there is no doubt that when you are struggling you just don't get the rub of the green,we deserved a point and we deserved a penalty and yet came away with nothing AGAIN!!, back down in the bin ,never mind Creepy next week, real tough game,who knows, but after this today im not expecting too much, seems it doesn't matter how we play, the big guy upstairs isnt doing us any favors......
houston we have a problem.!!!!!!! could it be our bunch of loanees care little for whom they are playing and have little interest in the management. it is high time our players learned the old maxim, punters make pay days possible. if we cannot perform at crawley or at home to carlisle, then a massive clearout of loanee lemons is called for and we rely on youth making up the numbers until january. surely they can do no worse than our loaned lemons and would gain match practice. i am not asking for managerial changes, but surely the jury is out
Like you AJ, i would rather go down with our own players fighting for the club rather than a detached bunch of misfits not trying for us!!...too many loanees must upset the balance of the team too quite a bit of an extent, and if their host club don't want them, why do we??......We need two in at most in weak areas, the rest should be made up of our signed players and youth!!....no disrespect to GT but me and AJ could run this club if our remit was "get a load of Nomads in"....about time our club took us the supporters into consideration....getting loads of loanees is a cop out and nothing to do with team building and securing a steady future for us...
Tinned Hats, I do not believe in luck - we are simply not good enough at present, either at the back or up front. The present squad is overall significantly weaker than that at the end of last season and I do not think we would be even in the top half of League 2 with this side if we had not been promoted. Unless we sign at least a couple of quality players in January ( a centre-half and a centre-forward) we are in serious trouble. Lets hope we can continue a decent run at home until then and at least stay in contention but three points from ten away games says it all about our away form.
one positive is the shrews lifted their game against crewe and should have beaten mkd. yesterday was a return to the bad old days. at least we have a break until the creepies on december 8. plenty of time to get el tel back from rochdale.
Atcham, I agree the last two games at home were a positive and we do have the best home form of the bottom two teams. However, the game against Crewe could have gone either way and we were lucky they did not get a penalty and the reason we did not hold out for a win against MK was that our centre halves could not deal with a very average cross (one was outjumped for the header across and the other lost the scorer) so I am not sure we will get any more 'luck' until we improve in this crucial area. From what I have seen of our defenders this year this probably means new players in January. If the much hyped Goldson was not good enough to come in and replace the injured Bennett (prompting yet another rejig of the defence) on Saturday then perhaps he should be released as well.
You can't have it both ways ghmm. If you don't believe in Town suffering from bad luck then you can't believe in them gaining from good luck (against Crewe) either. I don't think the centre backs were solely responsible for MK equalising - what were the midfielders doing on the edge of their own area when MK had the ball in midfield? Close them down and they don't have time to get the ball into the box so easily. We're not unlucky and we're not a bad team, in pure football terms. However, we have a squad lacking in character and players who fail to concentrate and who are unable to fight back in adversity. I don't believe in scapegoating individuals or the loanees. Any new player would struggle to make an impression surrounded by such a negative group of players. I believe the fundamental problem is psychological and we'll be relegated if we don't start to fix it soon.
i agree with part of the problem with town as being pschological or in the mind. how was it that having taken 4 points out of 6, town should have gone into saturday with heads high, and tails up. if this was the case, why was such a dreadful performance given by the team. perhaps gt will tell us or at least make the most of 14 days break from our next game to get the squad fit and ready to play for the club. with 5 weeks until january it has never been a better time for lemons to ripen! floreat salopia-- sadly some of our players have forgotten the meaning of this- let shrewsbury flourish! have a quiet word in their shell likes! graham! roland! WALLET!!
Obviously more poor selection by the management. Instead of the recently appointed sports scientist specializing in nutrition, we desperately need a Sports Psychologist.
I think that this squad is, on paper, as good as last year's, possibly even better. The issue is the mentality.
the players are just not good enough for this higher division, why? no investment by the club after promotion, lost our best players which were not replaced, plan B, bring in a load of loan players, and that aint working either, plus no youth players coming through and no strategic plan on our plying style...add to that the big one...TOO MUCH INCONSISTENCY !!
