We didn't. We were in a fight, but a fight it would have been unreasonable not to expect.
That Rotherham game was key, and if we'd have lost, it may have been different, but we didn't and stayed up very comfortably in the end. Stayed up comfortably in a season when staying up by the skin of...
It would be a very poor argument.
The first three seasons were very successful based on expectations at the time, and the fourth only fell away at the very end. Keeping Barnsley up was also very successful.
There's a par, and a good manager will exceed it, and a poor one not achieve it.
Also, I didn't say I agreed with the statement, I just answered your question of what difference managing a big club made to win percentage (though it seemed fairly obvious).
He's, along with Wright, by a distance our best player, but he looks like his heart's not in it anymore. It's all hindsight, obviously, but he ought to have pushed for a move in the summer, when his stock was high.
He was well protected, but was also pretty much faultless for the latter part of that season.
You don't keep all those clean sheets if you're not doing something right.
That's why he lost his place; he came for balls against Sunderland, Millwall, etc., got nowhere near and cost us goals. He seemed to lose his ability to judge when to come and when to stay.