Doomtastic.
There are a lot of things that people have criticised Owen Coyle for this season, but the one that has come up time and time again is his use of the name ‘Barclays’ when describing the Premier League. He wasn’t alone in describing it as such, I’m sure I heard even Fergie and Wenger say it once in a while. However, it was the amount of times that he said it, in press conferences, in after match interviews, in the written press, everywhere. At times he would say it three or four times in the same interview. It was appalling and embarrassing, like he had been programmed to say it by the club. No other manager said it as many times as OC did. In fact, no one came close.
Naturally, when a team is involved in a relegation fight, it is for the manager to keep everyone positive, to say that we will get out of it. And, throughout the year, the manager kept to that mantra. You can’t really fault him for that, it’s what everyone does and this year he was joined by McCarthy & Connor and Steve Kean, who all said that they believed that they would stay up until the death. I can’t comment on Wolves and Blackburn but I do think that OC believed what he was saying. He does have that infuriatingly natural positive outlook on life (it may come from being teetotal) and at no point in the season did he let any negativity come out in public. Even with Fabrice Muamba, there was a positive outlook from the beginning, couched in terms of concern and worry. I’m not saying that his sunny personality saved Muamba’s life. That was more to do with medical expertise.
I suppose that what happened with Muamba and the way that the manager dealt with it has scored him plus points with fans, although it is difficult to imagine any other manager not doing exactly the same. This will be part of the reason why those wanting his removal from the position are still in the minority. However, if we are to return straight back, the way he talks to the press may have to change. No more ‘Barclays’ for a start and you do think that ‘NPower Championship, the second best league in the world’ will be accepted even less. If the players start badly, then he is going to have to get tough in all forms of the media. But, to me at least, when it comes to the press and those associated with it, he has done just about OK. The advertising notwithstanding.
Right. Yeah. Tactics. Or, as some people think, the lack of them. It has long been said that OC does not have a plan B (in fact some people would think that he doesn’t have a plan A) but this is not necessarily true. One only needs to look at the game away at Villa to see that he does have the wherewithall to change a game and, of the ten games that we won, three were won from a losing position, and a thirty three percent record isn’t that bad. And it is also true that we never lost a game when we had scored first, although the West Brom game where we also scored second ultimately lost us our position in the league. However, there are an awful lot of losses that maybe could have been turned into draws. West Brom home and away, Villa at home, Wigan at home (especially Wigan at home), and Newcastle home and away were all cases in point. The Newcastle home game showed a lack of tactical ability when, against a team in the top half when we were struggling for points but buoyed by beating Blackburn a few days earlier the manager went for a win when a draw would have sufficed, sacrificing Fabrice Muamba for Chris Eagles and completely undoing all the good work that had kept Newcastle at bay for sixty six minutes. No surprise then that Newcastle scored three minutes later when relying on a central midfield of Eagles, Mark Davies and Reo-Coker.
He used an attacking midfield a lot throughout the season, preferring Darren Pratley to Fabrice Muamba, although Muamba is patently the better player. This looked to have caused unhappiness with Muamba, who tweeted as such a couple of times. With two attacking midfielders, alongside Martin Petrov who would at times track back and at times not, and Chris Eagles, who would do the same, this made no sense as it left NRC to man the defensive barricades by himself. With a weak central defence (any defence with Knight and Robbo in it would be weak) teams tore through the midfield and scored at will. The tide may have stemmed with the return of Wheater and Ricketts, but by then it was too late.
He did have other plans, switching between 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 depending on the oppositon and how well SKD had played in the previous game. He used SKD and Klasnic, N’Gog and Klasnic and N’Gog and SKD. All three were also used at sometime during the season. However, as they are all similar players, in size at least, this didn’t necessarily work and his continual selection of a badly out of form SKD smacked of favouritism.
When it came to the forward line, although games were being lost, he was always afraid of sending three strikers on, always preferring like for like and players always seemed to be on the bench for no other reason than to make up the numbers. (We’ll have less issue with that next year, only being allowed five). Disregarding Lee-Chung Yong, who came on both times he was on the bench, players like Pratley, N’Gog, Eagles, SKD and Klasnic were preferred more percentage wise than Tuncay and Sordell, players who, for the issues that they may have, unreliable and young, can offer something different. It took a number of sits on the bench for Josh Vela to be presented, Petrov came on just the once in the eight bench appearances he made. While it is safe to say that he had a different plan at times, most of the time that plan was to do the same.
All in all, at least football wise, it wasn’t a good season for Owen Coyle. Raised in the imagination of the public he may be due to what happened to Muamba, but his reputation has taken a knock as far as Bolton fans are concerned. This site won’t blindly go into an anti-Coyle diatribe but he has done a lot wrong this season and very little right. Yes, he was unfortunate with injuries and the fixtures, but he had other options that he seemingly refused to use when it came to replacements and whilst the fixture list at the beginning was harsh, if we had beaten one of those teams at the top, as the other teams around us did, we would have been safe.
His buying was adequate but his selling was poor, gambling on Jussi and Bogdan when a better goalkeeper than the two was available. All this points to a difficult season next year. The Championship is harder than the Premier League and for all the joie de vivre of a new challenge and those that blindly ‘In Coyle We Trust’, if the same mistakes are made next season as they were this, we won’t be climbing back to the promised land. Then there will certainly be no more In Coyle We Trust.
Overall: 3/10. 2 for the job he has done and an extra 1 for Muamba.