Too many injuries have also led to problems, causing a movement of players around the pitch to cover for the injuries.
Shrewdchemic, My point about luck was we tend as supporters too be very selective and only remember the marginal decisions against our teams. As we are usually only losing games by a single goal then we tend to put any marginal decisions going against us as bad luck. Tinned Hats I very much agree with you - the squad as a whole is weaker this year because of a lack of investment after a disappointing summer. We are possibly about the same strength in midfield, and improved in goal but very much weaker at centre-back and have never replaced our best striker. I do not want to scapegoat our new centre backs, who I am sure are doing their best, but they are simply not a patch on the Sharps and Cansdell-Sheriff combination who served us so well over two years. I do not believe this stuff about psychology - if you get better players in and the team starts to win more games then the positive attitude and team spirit comes from that. GT has substantially changed the side every six months since he has been here but that only works if you have better players coming in.
i have read a few posters on here saying Sharps and Cansdell-Sheriff aren't doing a great deal at their new clubs anyway and wouldn't make much difference if the were still with us, but really to get a good team with good spirit you have to have joint efforts like Sharps and Cansdell-Sheriff to pull you through as its a combination of players not individuals...and that's our problem, at the moment, we haven't got two working together as effective strikers and that goes straight through to midfield and the backs, it just looks like a team of individuals who are having a problem gelling, and this is were all the inconsistency comes from....
All this reminds me of the method of building a team; can anybody remember who said....."Build the spine...goalie, central defence, central midfield and central striker...the rest fit in around that". My words but that was the gist of it.....may have been Cloughie or Revie? I think we have the goalie!!! I leave it to other people's opinions as to whether we are progressing with the rest. However, I believe that Sharps and Cansdell-Sheriff were worth persisting with despite all the banter. Midfield and attack we are probably only 50% of the way there, discuss!
hopefully a lesson has been learned. on promotion, sensible terms are offered to the mainstay of the squad with a view to their signing for at least 2 years. alterations to the squad may be made by a few loans and signing and sales in january. sadly it will be some time before the lesson has to be learned again. a combination of continuity and trials would be useful. finally give doble and bradshaw more than 10 minutes on the field of conflict. who knows they may score!! floreat salopia!
Clough believed on starting with the keeper. Like you say, we've done that. I think Summerfield is a class player in the middle, but what we have at the back and up front in the starting team is adequate and no more. Plenty of our weaknesses come from out wide and with a real lack of quality depth
I think you hit the nail on the head...BUILD A TEAM, can you really do it without a bit of investment and a youth policy?.....is so many Loan players a cop out?, a cheap way of doing business? a lazy way to run a team..where as our gate money gone, and where has the promotion money gone from last season?...how can things go so wrong in just a few months between the seasons, we should have built on our better players not let them go!!....the cake's still there, but someone is taking the cream!!
Let's put these better players cure all to bed. Wroe admittedly has been a surprise (be honest) but stated he would have left whatever was offered and the same goes for SCS. We could never have matched Collins salary at Swindon (£4.5k a week) and Neale was no great loss. Which leaves Sharps but only as a leader and, surprisingly, he has been criticised for this on Rotherham forums. The one player with the true class to move up a level was Ainsworth and it is to be regretted that he has a self-destruct wish wherever he goes.
------------Weale Grandison Jones ??? Jacobson Taylor Summerfield Richards Wright --------Morgan Rodgers Of this squad who is actually decent? Weale, Jacobson, Summerfield and Richards? Taylor is working his socks off and should possibly be in the 18. Grandison prone to lapses in concentration but should remain on the right.CB is our biggest issue but it looked like SCS was already off to Oz before Preston put in an offer he couldn't refuse and we couldn't match! What about Morgan??? I'll hang on the forwards but they show a promising pairing. The CM is probably our strongest area of the squad as we have Hall and Wildig who are capable players, yet I still think it doesn't work to it's full potential.
