O'Neil In, Out and Shaking it all about

[Alan]

The thing for me is the buy-in he’s managed when things were pretty toxic (taking Doherty at his word here) at his arrival.

The players seem genuinely invested in each other and that can make such a difference to a team, flowery as it sounds.

Of course, winning cures all.

 

[The Bear]

It's not too soon.

We have City next which to be fair no theoretical Wolves manager is very likely to win. You might expect that one might win at least one of the games vs Villa, Bournemouth and Newcastle.

I expect Gary O'Neil to win none of them.

Why throw fixtures away? It makes no sense.

I'm not singling you out Dan because practically everyone wanted him out, but you were the only one to make some kind of prediction on those following games.

Man City W
Villa D
Bournemouth W
Newcastle D

He started to turn it around hella quick after that Ipswich cup defeat. Maybe something just clicked with him and the squad.

In fact Man Utd the other night was our first home defeat since that Ipswich game.

So, it’s all Lops fault… O’Neil: “When I arrived, the culture of the club needed to shift, there was a lot of individual focus and not team collective”

Turns out he was right. The team spirit right now is the best it's been since Nuno.

 

[Lupo]

Up to and including the Ipswich defeat things were looking a bit bleak. We seemed to be getting worse with every performance and O'Neil had no long term track record to suggest he could improve or he could improve us. Many expected the Ipswich game would be his last.

We then beat City a few days later and things started to improve.

When GO was first linked most thought it was a huge downgrade on Lopetegui and those first few games were far from encouraging.

Thankfully things are looking much better now and O'Neil is really bonding with the fans and the club but the smug 'told yer sos' (not so much on here) that pop up after every win get a bit tedious.

As Del Wop said, the thing with opinions is that they are fluid and change with what you see before you rather than sticking rigidly to one opinion even when its completely defies logic.

 

[Wolftone]

It's almost as if opinions can move in line with achievement

I never liked Lopetegui or his football, Ive always backed O'Neil. Having said that both of them and any of the players and 'us' are only as good as our last game.
That's worth bearing in mind for all of us .
We are where we are. Onwards and upwards

 

[Wolf of Ashford]

I have to confess, I was totally wrong! Coming off the back of those performances against Palace, Liverpool (2nd half), Luton & Ipswich, averaging less than a point a game, with City & Villa coming up........ i just couldn't see a way that he would turn it around in any significant way. I thought maybe we'd limp to around 35ish points & hope for the best in a relegation battle.

That City win seemed to change everything. Obviously we all look at it from a distance, and i'm sure it's not as simple as i'm about to make it sound....... but that City win, even seemed to help the players believe in what GON was asking them to do. We haven't really looked back since. Of course, we throw in the odd ridiculous game, West Ham for example, but that's part and parcel of being a decent mid-table team.

One of the things i like about GON, is that he does seem capable of self reflection. Whether it is himself, or whether he has a strong team around him to tell him, but either way, it means he (and by extension the team as a whole) tend to learn from their mistakes. Compare that to Lage, who was just so convinced by his own genius, all we ever needed to do to be successful, was to be more Lage......... it's just night & day.

During pre-season, i felt the noise around our player sales was being blown out of proportion a bit and thought Lopetegui would get us to a comfortable position around mid-table, and that would be a good season. As i say above, i thought with GON we were destined for a relegation scrap. But not only has he taken us up to mid-table, he's done so with us playing some great football and the atmosphere around the place seems very much like it did in the pre-covid Nuno era.

Lopetegui was essential for our needs last season and did a great job to drag us well clear of relegation. But i don't miss the media baggage that comes with him and would i swap GON for him now?....... no, i can't say i would. And i wouldn't have believed i'd have been saying that if you'd asked me back in September.

 

[KiwiWolf61]

I have to confess, I was totally wrong! Coming off the back of those performances against Palace, Liverpool (2nd half), Luton & Ipswich, averaging less than a point a game, with City & Villa coming up........ i just couldn't see a way that he would turn it around in any significant way. I thought maybe we'd limp to around 35ish points & hope for the best in a relegation battle.

That City win seemed to change everything. Obviously we all look at it from a distance, and i'm sure it's not as simple as i'm about to make it sound....... but that City win, even seemed to help the players believe in what GON was asking them to do. We haven't really looked back since. Of course, we throw in the odd ridiculous game, West Ham for example, but that's part and parcel of being a decent mid-table team.

One of the things i like about GON, is that he does seem capable of self reflection. Whether it is himself, or whether he has a strong team around him to tell him, but either way, it means he (and by extension the team as a whole) tend to learn from their mistakes. Compare that to Lage, who was just so convinced by his own genius, all we ever needed to do to be successful, was to be more Lage......... it's just night & day.

