I'll remain fairly isolated in my opinions, if not totally alone, in that although Westley's man management skills were probably the worst I have ever seen at Deepdale and his signings utterly disgusting at times, he did try to get us playing more football than we did under Grayson.
In my opinion, Grayson steadied the ship in his first part season purely by bringing a normality, pragmatism and League One-suited directness to the club that any sane manager could have brought. He then went on to give us some truly dire, defensive, long stuff that our budget warranted more than.
I do not, however, wish to denigrate the totality of his achievement, namely spectacularly breaking the play-off hoodoo and giving us one last season of McGeady and 4-4-2 inspired attacking football. The rest was turgid, however you roll it in glitter.
Westley was, ultimately, a monumental disaster, but he did get us trying to play football, I just think he was a) out of his depth and b) too wedded to his AIMITA mantra that is proven completely incorrect as you move up the leagues and apply the logic that if a player had the right attitude throughout his career his ability would surely reflect that via practice and improvement. The likes De Bruyne and Hazard weren't born pinging 70 yard balls to feet and trapping the ball with their backs, their love of the game (i.e. attitude) saw them develop that ability. The likes of Aaron Browne and Andy Procter may well run through brick walls for the club and do extra shuttle runs every day but they clearly didn't have the right attitude towards improving their technique that the better players had.
I still have a soft spot for Westley, despite it all. He's an absolute nutjob with a flawed philosophy but there is something in him that remains likeable to me and lest we forget, at the time, we did have a bunch of highly paid players that, let's say, were not giving their all. I think that was recognised by the likes of Ridsdale and Westley was the consummate hatchet man brought in to clear the decks. He certainly did that.
