U's players do the talking (From Gazette)

Aidy if you could listen to the fans too, would be great. When I see the teamsheet and see Heath and Wordsworth on the field, at first I think we have lost, then secondly think we could pull this off and they may improve as players and prove me wrong. But numerous times my first throught was the correct throught. Please for Tuesday's game drop both Heath and Woody, and see what happens. If we play well then it shows, if obvously we don't play well then I'm proven wrong. I'm off to the game tomorrow and hope to see us turn around and get some wins. We need it more then ever now. Up the U's

The players' talking has to be on the pitch. The job of manager includes facing the press, even when you know the questions could be awkward.

There may well be plenty of leaders in the dressing-room, but ultimately the judgment is on performance and results. If the players give 100% and lose, that can be accepted. If the players give 50% and lose, it is the job of the manager to sort it out. The players should get carpeted, but in the privacy of the dressing-room, training-pitch or manager's office. If you are talking to the press on the good days when things have gone well, then you also have to face them even if it's the last thing you feel like doing. Not right to pass this to the players. Even if they are the ones not playing as well as they can do, the buck stops at the door of the manager.

The next 5 games, of which 4 are at home, will define the season. The job of the manager now is to get the players fired up and motivated for those games. If we can win 3 of these 5, we should be in the play-offs. It is still in our hands, but we cannot afford any more slip-ups.

romantic, did you even read the story? Aidy did speak to the press after the game, but he let the players conduct the post-match debrief in the dressing room.

Going to be hard tonight without Mark Tierney. Lets hope they dont attack us to much down the wing. Imagine John White will fill in and Ifil at right back. Whats happened to Maybery ????? Oh I forgot he's not a hoover.

What's the Story, I stand corrected. However, I stick by the gist of what I was saying, which is that it is the manager's job to get the players playing at 100% of what they can do (or at least, more effectively than they have been recently). I'm not one of those who thinks Boothroyd should go, and overall, I think we would have been happy on day zero of the campaign to be in 6th spot at this stage. Every team has good and bad runs, that's part of football, and a win is often the spark that brings back that vital commodity: confidence.

Tonight and Saturday are important games. 4 or 6 points and we're back on track. Anything less than that and alarm bells start ringing.

If a post-match team-talk without the manager achieves this return to everybody putting in their full effort, then that's good. But it is the manager's job to be objective about the game, the players and the tactics. It's maybe hard for the players to have that objectivity, as many of them are in fact part of the problem in the first place!

Let's see what happens tonight.