Your basically saying if fergie was to have been given thorn's job he would not have kept us in the champ - or did I misunderstand.
If this is accurate then that is the same as saying the gulf between Fergie and Thorn is less than what would have been required to keep us up.
We only need a few points which could have been 3 more wins.
By saying fergie could not have used his exceptional abilities as a manager (see qualities of a manager thread) to gain those additional points you are discounting the obvious mastery of football management that fergie has.
If you cannot see that fergie is far superior to thorn and equally a suitably qualfied and experienced manager as also being superior to thorn - regardless of whether raw talent exists in thorn or not then you cannot identify a candidate for being a good manager.
I believe that most of those arguing for thorn are arguing on the basis that they believe thorn may have raw talent as a manager - but others argue that it is irrelevant because he plainly lacks the ability to perform the basics in setting up our team to win and perform as more than the sum of our parts.
I argue the latter because I have worked in my own field for well in excess of 15 years and am not yet at the point of total mastery - mastery of anything takes time and that includes management.
To me it is very disrespectful to any trade to believe a novice without experience (which comes through effort) could be somehow overnight master what takes men years.
I feel the fans identify with the romantic notion but I predict that as reality sets in after a couple more months time in spite of one or two possible lucky wins we will see that we need a new man at the helm.
Yes - the cry for a stop to the managerial roundabout must stop at some point - but only CCFC would chose to stop under the control of a novice. I believed in AB - but when times got tough we chose to ditch him -we could have given him time - thinking we were better than we were and he had us performing out of our skins and fighting - I would have given him time - but SISU wouldn't - they needed someone who wouldn't make demands - who wouldn't rock the boat - and by god they got him.
I also take issue with Thorn on several things - like the berating of youth players, the cosying up to the media, the lack of ability to field difficult questions.
Before the plea for clean slates comes - I've already made my position clear through the quote 'those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past'.
Thorn thinks that if we keep doing the same things we will get different results - Thorn believes in Luck - I believe that a real man makes his own luck - I think I heard AB say that once and that was something I could identify with.
Incidentally do you know that last season's Northampton were one of the worst teams in the country - heading for football oblivion, This season they knocked Cardiff out the cup and they beat the league favourites Rotherham. A lot of people are saying they look like contenders - How embarrassing if we cling to Thorn and pass them by as they get promoted.
If I am wrong and he proves me wrong then great - I will hold up my hands - I will not hide - you can hammer me throughout my presence on sky blues talk but hey - I'll take my chances - at least we'll have gone up or something - FAT chance