I’m not seeing overwhelming negativity; I am seeing (and feeling) understandable concerns.
We are in reverse at this stage; the longer Ange has had with the team the worse the results have been (we are on our worst run in 20 years), and the less the players seem to understand his system. We have been poor to watch for months, save for the occasional short spell in games.
Many are saying he needs the right players to succeed. That may be true, but I am not sure that our board will facilitate the huge clear out/influx of new players over the summer that he clearly feels we need; and I can’t imagine that he is ever going to be backed like the managers of City, Liverpool or Arsenal have been.
My worries are that he has failed to adapt in any way to the players who are actually at his disposal right now; that he seems idealistic, somewhat naive, and quite stubborn; and that he has failed to address some very obvious errors which are causing us issues in almost every game.
He has said from the off that he should be judged on his second season. However, if we do succeed in bringing in a sizeable number of new players then surely the cry will then be that they need a season to adapt to his system (why would they be any different to the players who needed time to adapt this year)? And if results don’t start well from August then I fear he won’t get very long…
For what it’s worth, I feel that he should be given all of next season as a minimum (provided, obviously, that we are not in the bottom six). But I do think he is going to have to become much cannier tactically, and he will need to accept that his system will need compromise if it is to bring any level of success.