Thetownend.com

2-1 win. Anderson and Taylor (free kick). Break the hoodoo to the delight of the travelling fans.

Pre match middle class fakery in The Moon Under Water.

I hate this place.

Their mascot got too close to the away end once and had its head ripped off.
Showed that it's not only dogs who look like their owners.

The teams knows what they have to do today.
Swindon expects.

If anyone has a spare ticket then do send me a PM.

I fear red cards, probably an early one for RC-C, bringing down Mohamed, after defensive fuck up.

3-2 Town of the S variety !

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

You may well be right Mystic Reg.

And we will still go on to win 2-0... 8)

Anderson, Norris (playing with a dislocated shoulder)

2-0 defeat. Kaid Mohamed and Eisa the goal scorers.

2-0 defeat, still not breaking the competitive game hoodoo at Whaddon Road.

Would take a draw but will probably be a defeat.

On their forum they have a new nickname for us that I haven't seen before, oh how we laughed at the term Swindump.  ::)

Leaving in a few minutes. My middle ones first away game. 3 0 defeat. Bad fucking ju ju at nam. 2 red cards for town and a total shambles of a performance. Being without vjgs is a fucker.

The mighty green away kit will see us to a 2-2 draw and disappoint the spa folk (mega optimistic prediction)!

Shocker of a 4-0 drubbing in the rain for the boys from the 'dump' (usual pessimistic prediction).

I'd love a decent win to induce a few more to go to Field Mill (as was) - it'll be my first time there so I'm hoping for a good turnout.

Forum regular Reg Smeeton is quoted in The i's 'Fan Matrix' feature today.

I am predicting a Desmond in the football.

Any link??

Norris starting? Surprising as he looked in total agony last week. Surely a risk?

4-2-4? I can already see a gap between attack and midfield. Let's hope I'm wrong.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLiY7-XXUAACJ0n.jpg)

His shoulder will surely pop out at the slightest cause*

*My totally uninformed, non-medical lay man's opinion.

Vigoureux stripped of his squad number, too?

Doubt it. I don't think squad numbers can be changed in the season.

I hadn't noticed that, I think it could be a typo, surely it should say 21.

Down

Sod it! 1 - 0

And the hoodoo continues.

Here we go again, the Whaddon Rd nightmare continues  :no:

Nah...lul em in and then....bang....

I wish I shared your optimism!!

was looking for the bar billiards thread and I get this >:(

Utter tosh so far.  Passing is all over the place and too slow to react.

This Division is a shambles.  Gordon must be sat on the right wing wondering how on earth he has ended up playing in a game whereby 19 other players have fuck all technical ability or mental capacity to cope under even the merest hint of pressure (I will let the keepers off).  It's like every team is entirely full of Ifil's.  34 more games of this drivel to go, hope to fuck we muster enough points to enable us to ship this team back out to other League Two teams next season.

We'll probably go on to draw or win the game based on the first half, but it won't be fun watching it, again.  It really does puzzle me how players turn into such cabbages.  The thing going for us I suppose is that Flitcroft has no issue at all realising this fact and sets a team up with not even a hint that it might try and play some football.  Just get it upfront and live of the drop downs when we get them.  Have a player or two in the quad like Hussey/Taylor who can put a decent ball in when afforded complete time and space via set pieces (Taylor continues to show this is indeed pretty much all he has ever had as a player).

Yipppee, I left it too late and missed out on a ticket. Sounds like a standard Cheltenham away performance!

Oh, and Cheltenham are just like every other team so far this season.  Maybe on a couple of occasions they have had some time and space and kept the ball down while running at us, and it causes our lumps problems.  They are included in my summary before though, they could win this, lose it or draw and there would be no rhyme or reason to any of those results.

Having all sorts of problems with the player site

1-1 Preston

(Cue people saying we are playing Cheltnum)

You beauty :pint:

Charles Cook saves a penalty

FFS

Phew! Saved!

Great save :)

How unusual

Is that the 4th time a Town keeper has saved a pen on his debut?

How nice of player to finally allow me to watch. Bunch of cunts.

Brez saved 2, Henry saved 1 and did Wes do it too?

Think one of those 2 brothers did I think (Belford?)

Cameron Belford, after Ty got sent off. First touch of the ball wasn't it?

FGR beating Notts C away. What do you mean inconsistent league...

Oh FFS. Fucking Fuckers Fuck me,

My decision is vindicated.

