North End are a noble club and I will always support them rather than the Nation State networks at Man City or Newcastle.This management team is working miracles with what's available to them and, like Schumacher at Plymouth, Mike Marsh deserves just as much credit.
I'm not a particular fan of Lowe's Westleyish style of management however if he's being all showy and mouth to the cameras, and it means the tactically astute coach can quietly go about his business behind the scenes and we keep grinding out ugly wins then I'm all for it!
Thankfully it is only a minority (less than 4% in the survey) of fans were calling for his head anyway, most people see where the real issues at the club lie. Imagine where we'd be with those two extra players, and still having saved millions on last year's budget. Some of our performances this season have produced the best football I've seen from PNE and that's huge credit to Lowe and Marsh, we just didn't have someone to create a bit of magic on the right or an experienced finisher to convert our draws in to wins.
Now the performances have tailed off we are still managing to pick up results, arguably that's even more important.
Every Championship team fancied Callum Robinson at £1.5 million, but he chose Cardiff. Before January, all Championship teams will be eyeing up the same loans from the Premier League, the same Championship misfits and the same players who are turning it on in Leagues 1 & 2. North End will probably be outbid for the cream of this crop.
Mr Lowe may prove successful at pulling the odd transfer rabbit out of the hat- we've done well to get McCann and Woodman. However to be successful across the season, it is his coaching and team management that will make the difference. So far, he has enabled Potts, Storey, Lindsay and Hughes to overachieve- they have become established £750,000 Championship players. His big challenge is to make Ledson or Maguire or Woodburn make a similar leap- if he achieves that, then play offs are a realistic possibility in a weary Championship season.