Recruitment is the key

[redrobo]

Just watched the EFL1 final highlights on Quest and heard the Rotherham Manager say that 'for success recruitment is the key'.....how very true and DA has already proved that with our promotion to EFL1 last season.

I'm sure with the backing of our owners and BoD we can go that bit further this coming season but it will be down to DA again to have a successful recruitment record.

[Cisco Kid]

So let's get this right. It is a revelation to you that recruiting the best players possible is linked to success?

Did he also say that it is a game of two halves?

In order to win you need to score more goals than the opposition?

Tomorrow is another day?

Morecambe library is full of books?

Or anything else as obvious as that?

Of course recruitment is key! Always has been, always will be!

[redrobo]

Success can only be brought by being excellent in ones recruitment.

Something Judas could have done a whole lot better.....

[marky No.1]

Something Judas could have done a whole lot better.....

There will always be the debate he didn't have enough time, made a difference in January

[Keith]

There will always be the debate he didn't have enough time, made a difference in January

He had plenty of time.
He decided, he didn't want it.

Promised the earth, failed to deliver anything. Statistically, one of Morecambe's worst ever managers.

[Gone_Shrimping]

There will always be the debate he didn't have enough time, made a difference in January

He had plenty of time.
He decided, he didn't want it.

Promised the earth, failed to deliver anything. Statistically, one of Morecambe's worst ever managers.

Agreed. We were blindsided by the cup run and a game at Tottenham Hotspur. We were sleepwalking towards relegation.

He did have several good results , beating Sheff. Weds , Blackburn Rovers , Fleetwood etc but some of his defeats were shocking , Wimbledon 3-4 at home , MK Dons 0-4 at home , with the defence looking like the Keystone Cops.

[KenH]

Something Judas could have done a whole lot better.....

There will always be the debate he didn't have enough time, made a difference in January

Robbo shouldn't have taken the job if he didn't think he had time to get a decent squad together. He knew exactly what the situation was when he signed up for it.

[redrobo]

Judas knew exactly what his short term goal was and that was to wait for some Scot club to come knocking. Wouldn't surprise me if he was encouraging St Mirran
to come in for him. It happened all too quickly for me and was part of his master plan He used us to get back in the game. Glad he's gone and hope he gets toasted sometime soon. Never have I detested such a manager before

[Little Shrimp]

Judas knew exactly what his short term goal was and that was to wait for some Scot club to come knocking. Wouldn't surprise me if he was encouraging St Mirran
to come in for him. It happened all too quickly for me and was part of his master plan He used us to get back in the game. Glad he's gone and hope he gets toasted sometime soon. Never have I detested such a manager before

So Robinson's devious plan from the start was to manage a club in League One, be in the relegation zone with them and then have that attract a job that would (apparently) quadruple his pay? And he decided to hire his choice of recruitment director and tie a promising teenager down onto a longer term contract just for a laugh because he knew he'd be gone in a few months?

I don't like Robinson for the way he left, but let's try to keep our heads in reality

[redrobo]

Just my opinion and I don't expect others to agree, but once he knew that it wasn't going to work out at our club then for me he did engineer a move to St Mirran rather than admit his tenure at our club was going to be a failure. After all it wasn't the first time he was a failure in EFL1.

Whatever he's gone thankfully and we now look forward to year 2 in EFL1 which only a few months ago looked highly unlikely.....bur once again DA came to our rescue and we escaped the prospect of our club being relegated for the first time in its history.

[Gone_Shrimping]

I don't think Robinson realised what a tough job it was going to be keeping Morecambe in League 1 when he accepted the position.

He did buy property in the area which suggests he did intend to be here in the medium/long term.

I think he filled his boots when we dropped into the relegation zone and he looked at the the last 14 fixtures and when St Mirren came calling he grabbed his lifeline.

As Seaside Claret (who must be in mourning after yesterday at The Turf !) said Scottish football has 2 huge clubs and the rest are much of a muchness so Robinson's past achievements have to be assessed differently.

