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Is Lowe evolving?

Is Lowe evolving?

Well, he’s now the second longest serving manager in the division. Which is an incredible statistic and indicative of where the game has gone.

What Lowe does need to do is back his players to get on the front foot and I agree that is frustrating. The Spurs Cup game still sits raw with me and remains the only time in my 40 years of watching us that I’ve walked out early. We’ve plenty of decent players offensively and they need to be given license to try and dominate games. Since we returned to this level we’ve suffered from imposter syndrome and we need to be braver.

But Lowe and Marsh are doing a good job and don’t deserve the constant shit they get which is mainly on this forum and not replicated across the wider fan base (apologies, I know that won’t sit well but is the common view of fans I speak to who don’t bother with being on here).

I think if we can sort the defence out next summer we can have a right good go next season. We need to be patient in a game that doesn’t usually offer patience anymore.
 
york white said:
But Lowe and Marsh are doing a good job and don’t deserve the constant shit they get which is mainly on this forum and not replicated across the wider fan base (apologies, I know that won’t sit well but is the common view of fans I speak to who don’t bother with being on here).

I think if we can sort the defence out next summer we can have a right good go next season. We need to be patient in a game that doesn’t usually offer patience anymore.
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this just proves that you know fuck all about football, bringing Brady and Woodburn on needing to chase the game at Hull was a fuckin master stroke!!!
 
Don't think we'll ever really succeed at this level till we sort out the defence, think most of the goals we concede are very poor and usually preventable with a professional foul here and there. We were all aware of the shortcomings of every defender coming into this season, we've not invested in this part of the team for a long time now and continues to be our issue. Hughes, who imo, is our best defender has injury issues which is then compounded by his deputy in Cunningham, having the exact same issue. Lindsay is basically just good at last ditch defending. Storey for me is average at most things at this level but can have lapses in judgement/concentration. Whatmough, I don't think has shown anything so far to indicates he's better than what we have either while Bauer continues to have a cosy seat on the bench picking up a tidy wage. We've invested up top, in midfield, in goal.. but why not in defence? Needs sorting.
I reckon Lowe and co are probably getting out of this team what they can for the most part, over performing at the start of the season, under performing now. It'll most likely average out into a mid table finish which seems about right for me.
 
Jack Daniels said:
Interesting as we have been "going nowhere" for a couple of decades now since KBD departed the building.

What makes yourself - and others - think that the next incumbent will wield "the magic touch"? History shows otherwise.

Under Lowe, we can at least banish any thoughts of relegation. Point One achieved.

Food for thought.
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Ainsworth wouldn't do better here, think that's been proven at QPR.

John Eustace would be interesting choice based on his Birmingham work with the young players but wouldn't say he's a play off manager in waiting just yet.

Would Dean Smith be interested in this job? Can see him being in the running for Bristol City.

This isn't a club with the budget where you can tempt promotion winning managers in their prime imo so it would be another project manager imo and the pros and cons that goes with that profile.

Lowe is in no danger of losing his job while team remains in top half whatever the monthly run is.
 
If anyone knew that a 'bad run' was only a monthly / 4-5 successive game period ,
( with that teams fortunes picking-up straight after that ) it would be tolerable in most instances. But occasionally good & bad runs of form continue for much longer, resulting in either talk of relegation or promotion . But this period reminds me too much of how we have played under Lowe just last season, only there's some different players, and I'd suggest some better ones than he had last season.

But it's the same old same old tactics & formations.
 
noelpne said:
If anyone knew that a 'bad run' was only a monthly / 4-5 successive game period ,
( with that teams fortunes picking-up straight after that ) it would be tolerable in most instances. But occasionally good & bad runs of form continue for much longer, resulting in either talk of relegation or promotion . But this period reminds me too much of how we have played under Lowe just last season, only there's some different players, and I'd suggest some better ones than he had last season.

But it's the same old same old tactics & formations.
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Away it is for sure.

I'd still say he's in credit at Deepdale. West Brom was a shocker so we'll see if season goes on if that was a one off as a quality manager at this level totally bamboozled him with the team selection that day.

Apart from that only dropped points have been v Millwall (not a great performance but they're always a tough team to play at Deepdale) and Southampton which should've been a win after the second half.

Away from home Lowe's mentality is simply to get to half time at 0-0 and then either try to win 1 or 2 nil if it's a lower half team. Or cling on for a 0-0 if it's a top level team. Will be no different going to likes of Southampton or Leeds as the season goes on, same even for teams like Norwich and Watford who are just average teams at this level now. That's where I want to see improvement and some risks taken but if he still goes safety first after the performance v Southampton it dosen't really bode well.
 
