Same gut reaction today as Bolton 15/16 from me

I'm sure as I've been on here a while you know I'm not too excited after a win, and try to be balanced when we lose. I really try to be on a level with this horrific drug we call football, which I think is far more destructive than heroin but there we go it's legal and we love it!

However, with Leeds / Sheff Utd + Boro all winning today, we ' entertained ' QPR needing to stay in touch. I know they all kicked off at the same time, but they all did their bit.

We drew at home with a side horrible on the road, down to 10 men at the end.

Clear as day not helped by the CM injury pile - I can only assume Bru not in the 18 ( not a fan but he's a number ) is added to the list - and by all accounts Teddy is annoyingly back on it..........

Now I've no idea how we played living in Bristol - I'm p****ed off with Mick re Sears starting. Celina, well I get will be in / out at times and have no qualms - however clearly used waayyyyyy too late on. However, Freddy really is offering very little ( if he played well today fair play kid ) so amazed he's starting.

With Pulis going to Boro, I can only imagine they are going to push on. Villa / Derby will spend in Jan if they need to. What are we going to do!?!?!? Prey for a minor miracle........get a couple of loanees in and hope for the best!?!?!?

Just infuriated with us at the minute. I think considering the spend, we're absolutely punching and think Mick's for the most part doing a very decent job considering the parameters he's working with. Clearly gets things wrong at times - we all do.

Injuries are wrecking a chance of us doing something - however so are other factors. I get the fact Evans doesn't want to get his fingers burned, and I wouldn't want us to throw £20 mill on transfer fees plus the extras on top people at the pub don't talk about.

Anyone seen the Emoji movie? Today, I'm very MEH with things.

Now of course, should we beat Derby,results go our way and 3 or 4 miraculously back for the game at Fulham, yes, I may get excited again.

Just have to say, at full time the same emotions went through my head as they did when Maitland Niles gave away a pen at Bolton 15/16. Season, over.

 

Unfortunately Westy all we will do in January is wave bye bye to Bart and watch Evans trouser several millions, no replacement will be bought for Bart or the missing mid fielders, MM will say " I knew what the gig was when I came here " and we plummet down the division.
Happy bloody New Year

 

Yep you're right FM and it is all too familiar. I was going to the Derby game but after the piss poor performance on Boxing Day I'm keeping my money in my pocket. I'm up in Ipswich visiting family for New Year but I will be avoiding Portman Road!

 

Perhaps mate - Out of interest, if we were to sell, what do you think would be a fair price? I'd want about £8 mill upwards considering the timing / how important he is to us.

I hope to god the board go out and address CM - BADLY need two QUALITY players in otherwise this season is going to fade to black ( Ps1 game ) VERY quickly I feel.

 

It doesn't matter whether we get £80,000 or £80million we know what the result will be from bitter experience going right back to Connor Wickham.Whatever price we sell our best player for ,we won't see even a small proportion of it reinvested in the playing staff,so why care?

 

No way in a million years will he leave before the summer, and in any case, his value is nowhere near £8m, more like £3m.
I like Bart, he's a good keeper, but i do feel he isn't the messiah as a lot of people on here think he is (judging by some comments on here and TWTD, anyone would think he's as good as Neuer)
I can't see any activity in this transfer window and definitely not any permanent additions . We have a big enough squad, if all fully fit and utilised in the right way.
I personally would recall Moore and Emmanuel, but maybe only for the next month as cover. Hopefully by then we get a few of our players back and fit, and then send them back out on loan again (or keep Emmanuel and send Iorfa back)

 

Agreed to a certain extent with Stretchy, regarding Bart. I do believe he is overrated among some of the fanbase and his distribution would be heavily criticised at a Premier League club. However, he is a very good shot stopper and is arguably the best goalkeeper we have had at Portman Road since the peak years of Richard Wright. If he was to depart, he would probably only fetch £3-4m because of his lack of Premier League experience, age, and the fact his contract expires in the summer (regardless of our two year option). If Bart was to be sold, we would struggle to replace him and I would hope McCarthy would bring in a decent, experienced keeper, rather than rely on the inconsistent Gerken.

