Thetownend.com

If a company cut it's budget by almost 50% how it would fare? We've done remarkably well with a drastic budget cut, an almost entirely new squad made up of inexperienced young players and cast offs. We've got a manager who has no freedom to sign his own players, or play his own way. If we finish top half it's been a good season.

Oh and we've had terrible luck with injuries/suspensions.

A somewhat more balanced view. Expectations can be horrible sometimes.

If I win the Euromillions I'm starting a club where to be a fan you have to pass an IQ test. It would avoid situations likes this arising.

What about if you are a follower/supporter rather than a fan?

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Pass the test/pay the membership and you're free to be armchair fan if you want.

And if we dont ?

it's been a bad season I presume

And what about if you are paying customer? If you run a bank or a power company, you can dish up shit and retain your customers. However Town are in the entertainment business. Customers will be walking with their feet at the end of this season. Leaving you clever ones and the ones who don't go to pick up the pieces.

Still an acceptable season under the circumstances

This 'philosophy' that Power wants takes time. Ferguson took a few years to really get going at Man Utd. Crewe persist with the same philosophy and have some good seasons, some ok seasons, some bad seasons. And we're nowhere near the Crewe extremes with regards to recruitment/philosophy.

No a bad season would be getting relegated...we've a very decent chance of avoiding that.

The club would have a really self-indulgent name too, and our nickname would be The Smug.
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We've not had bad lick with suspensions. We've got a bunch of gobby players who do stupid fouls. As for injuries, then you can't expect players in their first season to play the season out so its not unexpected. It wasn't unexpected that Troy or Jay would play little or that Mason was a sicknote. 

I have no delusions as to our expectations this season.

I have seen enough Town games over the years to realise the majority are run of the mill, averagely dull affairs.

But, for a team who have been knocking around the play offs for a good while now I struggle to remember a decent performance since Xmas.

I don't expect promotion or relegation at seasons start, I just want to be entertained more often than not and the heady days of early season have dulled my appetite for attending.

I seriously doubt if Cooper actually believes in what he says about the 'style' of our football as he can't see much different to what the fans see.

We are just in the midst of a mediocre period of club life.

It has always been thus

Indeed...the drop off in form was highly predictable, namely Div 3 is a tough attritional league, weather/pitches, injuries suspension, young player etc, was always going to take its toll.  The key was still having enough to pick up the 3 definitive home wins, v Posh, Cov and Shrews.

Unfortunately though, at STFC as with most clubs when mediocrity sets in fans vote with their feet....

but is this mediocrity or complete dross?

You decide....you're the one who is apparently giving up on the club.

well you were the one that plucked mediocrity out of your ass. I just gave you the chance to correct your mistake.

I can only wonder where the club would be without the link with tottenscum.
Down already I think.

It's mediocrity. If you've really been going for 45 years as you claim, in fact even if you've been going for a third of that time, you'll have seen plenty of genuine dross to be able to compare

Looks back with fond(ish) memories of periods of dull leading to chants such as "we'll score again, don't know where, don't know when....", and "all we want is a fucking shot on goal..a fucking shot on goal..a fucking shot on goal"....

I'll never forget getting sympathy off Forest fans while sitting in their home end after losing 3-0 (I think ) one boxing day. When you get clocked as an away fan in the home end and the locals don't have the heart to at least rip into you, then you now its not good :)

yep all that time with a one season break when Trollope was in charge. Not missing a home or away game for six seasons in the 70s. I've seen relegation at Newport. Stood on the bank with 3000 in the ground in the 4th division. Danced in Mansfield when we won promotion. Been to Accrington and Old Trafford with the Town. The  1 1 draw with Bournemouth on my wedding day in the Arkells
Still this experiment stinks. I'll put up with it until the end of the season. We've still got some of the better teams to play at home and I'll come on here and bitch unless I'm banned again in the meantime.
Not bragging or claiming anything special. Just not the beautiful game any more.

Whilst others may not agree with your view, I'm sure they'll agree its a shame you feel that way now. Plus they may not like what you say, but that shouldn't stop you from saying it!

It's boring, void of imagination, drive and passion.
Best part of today though was spending 10 minutes with Andy Rowland.
An all time idol for me. We talked about the 8-0 Bury game, the Arsenal  epic games and then of course Steve McMahon....... Loved every minute.
Not giving up but it's so bloody dull with no threat up front and nobody taking anyone on and no crosses in the box to get you off your feet.
Yes I thought we would get relegated this season so expectations exceeded.

If that is true,and I have no reason to think it's not-how can you say we are" down the Swanee" now?

It's "Arse", "Ass" is another name for a donkey.

It's still better than what you expected, I'd imagine.

How is Andy Rowland now? I remember reading last year that he was quite ill, so i am hopefully presuming from reading your post that he much better :-)

Hope Andy Rowland is at least ok and if he's chatting then that's good.

I think it's the manner of defeats and the inability that Cooper has of changing anything compounded by arrogant style of post match interview that fucks me off.

However.....I didn't hear yesterday's post match...what did he say?

Got to say I can't remember this level of pessimism when we are having what is just a middling dull season.

There have been plenty of these over the years.

I can only think, and this applies to myself, it is the performance level (or lack of) that has got people down.

When you are served up with a continuing 90 minutes of same old same old knowing nothing is going to change for the next game you do get to the stage where you say 'fuck this for a game of soldiers' and start skipping more and more games.

And, of course, being fans we all know better!

My mistake. After years of reading Regs pearls of wisdom, I'd always thought he was the same age as Jesus and as we all know Jesus rode into town on his ass or arse, as the case may be.

I remember the Malpas era, the crowd moaned and groaned a lot but weren't calling for the manager to go for a long time.

It isn't always going to be a cracking season,  Swindon usually find themselves at either end of the table,  some people can't take a season when there is nothing at stake.

Absolutely right. It's when bums on seats go missing when the shit hits the fan. I was told, wrongly or rightly, that the Crawley game was poorly attended. A false figure was possibly announced, counting all season ticket holders as present when some had gone AWOL.
If that was correct and if that's the future, well, it looks grim for you diehards sorry to say.

I have a slightly different view. I think it's that we have recently been relatively spoilt in terms of budget and hence expectations were high.

 As a club it feels like we are heading back to square 1 pre fitton/black. And it's hard to adjust to that loss of momentum.

But the performances don't help. All that would be forgotten had we been playing well.

Currently sitting 8th in the league does anyone know where we would be in a league table of budgets. That would give some perspective as I am almost certain there is 7 teams with a higher budget than ours.

It's a shame we couldn't build on our early season form but we can rebuild next season and go again. Plenty of teams would swap our position for ours. Both financially and on the pitch. Seems weird saying that first bit!

Top 10-ish. I've looked into it. In terms of budget we are pretty much where we should be.

I guess as we started the league quite well and played some sexy football towards the start of the season, the expectation levels were increased slightly.

The recent run of form (1 win in 10 is it) is slightly worrying but we should have enough to finish 8-12th which was the pre-season prediction for many.

Is the recent run of form due to a lack of fitness? In the Crewe and Saturday's match we were decent enough in the first half but then sounded like we ran out of steam, is Cooper working the players hard enough? Obviously under Di Canio, Fitness was never an issue.

Its been interesting to hear the comments this season are so polarised. Earlier in the season some were saying its the best football they've ever seen Swindon play, and no people are saying its some of the worst!

Hopefully we take the positives from this season and learn going forward. I think Cooper needs to be a bit braver in matches, the negative football we play is both boring and non-rewarding.

Matthew 7:6

neither cast ye, your pearls before swine....