I have tried to defend Clark for months. I've said that he has had a difficult job, relying on the 21 loanees that have come in to the club this season as well as the free transfers that we have had varying levels of success with.
However, I think it's now time for me to submit. Clark is not doing a good enough job.
Maybe this is just an overreaction to the shambles of yesterday. Or maybe, this is the perfectly acceptable reaction to not winning at home for half a year.
Yesterday was a snapshot of everything wrong with Clark's tenure. As soon as the team was announced, I knew we would lose.
I've never been so certain in a result.
The worst part is, every single Blues fan in the ground, every Blues fan who couldn't make it, every Blues fan who lives abroad, every Blues fan who has fallen out of love with football; we all knew. We knew we would lose and that it wouldn't be pretty.
But Clark was oblivious to it. His post-match interview tells us everything we need to know. He doesn't realise that his asinine meddling is nearly as cancerous to the club as Peter Pannu himself.
How can any professional manager possibly justify playing 5 players out of position? Deliberately. At the same time. Absolutely insane. The most baffling part is that we had the players to play in the right positions. But that would be too simple for Lee Clark. He has to play a right back in midfield, despite the fact that he has proven incompetent there. At least Spector couldn't play, as he's incompetent nearly everywhere anyway. But don't fret - he's likely to be fit to play on the left wing on Saturday.
He can't be much worse on the wing than Howard, who hadn't played for months. Therefore, the only logical thing to do was to play him out of position in a massive game, then take him off after 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, we went to our second left-back of the game. Callum Reilly, a young, tenacious midfielder, surprisingly enough couldn't deal with the pace and direct dribbling of Josh King. Who knew?
Luckily, Blackburn's Man-of-the-Match Tyler Blackett went over to deal with him. I'm not sure I've seen a clumsier footballer in my lifetime. His positioning is dreadful and he is entirely inept at left-back. Surprisingly enough, he couldn't handle the aerial presence of Rudy Gestede.
Fortunately, we were only 0-3 down by the time we decided to play players in the positions they know how to play. There was a marked improvement in the performance then, amazingly. The problem was that not only was the game already over, Blackburn had given up. They took off two of their most dangerous players, King and Gestede, and we took off their most dangerous player, replacing Blackett with Hancox.
Clark keeps doing this though. Reece Brown has been superb when he has played. He's now languishing in the U21's whilst Caddis runs around in midfield. Shane Ferguson comes out of nowhere to start a game, then gets subbed at half-time then he's out of the squad again. Ibe didn't make the bench - though Demarai Gray was, and he scored, so that's something.
Peter Lovenkrands' inclusion was just as stupid. His signing has been a disaster. Fans complain about Zigic and his wages (and sometimes rightfully) but Lovenkrands is easily on over £10,000 a week, but he's over 10,000 times as invisible as Zigic.
This won't change anything. I'm just telling you things you already know. That was the most moronic piece of management I've ever seen. I give up trying to defend him. This season has been a shambles. Blues are 4/1 to be relegated with certain bookmakers - as League 1 beckons, you might as well make some money out of it.