During pre-season, i felt the noise around our player sales was being blown out of proportion a bit and thought Lopetegui would get us to a comfortable position around mid-table, and that would be a good season. As i say above, i thought with GON we were destined for a relegation scrap. But not only has he taken us up to mid-table, he's done so with us playing some great football and the atmosphere around the place seems very much like it did in the pre-covid Nuno era.

Lopetegui was essential for our needs last season and did a great job to drag us well clear of relegation. But i don't miss the media baggage that comes with him and would i swap GON for him now?....... no, i can't say i would. And i wouldn't have believed i'd have been saying that if you'd asked me back in September.

Terrific comment mate . . . fair and balanced as to how it's turned around.

My best mate is a Bournemouth supporter (he claims to be the only Bournemouth fan in NZ) and he told me when we appointed GON that's he'll be excellent.

I did reply that Bournemouth were turgid last year albeit they did survive and he replied that was to be expected given the squad they had. He added GON has always come across as a decent bloke but with a very thoughtful football brain.

I was unconvinced at the time, but now I think we may have got a gem. Yes he'll have his games where it'll go wrong but the improvement and track record since Ipswich has been outstanding and the football has been very entertaining.

 

[Dire Wolf]

People can be wrong and opinions can change. It's fair to say there probably wasn't a single person on the forum who was happy with his appointment. He felt like a sacrificial lamb. The only problem I had was with the vehemence and almost hatred some people had towards him. It was vitriolic at times, and a lot of it grossly unfair and unpleasant. I'm happy he has proved everyone wrong, myself included in that, he is a decent bloke and probably in the top 2 of young English managers around. Pretty good for a PE Teacher. And I will always refer to him as that to remind ourselves of how wrong we were.

Note: I reserve the right to refer to him as that in a non-satirical way if he ever has a period of looking completely shit again.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

Football can change on very fine margins as we saw last week. A couple of deflections, penalty decisions going for you, shots just in or off target. It’s almost inevitable that we’ll have a poor run at some point but the good news is that GO has got a fair bit in the bank so if and when happens there won’t be the clamour for his removal like there was after Ipswich. It is clear the players have bought into his methods and I hope he can continue to develop and embed his style of play which has me looking forward to watching us.

 

[Lycan]

I've refrained from commenting too much on this thread after starting it as after getting it wrong early on I didn't want to go too far the other way and hype him up too much. It's hard not to get carried away when we've just rolled over WBA at Estádio Matheus Cunha and done the double over Chelsea but as recently as WHU away on 17/12 I had someone stood next to me in the away end screaming bloody murder calling O'Neil every name under the Sun.

I like a hell of a lot about O'Neil but there are times when he's been naïve or just plain wrong. I think because he's so calm and measured that I keep having to remind myself that he's such a young manager and is still learning on the job. The one thing that he has earned since his appointment is the time to make mistakes. He's far from the biggest issue at the club now (as I feared he was after Ipswich away) and I feel our short term future is now safe in his hands. It won't be perfect and there will be bumps in the road but if we can hang onto him for the next 2-3 seasons the chances of us ending up in a situation like we were after the Lage/Davis shambles are slim to none.

Back to worrying about the ownership and all their bullshit I suppose. I'm pretty much back to the mindset I had in the summer before Lopetegui left, short term we will be okay with a good squad and competent manager but medium to long term looks bleak and there's probably very little any management/recruitment team can do if the lack of investment continues.

 

[Tony Towner]

I didn't get to the calling for him to be sacked stage, however that was because I didn't think he'd had long enough to be considered a failure, rather than having any confidence that he wouldn't be and thought getting rid that soon reflected badly on the club. I thought it was an inevitably, particularly after Ipswich.

He has and continues to make mistakes, but he rarely repeats them eg we probably win that cup tie with Sa, Bentley now isn't the cup keeper.

The ones now tend to be general team selection, but there's not a manager going that you wouldn't criticise for that from time to time.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

It’s easy to forget that all managers make mistakes and all teams have poor performances. Villa could have topped the table at Christmas with a win over Sheffield United, a team they’ve just battered. Pep cocked it up in a Champions League final. GO has exceeded expectations and consequently his decisions are not under such a high powered microscope as they were. He will continue to make mistakes and most will be taken in our stride. The one thing that riles fans more than anything is making the same mistake again and again so he’d be wise to stop starting Doherty.

 

[sycophantia]

Some excellent and sensible posts this morning, I think the vast majority of the forum is in agreement which is pretty unusual?
Have to admit I was one of the people calling for his head after Palace and Ipswich, not like me to go early but had it rammed down my throat since by GON and the players and I'm glad.
He clearly still gets it wrong on occasion but that's to be expected, the fitness and togetherness of the squad is startling compared to 12-18 months ago.

