Originally Posted by
cláirseach
I saw Rogers spinning a similar line in the press. It's something you hear a lot after a beating - we were in it for the first X minutes, until they got their goal. It is a little generous last night as Waterford had created several good chances, finishing poorly, before the opener and had really turned the game in the minutes leading up to it. Thereafter it was a total shambles and they could easily have hit double figures.
It is tempting to see the Rogers era already as an overcorrection to Horgan's tenure. His constant salesmanship, manifested mostly as #positivity and #energy was.. a little different to what Horgan offered and there were great promises to do all kinds of things, from playing the right way, to bringing youth through, to whatever else it was that you wanted to hear. He had an answer for everything, accurate or otherwise. The change of direction from Ollie certainly seemed to fit into the vision and direction of the new chairman. Four years is a long time.
There are a lot of lines to be used to deflect from the standard of player and performance at Harps, most of which don't stand up very well if anyone cared to look closely at them.
You can say that these are young players learning and growing, but the only young players who shown enough so far to mark them as capable of making a significant impact in senior football are on loan from Stockport and Derry.
It is a multi-year project, however the list of players on deals suggest that, a little like Bohs last year, the players are getting the length of contract that you'd wished you'd given the ghost of the past. Beyond the loans the only acceptable level of performance have been from a player on a short-term deal, arguably a 37 year old and from Ryan Flood. There are multi-year contracts here for players who simply cannot make an impression on senior football games.
I'm not going to bother with suggestions that they are playing the right way, or any of that nonsense. They're barely attacking at all.
The budget is a fan's favourite. Budgets are only important in relation to those around you and look at our neighbours in the table here are wonder if that can really be a factor. How you allocate it is another thing. Harps have a full-time manager for what is I think the first time in their history, and a surely it must be the first occassion on which they have had a full-time assistant. There is a big emphasis on availability for daily training, which has an impact on the players willing to commit and also on the cost and expense of training. Players are still being sourced internationally who struggle to play at this level.
Regardless, Rogers will retain plenty support for now and has a great chance in the next two games to get some good results on the board. It is not often that you play teams like Kerry and the current Treaty United side back-to-back in senior football. If they can do this then people can go back to believing.