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InterviewLoI
10-06-2014, 09:52 PM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

rcarter1
10-06-2014, 09:56 PM
Fenlon had a lot of good qualities. However for reasons unknown chose to play a style of football that was almost unbearably dull, and short on creativity and energy. He himself stated that he'd lost control of the dressing room, and this perhaps was due to asking his players play a football that was intrinsically irritating to a support base that rightly or wrongly likes to see attacking passing football. Good man, but wrong fit for Hibs.

erskine-hibby
10-06-2014, 09:58 PM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

Guy was a duffer and oversaw the worst results in the history of this club. Brought in a right binch of no hopers then left to let TB pick up the pieces. We were going nowhere with him and without Leigh we would have probably been relegated last season.

NAE NOOKIE
10-06-2014, 09:58 PM
Too many catastrophic results and terrible football. We were one disaster away from being top of the bill at the Edinburgh comedy festival.

nribs
10-06-2014, 10:00 PM
Was he sacked?

InterviewLoI
10-06-2014, 10:03 PM
Was he sacked?

I didn't say he ws. I said he left and in a seperate point said I didn't want him to get sacked. A lot of people wanted him sacked

TheReg!
10-06-2014, 10:04 PM
I agree with you mate but there is no point dwelling on the past now, all the dead weight is gone and we have to look forward, BUT as you said we were making slight progress under PF and whoever does get the next gig we need to see it out as we probably won't make it back to the SPFL until 2016, to that end Ian Murray is the right person to bring in as he knows the league and knows what it means to play for our shirt, all this talk of not being ready ?? Well all I can say to that is Jackie Mac was manager if Partick Thistle not long and got the DU job and has done very well.

nribs
10-06-2014, 10:04 PM
I didn't say he ws. I said he left and in a seperate point said I didn't want him to get sacked. A lot of people wanted him sacked

Not how I'm reading your post.

Elephant Stone
10-06-2014, 10:05 PM
He was 100% right. Gradual, and significant, improvement after taking over Calderwood's mess and consecutive Scottish Cup finals along the way was a great achievement. We could never have expected to be winning the Scottish Cup and competing in Europe properly within a year and a half of Calderwood's sacking and so the results were to be expected. I think he's probably the only Hibs manager since Mowbray to take over a team and actually improve it, which he did considerably, 10% improvement in a year and a half is not insignificant. Overall he was a great guy and is a decent manager, he was treated pretty badly in the end and I'm certain he'll be a success in his next job. Wish him nothing but the best.

ManBearPig
10-06-2014, 10:06 PM
three horrific performances were his problem. I have some fond memories as well as some terrible ones. it was a rollercoaster but his time was up amd he was wise enough to realise it.

his comments do ring true a little though and gradual progress was made until he felt he personally could do no more. we needed a better successor however we didnt get that.

yeezus.
10-06-2014, 10:07 PM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

Controversial or not I didn't want him sacked either.

erskine-hibby
10-06-2014, 10:07 PM
I didn't say he ws. I said he left and in a seperate point said I didn't want him to get sacked. A lot of people wanted him sacked

I wanted him sacked after the humiliation against them.

InterviewLoI
10-06-2014, 10:07 PM
Not how I'm reading your post.

I did say sacked woops sorry about that.

IberianHibernian
10-06-2014, 10:07 PM
Big mistakes were made last summer when PF was not properly backed despite losing our 2 best players plus our second striker ( Doyle ) . I suppose there was still hope that LG and Claros might still stay and so money was not spent on adequate replacements ( Vine , Craig etc were squad players ..) . I also suspect money was being kept back for possible new manager ( maybe Petrie had eye on Butcher then ) . Whatever , departure of Fenlon was a huge mistake and replacing him with Butcher an even bigger one . Whoever comes in now will start with a weak squad albeit in a lower division . Of our last 6 or 7 appointments , Fenlon`s was actually the one which excited me most as I thought we were going to make gradual progress with a very ambitious manager if he was backed ( assistants , scouts etc ) and I think some progress was made . Unfortunately we have gone back to square one since PF left . Returning to OP I agree with you ( and you`ll know a lot more about PF as a manger than most of us ) but subject of PF has been debated here a lot already and I`m not expecting you to get much sympathy .