In terms of transfer activity, if I was in charge, I would not sell Bart and only start shipping out players when we have options come in. I feel we need a central midfielder and a wide player if we are to keep in touch of the top six. I would return Emmanuel and send back Iorfa. I would recall Moore and look to get a quick sale and decent fee for him before he gets found out. If we get a couple of additions in, I would also look to offload Kevin Bru and Freddie Sears. Unfortunately, I think we will probably see another loan come in and maybe a couple of players departing before what will hopefully be a new manager and some investment in a bit of squad shuffling.

 

Well the examples are there Mings £11M = Knudsen £200,000, Murphy £3.5M = Moore £10,000, nuff said.

 

While on the surface that's true with transfer fees etc.... we lose £8 mill upwards per year so whether people like it or not, it goes into the running cost of the club and keeps us afloat.

That said, we clear as day need to be somewhat more ambitious or we'll be stuck in this league, or have a season like last and drop soooo the only way we're EVER going to sort the debt out is by promotion.

Issue with that is now FFP HAS come into play, with clubs allowed £13 mill of losses per season over 3 years - so we're allowed to legally lose £39 mill ..... Based on the fact we're currently losing around EIGHT MILLION QUID per year............. that's ONLY ( sadly ) an extra £5 mill of spend that can be by transfer fees which everyone picks up upon.

Be very interesting the next 2 -3 years with many clubs like Sheff Weds / Derby / maybe Norwich and if Bristol City DON'T go up this year............

But yes, QPR really reminded me of 15/16 all over again.

 

Trouble with Bru is his overpriced wages - he'll be ours until the summer unfortunately.

Think it's a given Moore will be back in Jan - agree with Freddy! MUST go.

 

Basically ME bleeds the Club dry of its best talent without reinvesting what he makes from transfers.Whatever we get in is used to subsidise his "hobby",plaything,tax break or however else he sees/views the Club ('cause it sure as hell isn't being run as a business in the normal sense).

That's the reason I don't care a jot what we sell our players for.If we are to ever progress we need a different mindset at the Club.

 

Whether we like the way Wolves, Derby, etc spend huge amounts of money or not is largely irrelevant, the fact remains that there owners bought the Clubs for the express purpose of gaining promotion, they didn't buy into football to remain at Championship level forever, they got the funds in place to buy quality players to improve there chances of promotion.
What a difference to the 10 years we've had under our present owner, gates falling, prices increasing, no investment in quality players, and no progression , stagnation seems to be the continuing order of the day with no attempt to force our way out of this division, oh for some drive and enthusiasm from the top to enthuse the fans and ignite some serious effort to move this Club forward.

 

We did have that at the start but unfortunately ME appointed Roy Keane and we've been left with the fall out ever since.

I actually like where we are as a club at the moment. We have worked hard to bring some decent players for not much money into the team and have got some really good youngsters coming through. If we continue to flirt with the playoffs so be it, I feel in general we are doing the right things my biggest bug bearer with the club atm is a lack of ambition on the pitch, to have a team that'll go out and try to win the match and also try to improve the first team players bar Bart and Murphy I can't think of a player since Mick has been here who I'd say has flourished and reached their potential.

The story with Sears is a prime example, it's terrible what has happened to him, he's a shadow of his former self and it's Micks fault for sticking him on the wing. He was superb upfront playing with Murphy and having an intelligent player like Fraser behind him to play the passes to match his intelligent movement....what a waste of talent Mick. And it won't end there

I think Ward is a good player but he's looked useless. Skuse is actually a talented player but Mick likes him to play in a certain way and therefore he won't fulfil his potential. Chambers was a great CB for us but he was played for years as a pretty ineffective RB and now hasn't looked as comfortable at CB. We've got lots of talented midfielders who will just be bypassed (or injured) as we pretty much play a formation of 5-1-4 in most games and won't fulfil their potential. The one player who Mick over the years should have said you're good at sitting and keeping it simple breaking up play was Hyam and he tried to make him an attacking Midfielder.

I'd actually be quite content with the club where we are now if we just played decent football which meant the young team we have could flourish and reach their potential and entertain the fans.

