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Westleys LEP Column

Love how it took an eternity for some fans to see Just how bad he was and then as soon as we sack him, they're back to being taken in by his rhetoric and feeling sorry for him.

If he thinks he's been hard done by and that he would have turned it around then he is deluded!

No win in 11 at home. Letting 2 or 3 in every match. 1 win in 14.

A humiliating win ratio.

Making the pitch look worse than those on Moor Park by deliberately training on it in the week to make it a leveller, in the hope we wouldn't be passed off the park.

Wrecking the away dressing room to annoy the oppostion.

Every away teams fans, managers and players commenting on him and the club in a bad light.

Shocking negative football.

35+ new players in and not one that I can presently see going on to play at a higher level.

5 home wins in his entire 'reign'.

All this in addition to textgate, leakgate, Aaron brown upfront....

He's a non league joker who has taken us backwards. We now have every chance of relegation.

I supported him much longer than some but I ain't going to read the article.... Not arsed he has gone and hope he takes some players with him. However the core of players he has brought in our good and I hope Dreyer then Grayson get the support they require
 
Just read the article and as in any relationship that's come to an end he sounds sad and reflective!

But for me what also comes out of i is the fact he was completly out of his depth at this football club! I nailed my.colours to the mast in that first game v Orient because for me he had one game plan and that was a pressing game. If that failed he struggled. Yet ironically he brought in some good footballers but we hardly ever saw them being allowed to express themselves. He tried to turn footballers into warriors!

He's right to praise the fans because anybody else would have been slaughterd a lot sooner than he was. But life moves on he.did his best but at the end of the day he wasent.up to the job!

But good luck to him in the future and.hopfully for his sake he will learn from.his time spent at PNE and come back stronger and wiser!
 
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I like how he said he asked for better players. So obviously all the Stevenage dirge were forced on him. Very, very few footballers were prepared to play for Westley and all the anti Westley comments in the press and on Twitter in the past day or so show what light people view him in. Marcello Trotta anyone?
 
Love how it took an eternity for some fans to see Just how bad he was and then as soon as we sack him, they're back to being taken in by his rhetoric and feeling sorry for him.

If he thinks he's been hard done by and that he would have turned it around then he is deluded!

No win in 11 at home. Letting 2 or 3 in every match. 1 win in 14.

A humiliating win ratio.

Making the pitch look worse than those on Moor Park by deliberately training on it in the week to make it a leveller, in the hope we wouldn't be passed off the park.

Wrecking the away dressing room to annoy the oppostion.

Every away teams fans, managers and players commenting on him and the club in a bad light.

Shocking negative football.

35+ new players in and not one that I can presently see going on to play at a higher level.

5 home wins in his entire 'reign'.

All this in addition to textgate, leakgate, Aaron brown upfront....

He's a non league joker who has taken us backwards. We now have every chance of relegation.

Spot on.

In isolation, it's a decent piece.

But in context...:rolleyes: :mad:
 
To cut a long story short, he had lost the dressing room and the squad he'd created.
 
To cut a long story short, he had lost the dressing room and the squad he'd created.



I think it may be even simpler than that , think he has a game plan but no back up plan and once his plan was rumbled he had no were to go rendering us all too playable .
 
"Given time to reflect, I am sure that the club will see that I was right to want the decisions that I wanted.

If those key changes are made and the right players are changed, then that promotion will definitely come next season."

I wonder who/what he means by that?

As others have said, a good read but he had to go. If he'd been shown more humility like that whilst in charge, who knows?
 
"Given time to reflect, I am sure that the club will see that I was right to want the decisions that I wanted.

If those key changes are made and the right players are changed, then that promotion will definitely come next season."

I wonder who/what he means by that?

As others have said, a good read but he had to go. If he'd been shown more humility like that whilst in charge, who knows?

Whatever the changes he wanted were, you can fully understand the club's reticence to act on them. They showed huge faith in his version of events last season, allowed him to totally uproot the playing staff and culture of the club, and were paid for that faith by seeing us perform even more poorly than previously.

I'm glad he's gone. I've never been more miserable as a North End fan than during his tenure. It's a nice article and I bear him no ill will in his future career but he was a disaster for us from start to finish and that's that.
 
At least he comes across with some humility, the message isn't "you're all a bunch of idiots".

