I don't think there is any problem in doubting various aspects of a managers abilities as long as you are respectful and give valid reasons for the doubts.
I have had plenty of doubts about Brendan, most of which have now faded away.... just needs to show he can be successful in the transfer market now.
Very happy with Brendan, delighted with what he has achieved and looking forward to what he will achieve over the next few years.
Spot on Saint. There's a strange attitude that exists that suggests a criticism equals you're against someone. I've criticised Brendan plenty, especially in his first year here and by his own admission he was making many mistakes. Something I always gave him credit for was learning from his mistakes. Not once did he ever lose my support though and the only manager in the history of this club to lose my support before he bit the bullet was a certain Roy Hodgson.
Initially I was worried that he was too inflexible with his system and was far too entrenched in his own ideology. I feared he would stick to it at the cost of progress, thankfully he showed his adaptability from his system and these fears disappeared. I was then concerned that his new found adaptability was only correcting his own mistakes. There were numerous times that we would get dominated in the first half of games through poor team selection and tactics only to play much better in the 2nd half of games once those mistakes had been rectified. For this I gave Brendan equal credit and criticism because it's fine correcting a problem but it's also not so great when it's you causing the problem in the first place.
My final worry on the pitch was that we had trouble against the better teams. There was an extremely long run of games where we had got next to nothing from what are generally accepted as the better teams in the league. We'd seen under Kenny that this team could beat the better teams and no matter how much Brendan had proven against the lesser teams I knew the players were capable of producing performances against the stronger sides and Brendan hadn't managed to bring that out of them. This went on for some time and probably became my biggest concern with Brendan, thankfully those fears are clearly now all gone as he has also proven himself capable of this challenge. I think, again, he has simply learned from his mistakes, adapted and applied what he's learned the sign of someone who is very likely to succeed at the highest level.
His media handling had been an issue after the first few months. Initially I actually loved the way he spoke, he seemed to get us, the red nets, the reinstatement of the "This Is Anfield" sign and the way he spoke about everyone on a personal level with equal respect for ground staff and players alike. I loved all that but just because I saw something I liked didn't mean I couldn't be fair and criticise what I didn't like because I personally didn't like things such as: "anything above 7th would be a fantastic achievement" then resetting the goal posts with talk of first, 2nd, 4th, it seemed like he didn't have a clue what his actual target was. Without digging up the actual quotes he also suggested he had to be some kind of miracle worker to get this bunch of players competing at the top level.
This, to me, was poor man management, the players would have heard these ever changing goals, they would have heard that we needed "miracles" and that would have affected their mindset. He has since proven (unless you believe he is a miracle worker) that it was actually possible to compete at the top level with virtually the same group of players. On every occasion I criticised his media handling I suggested he should be adopting the 1 game at a time talk, in much the same way that Kenny gave the media nothing. Granted Kenny's frosty nature towards the media was not something I would advise, even though I personally loved it, because clearly FSG didn't. He also criticised the kids for a cup exit after it was of course him who'd chosen to put them in, this was poor and he rightfully later came out and corrected that mistake for which he then earned the credit he deserved. Brendan has now thankfully moved on to the line of media handling that is 1 game at a time, total deflection from setting goals and therefore giving the media absolutely nothing to pin against us or criticise us for.
So not only has he improved his initial team selections, our first half performances are now the best in league, meaning he doesn't need to correct his mistakes nearly as much, he's also moved away from some terrible sound bites and poor target setting. His man management skills seem to be improving too judging from the reactions he's getting from some of the lads he initially thought were surplus to requirements. The truth is he's learned valuable lessons and grown with the job to become the manager he is today and while those who blindly supported him in the early days are being proven right for their faith I believe criticising those who had genuine concerns early on is just childish behaviour that is reminiscent of dancing round shouting "I told you so!"
FWIW I stick by every criticism I've ever levelled at Brendan but am extremely happy to say he has now proven himself to be an absolutely outstanding coach and man manager, his media handling is now at a fantastic level and all that remains is for him to prove himself in the transfer market. Matters obviously become easier when you're winning and our faith will no doubt be tested again when things aren't going so smoothly but Brendan has now earned that faith and all I'd like to see is the man backed to the hilt in the transfer market this Summer and given the targets that he actually wants.