I suspect he will not find it easy to find work South of the border again if St Mirren show him the door.

[SupermarketShrimp]

I honestly think Robinson was excellent in his time here.

Fundamentally all the Judas chat is merely bitterness - he's been offered a staggering amount of money up there, life changing. Anyone that wouldn't move for the reported increase in salary to go to St Mirren is lying to themselves.

We had what, 3 players and no manager after most of the sides had done the main heavy lifting in their recruitment. We were expected not just to get relegated but with about 25 points as well.

I don't know how you can successfully succession plan in football with a small budget, but we weren't ready for Derek leaving (I'm not sure how we could have been to be honest) and we were lucky to have him back and the timing being right.

He's brought in 16 players last year that weren't known to the club. Out of those 16, McDonald and Mensah are the only two that were not good enough. The other 14 all contributed, and the players in Jan were exactly what were needed and did the majority of keeping us up.

[redrobo]

I honestly think Robinson was excellent in his time here.

Fundamentally all the Judas chat is merely bitterness - he's been offered a staggering amount of money up there, life changing. Anyone that wouldn't move for the reported increase in salary to go to St Mirren is lying to themselves.

We had what, 3 players and no manager after most of the sides had done the main heavy lifting in their recruitment. We were expected not just to get relegated but with about 25 points as well.

I don't know how you can successfully succession plan in football with a small budget, but we weren't ready for Derek leaving (I'm not sure how we could have been to be honest) and we were lucky to have him back and the timing being right.

He's brought in 16 players last year that weren't known to the club. Out of those 16, McDonald and Mensah are the only two that were not good enough. The other 14 all contributed, and the players in Jan were exactly what were needed and did the majority of keeping us up.

I want a manger who is prepared to honour his contract rather than move out at the first opportunity.
I'm probably in the minority but I firmly believe that he engineered a move as it happened all to quickly for my liking.

But I agree that money was a contributing factor but for me he simply was leading us down the road orf relegation.

Thankfully he's gone and we have been fortunate enough to get DA back despite my reservations about style of play but it's proved highly successful for us on 2 occasions.

[Little Shrimp]

I thought Robinson had a couple of key gaps at centre back and defensive midfield from summer recruitment that cost us a lot towards November/December. Fixed it in January and got that spot on, performances improved dramatically and things were starting to click. Left for shed loads more money which is understandable, although I do find it very frustrating given how the club/board had backed and invested in his ideas.

I don't like Robinson for that, but there wasn't some mass conspiracy about his move to St Mirren. He was only appointed 11 days after the previous manager left, and I think it was reported that St Mirren were initially in for Scott Brown (and I think another name too) before turning to Robinson. They agreed the compensation, then got to sort the deal. There was obviously desire from Robinson to move when he heard about the 'new challenge' (£££) at St Mirren, and when someone wants to leave then what's the point in digging our heels in and making them stay?

[SupermarketShrimp]

I honestly think Robinson was excellent in his time here.

Fundamentally all the Judas chat is merely bitterness - he's been offered a staggering amount of money up there, life changing. Anyone that wouldn't move for the reported increase in salary to go to St Mirren is lying to themselves.

We had what, 3 players and no manager after most of the sides had done the main heavy lifting in their recruitment. We were expected not just to get relegated but with about 25 points as well.

I don't know how you can successfully succession plan in football with a small budget, but we weren't ready for Derek leaving (I'm not sure how we could have been to be honest) and we were lucky to have him back and the timing being right.

He's brought in 16 players last year that weren't known to the club. Out of those 16, McDonald and Mensah are the only two that were not good enough. The other 14 all contributed, and the players in Jan were exactly what were needed and did the majority of keeping us up.

I want a manger who is prepared to honour his contract rather than move out at the first opportunity.
I'm probably in the minority but I firmly believe that he engineered a move as it happened all to quickly for my liking.

But I agree that money was a contributing factor but for me he simply was leading us down the road orf relegation.

