Stevie Cooper

[wassy04]

Back to Cooper, for the remaining games until the transfer window, if Cooper was to leave now. What are the Cooper out brigade expecting a new manager to do differently? I will never understand this logic, there's no miracle cure or tactic that will suddenly improve the team. We don't have a starting calibre striker, that's usually a pretty big weakness. That Elanga is the best option despite clearly not being a striker is pretty damning.

So what are you expecting, a new manager suddenly throws in Montiel, Tavares, Sangare, Santos? A bunch of guys that have both underwhelmed when played (or in training presumably in Santos case) and just haven't played so aren't going to be overly fit. It really feels like people just want a change for change sake and assume that it will work out well. Despite the statistical evidence against it. Maybe ask Leeds, Leicester and Southampton fans whether they're happy they made changes last year.

I know you're desperate for him to stay. But my personal opinion is that Coops is overly reliant on a very specific type of striker. Taiwo is the Prem version of Davis for me. When we were in the champ, our team performances were way better when Davis played. However, we were able to win games when he was injured mainly because of the Spence, Brennen combo was so good compared to the opposition that we could still score goals through that route without Davis causing chaos. Garner also put some good free kicks into the box. 

Fast forward to now and without Taiwo we are toothless. I think it's because the way we play is completely reliant on him and I think it's Coops job to come up with alternatives that work. Unfortunately, Taiwo is prone to injury....and I also believe that the vast majority of players like him (there aren't that many), who are big lads, fast, mobile etc will typically suffer from regular injuries because of their weight and how they use their bodies. 

We desperately need to find a way to work with other strikers and that is on Coops. If he can't we need someone who can, in my mind it is as simple as that. Elanga (and last year Brennan) are Coops' idea of a best option as you suggest above - another manager may be able to bring out something better from other payers in the squad, I don't understand why you can't recognise that it is possible. It might not happen and the change might not improve us, of course that's possible, but for me it's at the point now where if we don't drastically change something then we are very likely to be relegated and the values of a load of players has drastically reduced, putting us in a precarious financial position. It's not like we're even making many chances for Wood, Origi, etc etc to fluff and they are experienced enough at playing at high levels to be putting themselves in the right places to get on the end of chances. The wingbacks did against Wolves, when he went back to a back 3, which is clearly our best way forward and he stuck with 4 at the back for about 10 games, which was criminal. Those games where we persisted with 4 at the back really irritated me, that's a quarter of the season and it was against 'lesser' opponents who we needed to get points from. Unfortunately, you don't have that amount of time to play around with a failing system. 

It is not a change for changes sake. He is underperforming in his job. I would prefer him to perform to a good enough level to not be questioned because he is rightly a Forest legend because of the past 2 seasons, but he isn't performing now and it is on him. He also needs to work out how to work with certain types of people. For someone with what appear to be excellent man management skills and a nice bloke, there is a huge amount of players not putting enough in and a large bomb squad. This is a major part of a managers role. It's easy to manage players and be everyone's mate when we're winning....

It's a fair point on the striker front and his inability to produce without a star striker. Although it's fair to caveat that with most team would struggle without their star striker.

To summarise I can 100% recognise that a change may improve the team, of course it happened with Cooper himself. However, the majority of people seem to have this assumption that change guarantees you an improvement which statistically isn't true and in fact the opposite. There's no reason why Cooper could not make the same drastic changes and there's plenty of evidence of teams that stick and this happens.

In my opinion, the balance of probability is that its more likely that we do better with Cooper than it is with a new manager, at best marginally worse. I don't think that is worth giving up everything we've got with Cooper.

Your last paragraph is completely relatable and that's the rub. Conversely, in my opinion, I am genuinely worried that we are now quite likely to get dragged into the bottom 3 at the end of the season if we stick and it's worth taking the risks you mention to give us a better chance of avoiding going back down to the Champ. 

If we do stick, I'm not sure it's that easy to find someone to replace Taiwo's game in January. Even more expensive, bigger names that don't play the way he does, would not work in our current team. 'Homecoming' for Antonio maybe?!?

Antonio does seem to fit the bill pretty well, I think you'll struggle to name too many bottom half teams that can cope without a decent recognised striker though, Palace when they had Zaha maybe. 

Either way, it's certainly not clear cut either way which is why I'd been keen to stick. If it was certain a new manager would dramatically improve us then it would be more justified but there is just no statistical evidence to support that.