gillythehibby
10-06-2014, 10:09 PM
My opinion is that Pat should have stuck it out until the summer and then handed the reigns over if he thought he could do no more. I think the job was possibly too big for him and he maybe trusted the players too much or gave them more credit for their abilities than they had. Possibly the progression he wanted to make was slower than expected. What he did say in his last interview in the papers struck a chord with me tho in as much as he thought the club had lost it's identity and maybe he was onto something. I've taken that to mean that Hibs should stick to their playing principles and a style they were renowned for. This should be carried right through to the youth set up. Any manager employed should be aware of that and be trusted to instill this very playing ethos. I firmly believe that Hibs should play a certain brand of football and i hope the board now choose the new manager on that basis along with the usual criteria. GBTH

nribs
10-06-2014, 10:10 PM
I did say sacked woops sorry about that.

No worries thought I was going mad :)

blackpoolhibs
10-06-2014, 10:15 PM
When he left NOBODY was mentioning relegation, NOBODY. In fact the talk was could Butcher get us into the top 6, that was his target. In fact i remember a thread about us being roughly 2/1 to make the top 6 and folk were jumping on those odds because they thought we were certainties.

This rewriting of history is funny to see, Fenlon went because of how boring we'd become and how we were not playing to our potential.

Butcher came in to take us forward, he took us down. :rolleyes:

IberianHibernian
10-06-2014, 10:16 PM
Would add tp previous post that quotes about expectations are often misunderstood by fans and are great for bored journalists . We all want Hibs to play great football and qualify for Europe regularly so any manager ( not referring to PF here ) who questions that will be criticised even if circumstances make objective difficult in short term . Don`t think PF was unrealistic about expectations ( he loved his time at Hibs and loved / loves the club ) and probably tried hard to avoid saying expectations were hard to realise .

boab1875
10-06-2014, 10:19 PM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!



I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.




He lost to won of the worst Hearts teams ever that were on the brink of liquidation, twice!! Not acceptable

Elephant Stone
10-06-2014, 10:21 PM
He lost to won of the worst Hearts teams ever that were on the brink of liquidation, twice!! Not acceptable

Aberdeen lost three times. McInnes oot.

silverhibee
10-06-2014, 10:23 PM
He should have been sacked after that game at Hampden, but he wasn't and got another season, then the Malmo game came along and he should have been shown the door straight after that game, if we had anyone who new anything about football on our board they would have seen that night how poor a manager he was, a embarrassing result for our club, a horrible result for our club on a sad night for the Hibs family.

Jamesie
10-06-2014, 10:24 PM
Just as a complete aside I am sure I read that Fenlon has a business in Ireland that he's working on now - out of sheer nosiness does anyone know what it is?

Northernhibee
10-06-2014, 10:26 PM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

Honestly I thought at the time that we should have fought to keep Pat to the end of the season and to the end of his contract - nowhere near as bad as many make out.

Unfortunately for him if he got it wrong he got it very wrong and two or three bad results went against him.

blackpoolhibs
10-06-2014, 10:26 PM
Just as a complete aside I am sure I read that Fenlon has a business in Ireland that he's working on now - out of sheer nosiness does anyone know what it is?

I was told it was some sort of cleaning business?

Greenblood70
10-06-2014, 10:28 PM
Fenlons biggest problem imo was he could set up a team to not get beaten but he couldn't seem to get the balance right when we had to go out for a win. The football, other than Leigh's virtual one man mission, was often, especially latterly, appalling to watch. We also always seemed to have a fragility about us that we were one catostrophic hammering from another poor run of form.

