Luke Dowling

[HLS]

+1 to the not against Dowling camp. A year ago and even in the Summer people were saying he's played a blider. Bilic was ultimately backed to get certain players and Luke delivered by mostly getting young players with resale value or longer term projects, i.e. Brazilian Perry, Grady, Grant, Ajayi before that. With hindsight, they couldn't adapt in the short term to the demands - whether that's the system is still yet to be decided - but you could see a longer term picture where we keep adding and improving the age and development of the squad. With Bilic gone and Big Sam in, it feels like the confidence in that project is abandoned and with th way Sam's talking at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if said signings just said sod it, I can play my football elsewhere. Whatever happens, I don't think ode Lukey will be with us by next season as it seems like his project that's been abandoned as well. We're about to be deep into the unknown soon and unless Big Sam gets some good signings in, we might be starting from scratch again by match day 1 in the champ.

[Birdman1811]

Dowling will be sacked at the end of the season, I predict.

As footballing director, the failure to assemble a team which was fit to compete in the PL physically, psychologically, or in terms of personnel - he has to take some responsibility for that.

Surely the club (i.e. Dowling) has to bring in (to their best of its financial ability to do so) the players that the manager wants, and not players that the club wants and the manager doesn't.

I don't get all this antagonism against Dowling. He has backed the manager as much as Lai has allowed him to. What else is he supposed to do?

The only alternative to what he has done was to tell Bilic "I'm a better judge of a footballer than you and the players you want are shit, therefore you are sacked". Or "Bilic, your job is solely to get a tune out of the players that I want to bring in so shut the fuck up and get on with it".

There's no doubt their relationship went frosty as he went from 'Luke' to 'the Director'  - I assume assumed a dictatorial stance with Bilic who doesn't strike me as someone who would throw his toys because he can't get what he wants but wouldn't take kindly to Dowling's arrogance.

Bilic very much capable of throwing toys out of the pram.

The relationship strained last summer, the whole season strained it further.

[Squid]

Dowling will be sacked at the end of the season, I predict.

As footballing director, the failure to assemble a team which was fit to compete in the PL physically, psychologically, or in terms of personnel - he has to take some responsibility for that.

Surely the club (i.e. Dowling) has to bring in (to their best of its financial ability to do so) the players that the manager wants, and not players that the club wants and the manager doesn't.

I don't get all this antagonism against Dowling. He has backed the manager as much as Lai has allowed him to. What else is he supposed to do?

The only alternative to what he has done was to tell Bilic "I'm a better judge of a footballer than you and the players you want are shit, therefore you are sacked". Or "Bilic, your job is solely to get a tune out of the players that I want to bring in so shut the fuck up and get on with it".

There's no doubt their relationship went frosty as he went from 'Luke' to 'the Director'  - I assume assumed a dictatorial stance with Bilic who doesn't strike me as someone who would throw his toys because he can't get what he wants but wouldn't take kindly to Dowling's arrogance.

Bilic very much capable of throwing toys out of the pram.

The relationship strained last summer, the whole season strained it further.

I wouldn't say I was anti-Dowling, he can definitely do a deal to bring players into the club within budget.

But this season has been an utter mess. We know Lai has no problem sacking people. If he's still the owner at the end of the season, I can see him sacking Dowling, just as he did Hammond.

If we get new owners, they are likely to want to bring in their own people for a clean slate, so again Dowling goes. 

Whether this is a bad move or not depends entirely on who Dowling is replaced with. Under new owners we may even go back to having a manager as opposed to a head coach. 

The biggest point in favour to keeping Dowling is that he has a very good relationship with Appleton, who I firmly believe should be our next manager.

[Remi_Moses]

Will we ever know who is to blame, does it matter anyway.
We have got promoted and purchased £40m worth of youngsters. So we are not playing well as a team should do. We need a new plan for how we get out of the mess. Big Sam is having a go, I wouldn't be in favour of him chucking money about that we don't have. 1 or 2 loans. That's it. By the end of Jan if we haven't got some more points. Sam can go and we can focus on a new manager for next year's promotion challenge.

[TartanRug]

It depends if you blame Dowling or Bilic more for the dire recruitment last Summer

[Tom Joad]

It depends if you blame Dowling or Bilic more for the dire recruitment last Summer

It surely does. Then chuck Lai in there as well if that's all he could stump up. I suspect our budget was dwindling day by day as the Covid situation gripped. I wonder if we'll ever know who exactly was to blame, I suspect they all are but don't know to what degree? If this recruitment was really expected to cope with the season then a statement on our long term strategy is overdue. We don't see one (for obvious reasons),  and that is as much to blame for the unrest as any of the managerial decisions.

[Squid]

It depends if you blame Dowling or Bilic more for the dire recruitment last Summer

Ivanovic, Krov, Grant - All Bilic buys.

Button, Kipre and spending however much it turns out to be on Diangana - Dowling.

According to the Athletic, there were concerns from Dowling about the team lacking a DM, but Bilic was unconcerned.

Either way, it wasn't a coherent football team. It was always going to be a challenge assembling one due to both time and budget constraints but, we've really shot ourselves in the foot with both barrels.

[Peachy]

Dowling will be sacked at the end of the season, I predict.

As footballing director, the failure to assemble a team which was fit to compete in the PL physically, psychologically, or in terms of personnel - he has to take some responsibility for that.

Surely the club (i.e. Dowling) has to bring in (to their best of its financial ability to do so) the players that the manager wants, and not players that the club wants and the manager doesn't.

I don't get all this antagonism against Dowling. He has backed the manager as much as Lai has allowed him to. What else is he supposed to do?

The only alternative to what he has done was to tell Bilic "I'm a better judge of a footballer than you and the players you want are shit, therefore you are sacked". Or "Bilic, your job is solely to get a tune out of the players that I want to bring in so shut the fuck up and get on with it".

There's no doubt their relationship went frosty as he went from 'Luke' to 'the Director'  - I assume assumed a dictatorial stance with Bilic who doesn't strike me as someone who would throw his toys because he can't get what he wants but wouldn't take kindly to Dowling's arrogance.

Bilic very much capable of throwing toys out of the pram.

The relationship strained last summer, the whole season strained it further.

Yep. Bilic was on record saying how much he liked working with Jenkins. You get the feeling he dealt with Jenkins above Dowling. 

The minute Jenkins left the power shifted to Dowling and Ken. The rot then set in.

[Big Daddy Cool]

Both Bilic and Dowling are responsible for this mess right now. We didn't have a big budget but if we "boxed clever" as Dowling likes to say, we could have become much more competitive but we wasted money on shite not good enough for this league. It was obvious we needed defenders and defensive midfield players.

[SW4Baggie]

It depends if you blame Dowling or Bilic more for the dire recruitment last Summer

Ivanovic, Krov, Grant - All Bilic buys.

Button, Kipre and spending however much it turns out to be on Diangana - Dowling.

According to the Athletic, there were concerns from Dowling about the team lacking a DM, but Bilic was unconcerned.

Either way, it wasn't a coherent football team. It was always going to be a challenge assembling one due to both time and budget constraints but, we've really shot ourselves in the foot with both barrels.

Correct.

LD wanted a DMC, Slav wanted Krov.