As you well know - I am unaccustomed to saying anything that might be conceived as controversial - but on this occasion I believe I have to speak out. The football played under Hecky in the promotion season 15/16 and the first half of the 16/17 Championship season was far far better and more exciting to watch than what we have seen under Daniel Stendel. Admittedly Hecky had a team of much better players - and it’s also worth remembering that all of that team cost relatively NOTHING. As much as I like Daniel Stendel - if Hecky was given the same amount of money as Stendel - or indeed any amount of money - then the momentum of that 16/17 team would have seen us in the Premeir.
In December 2016 - the newly promoted Barnsley was ONE POINT off the top six. They were taking the Championship by storm. What position do we find ourselves in with this newly promoted team?
Its unarguable that our ex coach who went to Leeds had much much better players who had played more games, individually and collectively. We scored a huge amount of goals from set pieces. I'd be interested what stats showed were from set pieces, but certainly why we went downhill so fast because we lost Conor’s left foot. Imagine putting Conor in this team instead of say McGeehan. Then you'd likely have better results and good technical football too. That a coach got such high performance from a team deemed to be much worse than what we had in late 2016 early 2017 highlights just how amazing a job Stendel did last year.
He had plenty of decent players at Leeds and bombed, so I'm not so sure he'd have got us promoted, regardless of what your opinions are about Leeds. He's not a bad manager, but equally he's not a miracle maker either.
Success doesn't necessarily equate to attractive. Managers like Tony Pulis, Sean Dyche, Sam Allardyce, Steve Bruce, Gary Megson and Neil Warnock to name a few all had varying degrees of success (Promotions, championships, cup winners) whilst playing unattractive football. Last year was the best football on the eyes i've seen since going to Oakwell, and i watched both Heckingbottoms and Stendels. I'm not saying Hecky is a bad manager (Some would argue he's a better manager than Stendel) But his sides don't produce better looking football than Stendels.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however I will say under Hecky we were more street smart as a result we looked more dominant. The one caveat to that was we had lads with far more experience of 1st team English football and lads who had more talent and grit.
P.s Stendel wasn't given that money. He was given the players. I'm sure if you'd have given Stendel the transfer budget and said go get the players you need we would've seen completely different transfers, we would be higher in the table AND we would still have a manager at the helm who we were all behind.
I’m not saying Stendel was given money in his hand. I’m talking about the relative costs of the players brought in under Hecky compared to Stendel. Hecky 7th in the Championship. Stendel bottom 3 in the Championship. As for Hecky time at Leeds - this has been well documented. But to reiterate - Leeds snobs, players and supporters, will never ever accept a manager from a club like Barnsley. As snobs they will only accept and expect managers from places like Barcelona.
I'll have whatever you've had lol. The football played under Stendel last season was the best i've seen in the last 20 years. The style of play got the fans off the seats pure football pressing the ball and attacking at any given opportunity optimised at Southend away scoring 3 when we went down to 10 men. Quite remarkable statistics for the season, best defence in EFL, Joint most clean sheets and unbeaten at home all season all wrapped up in fast flowing attacking football. We had injuries to both strikers for long periods and im my opinion our best play earlier in the season (Dougall) out for a few months then when back broke his leg we'd have comfortably finished top without such luck.
That's not my recollection Nudge and I'm not sure if that's clouded by the crap he served up towards the end of his tenure or my memory playing tricks on me (entirely possible).
It's all opinions, obviously, but I have to fundamentally disagree. Last season offered the most exciting, thrilling football since the Clarkey/Hunter days. The stats bear this out - we were setting all sorts of records last season for shots on goal. The statistician here at work kept showing me charts and graphs and getting giddy about the numbers we were making. YMMV