I don't doubt he put his heart and soul into the job, I think even he realised in the end that he couldn't get us where we need to be. Will be interesting to see if he manages outside of LOI again in future, I'd be surprised if he did personally.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Peevemor
10-06-2014, 10:42 PM
I liked PF and enjoyed his interviews, however once Griffiths was gone we were awful to watch apart from the odd 20 minute spell here and there. The second halves of Fenlon and Butcher's final games were remarkably similar.

Bronson
10-06-2014, 10:42 PM
Some selective memories on here, we were terrible under him. Had it not been for Leigh Griffiths we'd have been relegated that season instead of last.

BH Hibs
10-06-2014, 11:00 PM
No don't buy that at all. I said in another thread that in terms of Scottish football Hibs are a big club and with that come certain levels of REALISTIC ambitions and expectations. PF did well to provide us a platform to build on from where we were and deserves credit for it but he couldn't take us to the next level and admitted as much himself. Butcher came in and put a great big sledgehammer to the platform and sunk us. I personally think the job was too big for him as well. We need someone who is not phased by our ambitions as the potential is still there.

DH1875
11-06-2014, 07:45 AM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

Said at the time he should be allowed to see out his contract. Wouldn't have renewed it so although he wouldn't have been sacked, he'd be off-ski.
I still don't get all this high expectation guff. Doesn't matter who our manager is, but I don't think going for 3rd/4th in a league without rangers in it is too high of a goal.

Onion
11-06-2014, 07:52 AM
Fenlon had to go. He was a boring bombscare of a manager. Our next humiliation was always just around the corner and his team would have bored us to death. Remove the cup runs and you have one of the worst managers in our history, up there with Calderdud, Duffy and now Butcher. Had Butcher done even a half decent job we would have moved on from Fenlon.

I'm delighted we appear to have a CEO who understands what the standards should be at Hibs because it is crystal clear that a lot of Hibs fans have lost sight of this.

truehibernian
11-06-2014, 07:52 AM
Hey guys,

I've been thinking more about Pat's "expectation" comments, and right now I'm starting to think he may have been right.
He came in and inherited possibly the worst Hibs squad of all time! He brought that squad to a cup final after keeping them up.
The next season he improved the squad slightly, made another cup final and finished 7th, a four place improvement on the last time. There wasn't even thought of relegation by November.

Then by the time he was sacked, his squad were 5th in the league without Leigh Griffiths and even James Collins and Liam Craig were scoring goals.

Any other club would see that gradual progression as a good thing. Yes there were a few poor results in there but when he left the club was in a much better position than when he arrived!


I know its a controversial opinion, but I never wanted him sacked.

When's Leeann hiring you for Hibs TV mores the point - you'd be perfect for a role in Hibs media mate. Need to get that place far more energetic, insightful and fun - you not be interested in that ?

lord bunberry
11-06-2014, 08:13 AM
Fenlon proved in his last season that he wasn't up to the job. He had made steady progress in his first 2 seasons, and I thought we were ready to kick on under him last season. There was a definite feel good factor that had been missing from the club for a while and he failed to capitalise on that, he signed to many defensive midfielders and his style of play was dreadful. I keep hearing that we have unrealistic expectations, but I don't think it's unrealistic to think a team like hibs should be be finishing in the top half of the league most seasons.

JimBHibees
11-06-2014, 08:44 AM
Fenlons biggest problem imo was he could set up a team to not get beaten but he couldn't seem to get the balance right when we had to go out for a win. The football, other than Leigh's virtual one man mission, was often, especially latterly, appalling to watch. We also always seemed to have a fragility about us that we were one catostrophic hammering from another poor run of form.

I don't doubt he put his heart and soul into the job, I think even he realised in the end that he couldn't get us where we need to be. Will be interesting to see if he manages outside of LOI again in future, I'd be surprised if he did personally.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I wish he could both finals were over in about 15 mins. To play 2 forwards in both games when we were pants was a joke. Thomson wide left v Celtic in a midfield 4 when he should have been in a 5 in the middle battling Brown. We had to stay in both finals to have a chance we were wide open.

Malmo was farcical although 2 down we had to stop them scoring first to stay in the tie yet their first attack they score. A pub league performance.