 

[White Wolf]

I was a lot more keen on Lopetegui than most were/are, and still do believe that he would have been a really good coach for us. I'm more sympathetic to his position; take a look at how Sevilla are doing now after they cut off investment and started selling their players and he probably thought we were going the same way. There's a touch of irony to my profile picture but I do think that the club would have been better off keeping him - of course, this would also mean that we invested more money in the squad and the ownership were more ambitious, which long-term may also become O'Neil's undoing. In general Lopetegui represents a massive missed opportunity for the club to me.

I did think O'Neil was probably taking us down. No track record, set us up poorly a few times too many and also got caught not knowing when to make changes in-game against a superior coach. There has been a positive change since Ipswich, and he does seem to be taking lessons from the defeats and improving as a coach. Generally he does seem to learn from the mistakes quickly which is a positive.

Won't go too overboard because Bruno Lage also had a pretty good start (even if the football was visibly much worse and clearly unsustainable) but I'm eating some humble pie so far and hope O'Neil continues to improve. The football is entertaining, and if the best we can hope for under Fosun is floating around midtable with no investment then it could be a lot worse. Can't see it being much better than this because of our ownership, and if O'Neil is a decent coach I doubt he'll stick around here for too long once the saleable assets are exhausted and there is a small budget.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

I was a lot more keen on Lopetegui than most were/are, and still do believe that he would have been a really good coach for us. I'm more sympathetic to his position; take a look at how Sevilla are doing now after they cut off investment and started selling their players and he probably thought we were going the same way. There's a touch of irony to my profile picture but I do think that the club would have been better off keeping him - of course, this would also mean that we invested more money in the squad and the ownership were more ambitious, which long-term may also become O'Neil's undoing. In general Lopetegui represents a massive missed opportunity for the club to me.

I did think O'Neil was probably taking us down. No track record, set us up poorly a few times too many and also got caught not knowing when to make changes in-game against a superior coach. There has been a positive change since Ipswich, and he does seem to be taking lessons from the defeats and improving as a coach. Generally he does seem to learn from the mistakes quickly which is a positive.

Won't go too overboard because Bruno Lage also had a pretty good start (even if the football was visibly much worse and clearly unsustainable) but I'm eating some humble pie so far and hope O'Neil continues to improve. The football is entertaining, and if the best we can hope for under Fosun is floating around midtable with no investment then it could be a lot worse. Can't see it being much better than this because of our ownership, and if O'Neil is a decent coach I doubt he'll stick around here for too long once the saleable assets are exhausted and there is a small budget.

Clearly the aim is to replace the saleable assets with cheaper players that become saleable assets. Wimbledon did it for a while, Southampton too. We just have to hope that our recruitment is good and that if it isn’t Fosun throw a bit of cash at it to protect their investment line last January. History suggests GO will be the fall guy if the recruitment isn’t good enough as Wolves managers don’t leave of their own accord other than Hoddle who was an utter twat.

 

[Tony Towner]

I Can't see it being much better than this because of our ownership, and if O'Neil is a decent coach I doubt he'll stick around here for too long once the saleable assets are exhausted and there is a small budget.

The time frame of this will be interesting. When he got the job the balance of power between him needing us rather than vice versa was massive, but is closing quickly. His eyes will have been opened in January, I don't see him continuing to patsy up for more than another window at the most if we continue to perform as we have.

 

[Tredman]

The time frame of this will be interesting. When he got the job the balance of power between him needing us rather than vice versa was massive, but is closing quickly. His eyes will have been opened in January, I don't see him continuing to patsy up for more than another window at the most if we continue to perform as we have.

If we do continue playing well then his stock rises and he'd be the next in-line for a better run club. He can use that to force Fosun's hand or, more likely, leave for a better job.

 

[sycophantia]

If we do continue playing well then his stock rises and he'd be the next in-line for a better run club. He can use that to force Fosun's hand or, more likely, leave for a better job.

Bit depressing isn't it?

 

[Alan]

Bit depressing isn't it?

He’d be better off being patient. He’s done so well here, but his career is still a very small sample size in the grand scheme.

Still a lot of work ahead for him, whether staying or going long term, but some start, ay?

 

[AndyWolves]

No problem with people saying they backed GoN since day one, but at the time there was precious little evidence to back it up

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

No problem with people saying they backed GoN since day one, but at the time there was precious little evidence to back it up

Depends in what sense.

It'd be a very odd Wolves fan (we do have lots of them) who wanted O'Neil to fail so they were proven right and won Internet Points, so anyone who's vaguely normal wanted him to do well and for us to win plenty of games.

Pretending you knew he'd be awesome all along isn't kidding anyone though. There wasn't any body of evidence to support that and he wouldn't have appeared on anyone's list of 10 contenders to succeed Lop the Strop.