Thankfully he's gone and we have been fortunate enough to get DA back despite my reservations about style of play but it's proved highly successful for us on 2 occasions.

And where is this belief from?

He inherited a side with 3 players when all the main recruitment by the others sides had been done. 2 of those players were then sold.

He left us in a position where we could have stayed up in League 2, with his salary for the year paid for and he went for a kings ransom to Paisley. I expect a lot of his players to go there too, unfortunately.

I judge the performance on whether they left us in a better position than how he found us, and Stephen Robinson definitely did that.

[CityShrimp]

I honestly think Robinson was excellent in his time here.

Fundamentally all the Judas chat is merely bitterness - he's been offered a staggering amount of money up there, life changing. Anyone that wouldn't move for the reported increase in salary to go to St Mirren is lying to themselves.

We had what, 3 players and no manager after most of the sides had done the main heavy lifting in their recruitment. We were expected not just to get relegated but with about 25 points as well.

I don't know how you can successfully succession plan in football with a small budget, but we weren't ready for Derek leaving (I'm not sure how we could have been to be honest) and we were lucky to have him back and the timing being right.

He's brought in 16 players last year that weren't known to the club. Out of those 16, McDonald and Mensah are the only two that were not good enough. The other 14 all contributed, and the players in Jan were exactly what were needed and did the majority of keeping us up.

Oof I hope you have put your tin hat on

There’s probably some truth there - the disdain that people have for the guy is more to do with his conduct than his ability. He certainly had a tough job but overall Derek Adams is a better manager - he got us out of the relegation zone, working under the same circumstances.

[BerlinWaller]

Robinsons main strength is the way he talks. He gives a very good interview and gets the fans on board. The moving to the area stuff and how he gets the special club is a stroke of genius. He has been getting hammered by the St Mirren fans but gave a Churchill style performance last week and suddenly has the fans in the palm of his hands. He won us all over and this made us forgive some awful performances. The catchy chant and a couple of away days had us caught up in his spell.

I do agree that he had a very tough job to do here and that he did make some very good signings but has a Morecambe Manager ever had such a high level of backing? He got everything he asked for from the BoD's and from us. I don't blame him for taking the money on offer, we would all do it but I am glad he did because he was taking us down playing the mythological champagne football some of us crave.

[SupermarketShrimp]

When he left after we were robbed out of beating Accrington at home, post the new signings

Results were

Doncaster (W)
Spurs (L)
Wimbledon (D)
Wigan (L)
Wycombe (W)
Accrington (D)

I'll forgive him losing to Spurs, the Wigan game was one we could have won on a different day with a different ref, and the Accrington game was a robbery.

So 8 from 15, could have been more. He'd turned it round.

I mean, I know most on here chunter in C Prem, but you all need to remember that we are the 5th or 6th smallest club in this division, and anything above 21st is an absolute result. We are not going to be saved by having 2 basket cases getting relegated every year.

[BHmfc]

Supermarket Shrimp, I've not come on here to give you a slating because we all have different opinions about our players, managers and how our club is run (one of the great things about following football) but to say Robinson did a good job is, in my opinion, absolute "£$%^&*()_. I've only got a couple of minutes so will keep it short but Robinson came to our club talking about long term plans and I must admit I liked what I was hearing. Players started to arrive, most on two year contracts, but again I had confidence in him, after all with all his connections the players coming to our club must be league one standard, especially with all the rumours that we were paying decent league one wages (before anyone shoots me down I know we were not in the same ball park as Sunderland, Ipswich etc but still paying decent money) He kept John Mc at the club, which once again, I was very happy with and we even made a promising start to the season, but then, Sam Lavelle left and I know one person doesn't make a team but to lose our captain and arguably our best player was a blow. Robinson and our defence then became a joke, we conceded soft goal after soft goal and our manager could not sort the problem out. We could not defend and it was only the goals from Stockton that stopped us from drowning. Most of the players he brought into the club were not good enough for league one, some in my opinion were not even conference standard. He then got rid of John Mc, big mistake, and then it was looking like relegation because Robinson was not the manager we were all led to believe he would be. One example of his tactics that cost us points was away at Accrington, we were cruising at 2.0 up but then Gibson went off injured. Our manager then decides to bring Bennett on , a player who had just arrived at the club the day before, and rather use him as a straight swap, Robinson changes the whole defence around and we were lucky to come away with a 2.2. If Robinson had stayed we would be playing league two football this coming season, thank goodness for Derek Adams, within a couple of games of his arrival we started to look more organised and more tactically aware. All of the above is my opinion and my opinion only, some may agree and some may disagree, but we all have one thing in common, our passion for MFC.