 

Returned to the forum today to say pretty much what you've said there. What's holding the club back now is Mick, had that feeling since the declaration that we wanted 50% of first team to be from youth teams and it really came to the fore over the summer. Mick was the right person at the right time when he arrived, but no longer fits

 

If I'm honest, whilst I'm not Micks biggest fan, if ME was to give him a decent amount of money for transfer I'm fairly confident that we'd get promoted under him, however I don't care anymore I just want to enjoy going to football again and getting promoted to the PL and playing 38 games where we sit back and defend for the majority of the time to scrape the odd result to stay in the division doesn't appeal to me to be honest

 

Doesn’t matter what division we’re in, under Mick, we will sit back & defend for the majority of the game as that’s the way he sets his teams up

 

Have to say Mick or no Mick - as I've said before re Mick........ this January is utterly alarming.

Wind the clock back 5 games, I'd say we were quite well placed to have a crack at the play offs thank you provided we add 2 or 3 in January.

Now we get to Jan we're talking -
* Keeper going!
* McGoldrick + Moore probably both going.
* Tommy Smith going ( have to say thank f not a fan but it's a body.... )

SCRAPING THE BARREL for replacements...... yet people will be going ' Mick out Mick this ' after the next few games when realistically with an injury list the length of the benefit queue, various other players seeking departure, it being very difficult to get players in as we don't know whose managing us next season so agents are going to be in the most case reluctant to sign for us!!?!???

I would say the absolute collapse which I have in my mind that's just about to happen - ( fortunately we're 12 ahead of relegation so unlikely it'll get that bad ) is utterly laughable.

I feel for Mick this and last season - had the wool pulled over his eyes last year when Murphy left right at the end and he's being made to look an absolute melt this season again.

Positive we'll have a new gafa next season and good luck to them. But simply put, this season we were not badly placed at all and instead of pushing on to try to get top 6 we're weakening our sodding hand come January.

Take 14/15 we were almost top 2 but we didn't really strengthen as we could.

I DON'T expect ridiculous spend from our chairman - Magilton/Keane+Jewell wasted upwards of £50 mill however I would like our current manager and next one to be given some parameters to work in to POTENTIALLY achieve something - otherwise what the hell are we doing following this ' team ' right now?

I'm really fed up with it. It's clear as day we won't be doing anything this season.

 

How did you get that figure?
Between 2007 and 2013 our transfer dealings left us -£10m. I appreciate there were quite a few high wagers in this period, but i think 50m sounds a bit over the mark.
And in any case, if you look at ALL our transfers since ME has been here, we are £8m in the black (sales of £25m, against purchases of £17m)
so we can't keep using the excuse of ME having his fingers burnt by Keane and PJ.
If anything, his fingers have been burnt by our attendances falling year on year (since 2005, our average has gone down every year, except for our play off year) - now this tells you it's the performances on the pitch, and the ****e football being served up, along with the soaring ticket prices which is putting a hole in his pocket.
If ME has ANY aspirations to take us into the premiership, firstly MM has to go, then we need to clear out the team and start afresh.

 

Those figures don't tell the full story though.. As ME has been quoted as saying previously. He was told that a few quid would be enough to turn us into a Premier League side and spent heavily when Keane came in.. (Fees and Wages) and the first income we had was from Wickham sale in 2011

Prior to that (and the Jewell era) we were paying off unwanted players left and right and it's only really Mick's time at the club that has tipped the scales back into the Black as we haven't been quite so frivolous with players contracts

 

From 07 to when Mick took charge, our players sales were -£6m. Now i agree that we paid over the top for a lot of the mercenaries' wages, but the sums quoted above are, i believe way off the mark.
Since MM, we have made a profit of £17m in player sales. I'm pretty sure there aren't too many clubs in our division with similar profits, but we don't seem to have invested any of that on buying decent players, which is one of my biggest issues.
You're not going to get anywhere in this division by gettng any loans and freebies AND playing such negative football - that will only win you a few games.
we're doing the same thing year in year out, and getting the same results. We had one freak year, but that aside, we're playing the same negative football, with the same type of players.
In nearly 40 years of following the Town, i've never known our club to be such a joke - and thats including Bobby Ferguson and John Duncan!!