That's all fair enough Will, but you are not the only person who posts on this forum, and there are plenty of others who absolutely WILL do exactly as I have described to fit their narrative and say they "called it".
I mean, we still have some clowns defending Postecoglou because it fits their narrative of hating Dyche.
As for Dyche, I personally did not feel the team lacked that belief that you have described as a fact. Not pulling rank here, but remember I do go to all the home games. I see the body language a lot more than most on here with their giant satellite dishes or dodgy fire sticks.
From my perspective, it's only a game or so since they destroyed Ferencevaros. It's only a game since they were cruising against Palace (I know you dispute that, but I am as pessimistic a fan as you will find and I was supremely comfortable that we were going to win that until the red card). Leeds was terrible, but the last terrible game I personally saw live was Everton way back in December.
So I dispute that.
What I don't dispute is that the players, when behind, lacked imagination and strategies to unlock a defence and get back into the game against a team willing to defend deep. I think most sides struggle against that, we struggled under Nuno too- but I DO accept that it is the manager's responsibility to coach patterns of play and work on those solutions.
I DO accept that Nuno, with his little triangles, was a lot better at this than Dyche
I DO accept that we lost our counterattacking ability under Dyche. In fairness, we lost it under Postecoglou, along with our defensive ability. We got the latter back under Dyche but not the former. What we were left with was Nuno's side, minus the ability to counterattack, hence why we failed to pull away.
I DO accept also that, if there is any truth to any of the rumours that he lost the dressing room, ostracised certain players, or the senior players felt his methods were too basic and he didn't have the answers, and said this to the owner- then yes, he had to go in any of those circumstances. These are rumours and I would like to see some facts first.
Our results were between 1.2 and 1.4 PPG, which is entirely adequate for what we need. Our last 12 fixtures are harder - and these are the games where Dyche has generally done well. Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Spurs- all games where we performed really well, most of them we got results from. Even Brentford were flying high and unbeaten at home for ages when we won there.
On that basis, Dyche was certainly the man to finish the season with us IF none of the rumours above were true. Like I say, I am yet to see the facts.
But my main gripe is with this absolutely appalling appointment. Given the kinds of games we have in our last 1/3 of the season, it's even worse. Pereira has a shocking record against these kinds of sides. He has only one game against the kind of side he was ok at beating (last season, not this) with Wolves.
Let's not pretend that this fact was looked at. It took me 5 minutes on Google to look that up and express that concern. I seriously, seriously doubt that anyone at the club was aware of that or even looked it up. I doubt in this case there was any serious discussion of merits, because you have to be considering other candidates for that.
No, I don't think this appointment has much thinking behind it at all.
I think this is Marinakis's choice. I think it has more to do with rapprochement with Jorge Mendes and the fact that he has worked with him before than it does any detailed thinking about whether his style will fit the players or whether he is the right man for the games we have left. I seriously doubt there was any discussion at all- like with Postecoglou, I suspect Marinakis literally just told everyone this was happening and to sort the logistics.
That is not the basis for survival. You deserve to be relegated if you have four managers in a season anyway, and we will be. I don't see any way out of it
It will take ages for this guy to improve our attacking, and it is extremely questionable that he even will. But it will only take him a game to make our defence far worse, and think he will certainly do that compared to Dyche
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