[SupermarketShrimp]

So you're saying that something beyond his control was responsible for the defensive frailties?

Have a look at the Accrington goals. They're both massive fouls on the keeper. They managed 7 shots on target, 4 of which needed saving. It was hardly the alamo. I'm unsure as to how you think any of Obika, Mensah, Philips, Fane or Duffus could have done a better job in the defence when Gibson was injured?

We had a low budget for League 1 levels and literally only Aaron Wildig on contract when he walked through the door when every other side had done the bulk of their recruitment.

I don't know how much recruitment you've done but after doing quite a lot of it myself, that is some tall order in any business and he deserves recognition for the job that he did.

[BHmfc]

Once again it's all about opinions. All managers have contacts and information about players so they don't 'recruit' blind. They know which players can do a job in which position, what weakness's they have and are they good to be around in the dressing room. Robinson would be no different and yes I agree that he had to build a squad in a short period of time but he knew, or should have known, exactly what type of player he was signing. Sadly, most of his signings were not good enough for league one. As for tactics, he was manager for three quarters of the season and yet we still conceded goal after goal, mistake after mistake with no signs of improvement. Is it a coincidence that within a couple of weeks of Derek Adams arrival the defence looked better organised and each player on the pitch knew their job. The point I was trying to make about Accrington was that when Gibson went off injured why did Robinson not just play Bennett or Mensah at left back, instead of completely changing the defence around. Anyway, Robinson has gone, we have Derek Adams back, thank goodness, and another season in league one to look forward too.

[SupermarketShrimp]

I'll take that as "none" then.

[Little Shrimp]

The point I was trying to make about Accrington was that when Gibson went off injured why did Robinson not just play Bennett or Mensah at left back, instead of completely changing the defence around.

What, so put a right footed centre back at left back? Possibly one in Mensah who'd not played a minute of League One football? Bennett to centre back and Bedeau (left footed, not a full back but quick and mobile) to left back was the best decision in the situation. There are decisions that Robinson got wrong over his time at the club, this isn't one of them.

Once Robinson got his personnel sorted out in January, the defensive frailties improved a fair bit. As did the performances.

[BHmfc]

Sorry, I didn't realise it was a job interview, I will send you my CV. Little Shrimp, MY opinion is that Robinson did make a mistake changing the defence around, many times in a season right footed players play on the left and left footed players play on the right, they are professional footballers, not young kids on a muddy field. Bennett looked completely 'off pace' in the centre, it probably didn't help with just arriving at the club the day before. Out of interest, do you think we would have been relegated if Robinson had stayed with us until the end of the season, I do. Also, if Robinson had changed the teams fortunes around before he left, why did Adams make changes to the team as soon as he arrived, if it's not broken, leave alone. A second also, if Robinson was so confident in the team staying up, why did he not stay until the end of the season and then leave. HE would have got far more respect from myself and many others if we had stayed up and yes, I would then have said he did a good job, however he jumped a sinking ship with no consideration for the club, players, fans and the board who had backed him all the way on his 'three year plan'

[fulwoodshrimp]

In my opinion Robinson is a poor manager. He has the talk and many people were captivated by his baloney when he arrived. He was brilliant at analysing games and highlighting what needed to be done but he seemed incapable of doing anything about it. I don't have any doubt that if he had stayed we would have been relegated. Good managers are able to analyse where it's going wrong and correct it. Robinson couldn't do that.