SoccerHQ said:
Ainsworth wouldn't do better here, think that's been proven at QPR.

John Eustace would be interesting choice based on his Birmingham work with the young players but wouldn't say he's a play off manager in waiting just yet.

Would Dean Smith be interested in this job? Can see him being in the running for Bristol City.

This isn't a club with the budget where you can tempt promotion winning managers in their prime imo so it would be another project manager imo and the pros and cons that goes with that profile.

Lowe is in no danger of losing his job while team remains in top half whatever the monthly run is.
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Aye I've not seen a suggestion yet other than Rowett who looks like they could achieve more than Lowe has with our budget and our players. And folks won't like Rowett because of the football he plays.

I'm not the biggest fan of Lowe's but I think folks are viewing him as more inept than he is. I don't think we'll get relegated under him. We'll probably finish midtable again. If people want a better manager than him, they need to find someone who can offer better than that. And as you say, we've only got so big a budget so it isn't likely to be an in-prime promotion-winning manager. We're just in a position where we're only likely to get flawed managers.

For us to get promoted, we need a really shrewd manager and I don't honestly believe there are that many about. Also they'd need to be someone that our board is willing to back. Either that or we get lucky and everyone else is crapper than us one year
 
Depends what you want. If you’re happy maintaining where we are (which, depressingly, might well turn out to be the limit of what we can achieve) then stick with Lowe.

If you want more (and clearly, most fans would want to aspire to more, whether the hierarchy agree is unclear) then we will end up rolling the dice on someone else. Perhaps we’d end up with our Phil Brown (and, to be clear, I’m not in any way suggesting we get him back!).

My position is that I don’t believe Lowe has any more to offer than he’s showing at the moment. He isn’t losing his job based on what he’s done so far but the longer he goes without appreciable progress in the way the team plays, especially against good opposition, the greater the pressure becomes. It’ll be interesting to see where we are come January.
 
Tugg Speedman said:
Against Southampton, Lowe was accused of instructing the players to sit back and defend the 2-1 lead. Or did I imagine that we had a 2-1 lead?

Similarly against Millwall.
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That's two instances.
Think about all the occasions where we've just basically waited for something to happen.
I think it will far outweigh the number of times we've gone after teams
 
Extract from the report in today's Times on the Manchester derby. Does it have familiar ring to it?

"........In contrast, whenever United reached the halfway line, they panicked, and turned back to the safety of their own goalkeeper, or shanked a pass to a City player......."
 
york white said:
Well, he’s now the second longest serving manager in the division. Which is an incredible statistic and indicative of where the game has gone.

What Lowe does need to do is back his players to get on the front foot and I agree that is frustrating. The Spurs Cup game still sits raw with me and remains the only time in my 40 years of watching us that I’ve walked out early. We’ve plenty of decent players offensively and they need to be given license to try and dominate games. Since we returned to this level we’ve suffered from imposter syndrome and we need to be braver.

But Lowe and Marsh are doing a good job and don’t deserve the constant shit they get which is mainly on this forum and not replicated across the wider fan base (apologies, I know that won’t sit well but is the common view of fans I speak to who don’t bother with being on here).

I think if we can sort the defence out next summer we can have a right good go next season. We need to be patient in a game that doesn’t usually offer patience anymore.
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A very good take to be fair.
 
There are a few decent managers currently out of work, I would have Nathan Jones and Wilder over Lowe - and that's no disrespect to Lowe. I think he's actually done a decent job given the resources and circumstances and if he wasn't a gob shite he'd probably have a few more admirers in our own fanbase.

I do believe we have a squad capable of playing on the front foot a bit more and the Southampton game showed that.
 
Ron Burgundy said:
Disagree, they're both good and bad at different things.

Alex Neil had arguably the best squad we have had at this level at his disposal.

What I'd do for a prime Cunningham, Davies, Pearson and Fisher right now.
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Lowe has a good squad now, one that he's wasting. Invested in good attacking quality who he keeps on the bench.

I was entertained for at least 18 months under Neil, never been remotely entertained under Lowe.
 
RL is stagnating. Our most expensive ever signing scored a wonder goal in midweek last week and was left on the bench on Saturday to allow RL to revert to the sterile Whiteman-Ledson combination in central midfield. I am beginning to despair at RL's seeming obstinacy. This season can still be rescued but not if RL continues in this way.
 
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