Quite liked the guy however his style of football was torture, can remember a derby at Tynecastle when they were vulnerable and think we had one shot. He did an ok job however we needed to be better unfortunately we managed to pick a manager who was miles worse.

500miles
11-06-2014, 08:50 AM
I felt the criticism Fenlon got at the start of the season was partly unfair due to the injuries of Cairney and Harris, who he knew how to get performances out of. He was also glowing in his praise of Stanton who also got injured before breaking through into the first team.

number 27
11-06-2014, 08:55 AM
I felt the criticism Fenlon got at the start of the season was partly unfair due to the injuries of Cairney and Harris, who he knew how to get performances out of. He was also glowing in his praise of Stanton who also got injured before breaking through into the first team.


I think it is a bit much to bring Stanton in as a pro Fenlon point, yes he got injured but even when available Fenlon gave him hardly any time and most of that out of position. In that respect he was a bit like Yogi, lots of positive talk about youngsters but a reluctance to actually trust them on the pitch.

Stevie Reid
11-06-2014, 08:57 AM
I think it is a bit much to bring Stanton in as a pro Fenlon point, yes he got injured but even when available Fenlon gave him hardly any time and most of that out of position. In that respect he was a bit like Yogi, lots of positive talk about youngsters but a reluctance to actually trust them on the pitch.

Stanton featured in 11 of Fenlon's 15 games in charge this season. He then got injured and didn't appear again until the NY game v Hearts. Fenlon also gave Caldwell and Handling a fair crack of the whip also, and Forster made his debut under him.

number 27
11-06-2014, 09:04 AM
Stanton featured in 11 of Fenlon's 15 games in charge this season. He then got injured and didn't appear again until the NY game v Hearts. He gave Caldwell and Handling a fair crack of the whip also, and Forster made his debut under him.


I did not say Stanton didn't feature, I said he got very little game time and most of that was out of position. I also did not say he never played youngsters at all but I would contend that he was reluctant to fully trust them, Handling and Caldwell did not really start many games and then saw Collins, Vine and Heff brought in ahead of them, is that really a "fair crack of the whip"

Turkish Green
11-06-2014, 09:04 AM
Fenlon's good points are totally irrelevant when compared to the 5-1 defeat by the yams at Hampden in 2012, 3-0 defeat by Celtic at Hampden in 2013 and then, the icing on the cake, the 7-0 defeat by Swedish amateurs at ER in July.

He had an inability to change the teams tactics once Hibs had gone 1-0 down (if it's broke he couldn't fix it) resulting in the leaking of more goals.

HibbySpurs
11-06-2014, 09:08 AM
Hindsight is as the say 20/20 and now people will think that Fenlon should have been kept until the end of the season.

Would we have still gone down? Hard to say but many suspect not...

He did however preside over several utterly terrible results and it ws these that cost him the support of the fans and ultimately why he left.

However he probably still did have the support of the players and they may have been able to grind out enough results under him to ensure our safety even if there was some proper tankings along the way.... Remember just one more win would have done us.....

Butcher whilst a seemingly good appointment at the time turned into an utter disaster.....

The fact he was slating players from the off and telling them they werent good enough was just silly....

Most of that squad knew they would be emptied at the end of the season regardless as their manager had made it clear....

If your manager told you the same with no hope of changing his (or her) mind would you be inclined to burst a gut for them in the dying days of your career with them?

His man managment skills have been shown to be utter rubbish and as for his sidekick hes obviously a graduate from the Jim McLean school of football management....

At the time I felt Fenlon's time was up and it was time for him to leave but now a big bit of me wishes he had stayed as I'm 95% certain we wouldnt have finished any lower than 10th and been safe.

As I said hindsight is 20/20 so it's time to move on. We are were we are and now we all have to deal with it by making sure we go straight back up and that starts with the CEO getting her first major appointment spot on....

Question 1 at any interview has to be:

"How are you going to ensure that Hibs WIN the Championship next season?"