Let's hope the new manager can successfully "finish off" this mythical bloody house, then we can all look back on Mr Westley's reign as "building the foundations", and not purely a demolition job.
 
Fair play to Westley for that but why oh why didn't he show humility like this during his time at Deepdale?! Best wishes for the future, Graham.
 
Isn't there a part two to wake up to tomorrow morning..... I really can't see after 13 months here and the way he has treated some people that he won't have a dig.....

Bullshit sandwich and all that
 
It's now online.

http://www.lep.co.uk/sport/football...usive-graham-westley-s-final-column-1-5412630

When I arrived at Colchester last Saturday, a loyal PNE fan told me that he had passed the Westley Crematorium on the way to the ground!

He normally wished me good luck!

I got his message. Despite my best efforts, his prediction was correct.

Maybe the moral of the story is that you should never take a job on Friday the 13th and never meet the chairman at Waterloo Station on Wednesday the 13th!

My tenure at Preston lasted just 13 months from January 2012 until February 2013. As I write this column on Valentine’s Day, I do so with a true sense of pain at an unfinished job.

I am 100% sure that I would have successfully finished building on the demolition work and foundations that I had completed, but unfortunately, as it was put to me, ‘Mr Hemmings lost patience’.

To be fair, with the mood of the fans being what it was, it did need a strong faith in me to back me. I completely understand that. Regrettably for me, much as I asked for better players and more time, that faith wasn’t there.

Barry Fry told me it would take a good manager two or three years to turn Preston around and he was probably right. I did a lot in 13 months and there were mistakes in amongst my work. For sure.

It is my view that if you do enough good work you can afford to get a few things wrong and you will always get some stuff wrong if you do enough work.

I am gutted that I won’t be able to prove myself to the PNE faithful now, which I know I would have done and which I was totally committed to doing.

I took some flak, but I did my utmost to stay focused, trusting that people would soon be with me when the team started winning consistently.

So there it is. My PNE Chapter is closed.

I hope that the club finishes building upon the work that I have done and wins its way back into the Championship next season. My view is that it will.

I made some big changes in my time but I lost a few important battles behind the scenes during my 13 months.

I hoped that eventually, my beliefs would win through.

Given time to reflect, I am sure that the club will see that I was right to want the decisions that I wanted.

If those key changes are made and the right players are changed, then that promotion will definitely come next season. I want to thank Mr Hemmings and his family, Peter Ridsdale, the Board and the staff at PNE for the belief that was put in me and the support that was given to me.

I am privileged to have worked with some very decent people here at PNE. I want to thank the players for the effort that they gave.

And I want to thank every PNE fan for the passion and care that you give the club. You are a truly amazing group and, despite my tough ride, I greatly appreciate the support that you always gave the team.

I am sorry that I didn’t deliver better results. But I hope in time that people might see that I helped to turn the club round. I know from many emails that I have received that people do understand the picture that I have painted in this column.

Two moments that taught me so much about how deep the passion for football is in Preston:-

1:A lady stopped me for an autograph before a game and then told me that she would be ripping it up if we didn’t win!

2:A lady lambasted me for eating a jaffa cake before a game; ‘You have to understand…..it is orange……we do nothing orange’.

I didn’t do it again. I was learning PNE at a tough time but now it is over.

Good Luck PNE. Thank you all for everything. I can only wish I had done better, grow from the experience and look to bounce back strongly.

‘Building a squad on a budget’ - read the second part of Graham Westley’s final column only in tomorrow’s LEP
 
Fair play to Westley for that but why oh why didn't he show humility like this during his time at Deepdale?! Best wishes for the future, Graham.

I think he has been taught a lesson at Deepdale. Being a 'Fuhrer' type figure only works in lower league football, the higher you go the less it works.
 
At least he comes across with some humility, the message isn't "you're all a bunch of idiots".

Let's hope the new manager can successfully "finish off" this mythical bloody house, then we can all look back on Mr Westley's reign as "building the foundations", and not purely a demolition job.

Loving the e-bay sig, very cryptic! Perhaps a book on texting, mobile phone and 12 cones could be added to the account?
 
2:A lady lambasted me for eating a jaffa cake before a game; ‘You have to understand…..it is orange……we do nothing orange’.

I can't believe how stupid some people can be. I eat Jaffa Cakes. It's not a crime. I've also been known to eat a tangerine occasionally. It doesn't make me any less a PNE fan.
 
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