week alienated the league's top scorer and believes Tyreece Campbell is a striker and a bunch of Luton old boys are the answer is a separate question....but absence of fans' knowledge in who is available/ would be better isn't really a consideration as it is one that should be the sole responsibility of the people running the circus. It is literally their job and responsibility to ensure they are all over this given that the manager is perhaps the most important role at a football club.