:flag:

Stevie Reid
11-06-2014, 09:08 AM
Fenlon's good points are totally irrelevant when compared to the 5-1 defeat by the yams at Hampden in 2012, 3-0 at Hampden in 2103 and then, the icing on the cake, the 7-0 defeat by Swedish amateurs at ER in July.

He had an inability to change the teams tactics once Hibs had gone 1-0 down (if it's broke he couldn't fix it) resulting in the leaking of more goals.

We only won two games after going a goal down last season. Both were under Fenlon. The previous season there were 8 games where we went a goal down and didn't lose.

Stevie Reid
11-06-2014, 09:10 AM
I did not say Stanton didn't feature, I said he got very little game time and most of that was out of position. I also did not say he never played youngsters at all but I would contend that he was reluctant to fully trust them, Handling and Caldwell did not really start many games and then saw Collins, Vine and Heff brought in ahead of them, is that really a "fair crack of the whip"

I'd say that all them indications were that Fenlon was introducing a young player in a way that showed that he valued him a lot. Handling and Caldwell were given chances, and I don't recall many people crying out for them to our forward pairing at the start of last season.

number 27
11-06-2014, 09:18 AM
I'd say that all them indications were that Fenlon was introducing a young player in a way that showed that he valued him a lot. Handling and Caldwell were given chances, and I don't recall many people crying out for them to our forward pairing at the start of last season.

Yeah, I seem to have got into an argument by mistake and you may well be right. I do still think that you cannot use Stanton as an evidence for Fenlon over Butcher when it was Butcher who gave him regular starts in his favoured position.

Saint Hibee
11-06-2014, 09:20 AM
The subsequent nightmare that was Butcher makes Fenlon seem less awful than he really was. Under Fenlon, Hibs played some of the most negative, tedious, boring, ineffective football I have ever seen; at least until Butcher came along ... At one Fenlon game (Motherwell, I think) my son turned to me and asked "Why aren't they allowed to pass the ball forward?"

Stevie Reid
11-06-2014, 09:21 AM
Yeah, I seem to have got into an argument by mistake and you may well be right. I do still think that you cannot use Stanton as an evidence for Fenlon over Butcher when it was Butcher who gave him regular starts in his favoured position.

I wouldn't raise it as one either way myself, but I do believe that Fenlon was planning on using Stanton a lot FWIW. Butcher did use him as soon as he returned from injury, but only started him after we hit our first run of bad form and Robertson was injured.

greenlex
11-06-2014, 01:51 PM
Maybe we could appoint 12 managers with each of them getting a month each.

number 27
11-06-2014, 01:54 PM
Maybe we could appoint 12 managers with each of them getting a month each.


November is looking pretty quiet for me, I could do that one :dunno:

jacomo
11-06-2014, 01:56 PM
I didn't say he ws. I said he left and in a seperate point said I didn't want him to get sacked. A lot of people wanted him sacked

It was the terrible SC and Malmo results that did for him, really. Without those he would indeed have been able to show gradual progress.

Peevemor
11-06-2014, 01:59 PM
Maybe we could appoint 12 managers with each of them getting a month each.

That's more or less what we've been doing is it not?

emerald green
11-06-2014, 05:48 PM
He should have been sacked after that game at Hampden, but he wasn't and got another season, then the Malmo game came along and he should have been shown the door straight after that game, if we had anyone who new anything about football on our board they would have seen that night how poor a manager he was, a embarrassing result for our club, a horrible result for our club on a sad night for the Hibs family.

:agree: Fenlon was like a rabbit caught in the headlights that night. He seemed paralysed and hadn't a clue how to stop, or even minimise, the slaughter that night. It was clear after we went 3/4-0 down on aggregate that a damage limitation exercise was in order. Some of the players need to take a good look at themselves too, as some of the goals were scored ridiculously easily.

For a club with our proud European history (we're not Real Madrid I know) that result embarrassed everyone connected with the club, and has given our enemies loads of ammunition to ram down our throats ever since.