Insipid/lifeless/woeful. Take your pick. Thankfully, results elsewhere played into our hands, and our next three fixtures - all of which are winnable - could see us climb out the bottom 4 for the first time, I believe, in MJ's tenure.
Lenny, I wish I shared your optimism but in my view we are more likely to finish bottom than escape relegation. I think the club needs to be looking now at rebuilding for the future in League 2 so we do not do a Bristol Rovers and end up scraping along near to the bottom of that league for years. That should include bringing more people onto the board, having a proper selection process for manager, getting decent contracts for our best young players and identifying strikers that we could realistically bring in. Of the loanees we have had most will not be missed but players such as Eaves, Macalinden, Miller, Storey could be decent players in that league next year. What I fear will happen is that the club will go into denial and not even attempt to rectify any of the problems behind our woeful effort to establish ourselves in League 1.
"What I fear will happen is that the club will go into denial and not even attempt to rectify any of the problems behind our woeful effort to establish ourselves in League 1." I fear you are correct, if we don't go down it could well be the same. Bad 'management' always ends up in denial......how many companies say "it was the market", "it was the unions", "it was the government", "the competition were too strong"......I have never heard anyone say "We were wrong, we were c*a*"
Metashrew, There are several clubs with gates similar to ours who are making a very decent fist of life in League 1 (such as Walsall). We must look at what they are doing and ditch our loan. loan and loan again model. It has been so dispiriting to watch a bunch of half-fit and immature loanees fumbling to try to get some sort of teamwork together this season. Players such as Morgan last season were lambasted on this and other sites but he was experienced, he could hold up the ball, and he would put in 100% effort every game and not roll over feebly like many of our so-called strikers this season. Relegation may be a positive thing in that it will probably be easier to regroup and change the culture at the club in a lower league. As you say the biggest danger will be that the club will learn nothing from the debacle this season.
GHMM....totally agree. Learning from others is not a crime it's a necessity. That's what all the best companies do....shamelessly 'steal' the best bits from others. We have also proven that a bunch of loanees don't gel, I'm also unsure of the effect on proper squad members and also that one good loanee can't change the fortunes of a whole team. Now just watch a 'temporary member of staff' score the goal that keeps us up....maybe the exception that proves the rule? However, entering my 58th year as a supporter, and still working for my living, I feel that when the time comes I may have to think carefully where I spend my pension.....cut me and I'll still bleed blue though! This amber stuff is a bit of a Johnny come lately; when did it first appear? I was at Old Trafford yesterday and it's really interesting to note just how many long serving fans they have....I think those in the ground are the myth busters. This business of their fans not being from Manchester is also interesting, sure they have a large area to come from but over 10% of Town's fans travel to away matches; just as much or even more dedication. Bit of weekend musing over.....time to iron shirts for Monday....any volunteers???
The season started to fail at the closure of the summer transfer window. I have mentioned before that Turner admitted at some point during last season that the squad was too small and we had twenty three odd players on the books... A loanee can be a great thing but we have had too many. The risk is that you sign a professional player and they turn out to be duds, Kris Bright is an example of this. Good scouting is essential to getting in good players, paying them a competitive wage is also key to actually winning that signature. We tried to sign Chris Dagnall (I think!) in the January window and he has played 15 games for Orient since with 9 starts and 6 Subs on and has only scored three goals in a high flying squad. Talking to a kid at school and he mentioned that quite a few of the lesser players are only on £300 a week (I guess a good few are on £1500) and that town don't bother picking up on a lot of the local talented footballers and would rather take over the development of the youth who leave other bigger clubs. So perhaps that is where the desired income should partly be coming in from is coaching and developing local players.
Never understood exactly why lower league sides so rarely invest heavily in scouts. All the biggest clubs have 10/12 scouts and massive amounts of data on pretty much everyone in the world. Fair enough, we couldn't afford it to the same scale but just one scout seems ludicrous. How about one to look at the next team we face, two/three always looking for senior players and 1/2 looking for youngsters? It might mean slightly more investment in the short-term, but it helps prevent the signing of any more Nathan Elders. How about a performance analyst, or a sports scientist, or a director of football? Every top club has the first two, most have the latter as well. If properly implemented, it should result in an improvement in the efficiency of the club, just so long as you don't do a Tottenham. There is a real stigma of intelligent, continental style set-ups in the lower leagues, the pig-headedness which is why there are so many hustle and bustle managers who believe that hard work is all that matters and are inherently suspicious of anyone with technical ability below 5 foot 10. It's stupid, really, and Tim Sherwood is displaying all the shortcomings of such a style. All other sports embrace the more technical nature of the games, look at Rugby - the head coaches sit in the stand with a multitude of computer screens, TV angles and statistical data. Football is so outdated, it's just ludicrous.
Rant over! I guess the "never understood" bit was superfluous as I provided my explanation! It's just the harking back to the 70s that gets me, the "Messi wouldn't like it up him, wouldn't have lasted back in my day" thinking that ignores he would have run rings around the pissed, obese defenders.
It is acknowledged that Sam Allardyce used all these technical innovations before most others and it did not stop him from producing "hustle and bustle" teams. As regards harping back and Messi. Pele was kicked out of the 1966 World Cup by the Hungarians amongst others. He was an extraordinary player who bounced back in 1970. I wonder if Messi would have been able to do the same.
ever thought of getting rid of that old timer of a chairman...you no, the one that skims the milk off the top...so we have nothing to invest with!!
