For me the answer is easily yes. We were in relegation form before he joined (I'm factoring in last season in that) and he's managed to stabilise us. He's doing a good job.
Are we moving beyond our standard midtable position? Not currently no but I'm not sure people should be expecting more after just 5 months considering:
- The quality of our squad
- The waste in the budget with the Okkels transfer
- The lack of a pre-season with Heckingbottom (especially considering how unfit the squad looked under Lowe)
- The lack of time in the summer for Heckingbottom to make transfers (just 10 days)
I genuinely believe that you could probably count on one hand the number of managers in the world who are capable of working miracles having been dealt that hand and none of them would join us.
If the question was "are we more entertaining under Heckingbottom?" then I'd have to agree that the football is dull but I don't really think we have a squad capable of playing entertaining and successful football. The very fact that people are mostly bringing up the entertainment value as the main criticism of Heckingbottom shows that he's done a good job stabilising us because otherwise we'd all be complaining that we're heading to relegation.
I get that it's dull to watch but there's so many reasons why I've basically written off this season from the getgo. My expectations are so low all because the owners and director messed things up from the very beginning. I was expecting a relegation battle with a midtable finish being the best we could achieve. They should've sacked Lowe at the end of last season, they shouldn't have wasted our budget on a player we couldn't use, they shouldn't keep a hold of a director whose approach to work is stuck in the last century. I have to admit, this season has made me appreciate that Lowe wasn't quite doing as bad a job as I previously thought (although I still think he had a fair bit of luck go his way and I do think he would've seen us relegated this season). The problem is Ridsdale and the Hemmings family and it will always be them just as long as they persist with a club structure that wastes money, builds each transfer policy exclusively around the current manager, keeps a hold of players that tactically limit us, and fails to make any money.
Ultimately, I just don't agree with focusing our discussions on the manager when the problem is above him. I do think Lowe had to go as Lowe's biggest problem was his abrasive personality and Heckingbottom doesn't have that. Lowe also had been here for a few years and Heckingbottom hasn't even been here for half a year yet. I can stomach the poor football with Heckingbottom as manager because I don't believe he has been given the opportunity to show everything he is capable of. I know it's a bit of a cliche but football fans are fickle and impatient. Even if we weren't run in such a poor way and Heckingbottom had us sat where we are, I'd still be expecting some patience towards him from the fans. The only way to see a dramatic improvement from his starting position to now would be if we had boatloads of cash to spend which we don't. The only way we'd have boatloads of cash to spend would be if we did it the Brentford way, but if we did it the Brentford way we wouldn't have the squad we'd have, so we wouldn't have been in the exact same position anyway.
I think the negative feeling towards Heckingbottom is just a consequence of the negative mood around the club generally because of the failure of our owners to progress the club. There's easy solutions to this but the Hemmings family seem to find it inconceivable that the club management structure needs shaking up.
