Reading fan here. A detailed review of how he did for you would be great. We are shocked to say the least.
He was awful. He started off by treating the players like children. He would use phrases like "Players were practicing cheerfully." Then, he just turned into a jerk. The Fire were only good in 2017 when the players ignored him and followed the lead of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Dax McCarty. He is poor with player management, benching players in favor of worse players who we imagine he liked better (or who 'practiced cheerfully'). He rarely seemed to have a coherent game plan and the team often played like a youth team. The Fire, despite having some excellent players, and one of the larger payrolls in the league, managed a single winning season under his tutelage. His only saving grace was that he followed the worst manager in team history. He also seemed to be personally pretty unpleasant. Check the Paunovic Career Death Thread for details. Other than that, he was terrific.
Bloody hell. What have our owners seen in him? I can only think an agent has been involved here. I hope he's learned from his mistakes. Our owners are billionairs but have no idea about football. Thanks for replying. If you have a link to that thread it would be great.
The only thing I'd add is that he came in with the promise of being good with young players, coming off the U - 20 World Cup win with Serbia. Turns out, he was terrible at it. He had no patience with young players and so our development just dried up during his tenure. This explains it all: Team From To RecordG W D L Win % Chicago Fire 24 November 2015 13 November 2019 100 31 25 44 31.00
https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/veljko-paunovic-career-deathwatch.2026783/#post-33271007 If he had any chance of being good, I would say it was certainly undermined by our GM/Technical Director at the time. It would have taken a lot to overcome that hurdle and since that was his boss, Paunovic was beholden to him. That said, there was very little cohesion across games, much less years. When we could have been decent, we lacked a midfield. Basti moved to CB and we never put forward a solid midfield after that. You could blame personnel on some of it, but in my recollection we didn’t really seem to try to succeed with the limitations we had. I would say Paunovic probably moved players around hoping they could be something they’re not rather than catering tactics to the limited pallet he had.
Can't believe we've appointed this guy. Our owners are clueless. We thought Stam was bad, but this guy seems worse. Thanks for your responses all.
Yes my recollection of the Pauno years were they began with so much hope and promise but ultimately ended up being very painful and confusing. Like Bunge said "some" of the issue was the players he was given to work with but his squad had a large pay roll and his lineups were always inexplicable and confusing match to match and week to week despite the roster being of quality. Players who should have been in the starting 11 week to week would be benched inexplicably. Players who would come on and be game changers and deserving of minutes would also be benched or bad mouthed in post game press conferences or press reports. Players we hadn't heard of would start in place of those who should perhaps be starting and I don't recall too many of those players turning into much. Rumors behind the scenes involving locker room management ultimately were whispers of petty arguments, insults and favoritism although I have no personal direct knowledge of such or any information pipeline to back that up. For someone who came from an under-20 pedigree Pauno seemed to have little trust, skill or patience in developing younger players and unearthing diamonds in the rough. I also recall more than one (3 in total) well deserving wingers who should have received more support from Paunovic who ended up becoming disgruntled and seemed to give up before being traded off into oblivion. The owner (thankfully now gone) was running the Technical end of operations on a full skeletal crew so while the investment in the payroll was fairly high perhaps maybe Pauno wasn't given a full set of tools in other areas to utilize. We can all second guess all day about what should have/would have happened but ultimately I was happy to see him go which tells you probably the most important thing you need to know. Perhaps he has grown from his first club gig and will develop further and Reading won't have the same issues but again...I don't miss him. Good luck to you all.
We just beat Jaap Stam's new team last week. We had a decent team three of Paunovic's four seasons, as in we had an assemblage of good players (with some crap thrown in). They never gelled as a team, at all. Some of that is upper management not signing the "right" players, as pointed out above. Much was game management, not selecting the right players, not playing players to their strengths and not having a cohesive game plan. That was on Paunovic. Why management signed him? I would guess he "came cheap." I hope he does well for you guys. Maybe he has matured a bit and will be a success. I doubt he will, though. He joined the Fire with a fair amount of promise. It did not work out and the Fire should have cut him lose a year earlier. By the way, do you want his "soul mate"? He and the General Manager of the team, Nelson Rodriguez, referred to themselves as soul mates. He is still here. We would like him to find a new home. No, sorry, I have nothing against Reading. I can not suggest that we foist Rodriguez on you guys. Taking Paunovic is punishment enough. Taking Rodriguez would be masochistic. Good luck, mate.
Good luck, man. If Pauno learned from his mistakes, he may be ok. That's all I got. Look on the bright side: you didn't hire Potato.
Paunovich was a fine choice for Reading, assuming that the club aspires to play in League 1. ...and yes, I'm being charitable. Arrange for an accident. Nothing fatal, just enough to send him back to Serbia, where he can rule the U-20 world.
"I also led them to one of their best-ever seasons in 2017." What a liar! He did not lead the Fire to one of our best ever seasons in 2017. We had a top 3 or 4 payroll and all he f'n "managed" was a one game playoff lost. The team had way more talent that Paunovic showed. He managed to "lead" the Fire to one playoff game in four seasons. He managed to "lead" the Fire to Zero US Open Cups. He managed to "lead" the fire it worst home attendance (outside of Naperville). Oh, and says "in the MLS you don't have relegation so you have to find different ways to motivate your players to reach the goals you have set." The MLS? Also, if you are using "not being relegated" as your motivation, you are doing it wrong, asshole. By the way, if 'the' MLS had relegation, you would have been relegated in two of your four seasons, asshole. After reading that, my opinion of him dropped further. Didn't know, short of him eating puppies or supporting Trump/Boris Johnson, that my opinion could drop further.
Although to be honest, when I looked at the table a couple of days ago when this thread popped up, Reading was doing far better than I would have anticipated with Pauno at the helm. They would be in the playoffs with a real manager.
"Real manager"?!? What's Frank Yallop doing these days? He's a real manager, a real bad manager, but still. Maybe Jason Kreis, he was a Real manager.
Don’t blame me, you asked.... Monterey Bay FC Announces Frank Yallop as Head Coach https://www.uslchampionship.com/news_article/show/1159558