FFS

As is my indecision (leading to lack of ticket) :)

I fucking hate Cheltenham so much

Jesus Christ what a silly bunch

Forum meltdown  :suicide:

Ooops, sorry FGR. Kiss of death.

We all do Miles, we all do.

Result largely as expected. But our complete lack of playing any football is starting to grate. Only we could go from a football at all costs to becoming long ball merchants. With the budget Flitcroft has been given he must be under a bit of pressure now.

From what I have seen the quality of player we have is no better than last season

It's like watching New Century WMC vs Greyhound circa 1984 but with more people around the edge of the pitch.  Even if we'd got a point, the only conclusion you can come to is that this season is and will be shit, no matter how it pans out table wise.

Dreadful again.

If we ain't near the top 3 at Christmas Flitcroft has got to go. He has had a lot of money to spend and so far results ain't been good enough

Opposite in style. Which was refreshing, but frankly I was hoping this change was what it would take to go up..turning out not to be so, just a 'different' SNAFU.

Exeter apart, who do seem to be well drilled in trying to play some football but probably lose out to lump it teams, this entire division including us is playing football roulette.  It's low skill chuck it up and see what happens football mixed in with set pieces.  I still think we will end up in the play offs because the front four we can put out is probably better than most others and we have two players who can put a good set piece in from time to time.  Therefore we can win at football roulette more so than others, but it does give you games like today - truly awful with both teams just as likely to lose or win.

Lack of discipline to give away a free kick in ET.

IMO we paid the price for a piss poor first half....nearly got a point too.

Quality is poor but miles away from last seasons shit IMO, so for that I'm grateful, maybe some people think we should be pissing the league...not me.

Problem is we’ve probably paid twice as much for our roulette players compared to most teams in this league.

I guess like you say Rob that at least we are still in most games, even the ones we lose. That's better than a lot of last year where it was game over once we went down a goal.

OK we may not deserve to win, but it wasn't inconceivable.

I guess that's a positive.

Good post...at one point you could toss a coin today.

First half we were shit, second half much the better team.

We totally gave it away at the end, several stupid fouls of which they were always going to score from one of the free kicks.  Fairly sure it was Mcdermott who gave the foul away.  Offers very little from what I've seen other than a lack of discipline.

Our dire record at Whadden Road continues.

The fuck does Dunne actually do? Awful, awful player.

Aquaducts.

No, wait, that was the Romans.

 Swindon, just a small village in Cheltenham.

Let's not get carried away, we have a totally new management team, a totally new way of playing, basically a totally new squad of players and we always lose at Whaddon Road. We are 11th and only a good run away from being in the top 6.

The quality (Exeter aside) is poor but I think we have enough to challenge for the play-offs this season.
There is going to be ups and downs for sure but it could be worse, look at Vale and Chesterfield!

Just for once, that stupid moronic song would be geographically correct  ;)

That’s not the point though, Bob. I’m sure we could be 11th trying to play a bit of football and trying to entertain the fans. No wonder people are staying away in droves - it’s fucking dreadful to watch.

This is the problem, I wasn’t expecting to piss the league but I was expecting us to have a bit of quality at this level with our budget. As I say only Swindon could go from one extreme way of playing to the complete opposite in one pre season, I’m surprised Power has let us become such an ‘anti football’ team. Does beg the question what would happen if we did go up as we couldn’t possibly play this style up a league and we’ll have to bin off pretty much the entire squad so there isn’t even any real building for the future.

But then people would be saying 'well we are playing great football, but we're only 11th, etc etc.

The decision to bin off the Swindon Way, and return to traditional Div 4 football was entirely correct. Div 4 is a grind, we've been in it often enough in relatively recent years to know this.

There is a balance. I wouldn’t call defenders smashing a ball 60 yards every time it comes near them a way of playing to be honest. There is a happy medium to be found between overplaying and not playing any football.

Playing decent football is very difficult... you can see this watching England play, here are supposedly the best we can produce, and they're not very good. Our level is even further down the ladder, so more or less all sides play the %ages... on the odd occasion a bit of quality might come out.

theakston - did you go today?

a happy medium fine. I doubt anyone will disagree.

trying to continue as per last year and being in this position would have been a massive mistake. People may be a bit pissed off now, but can you imagine how much worse it would have been.

fwiw I think Power has played it right. Given the job to the manager he think best suited and STFU. As unpalatable as getting stuck in division 4 may be.

Yep and live in Cheltenham so will be made to suffer for the next week with yet another abject display at their place.

I blame Gladwin for all this!

I think his unearthing turned Power away from what had in fact been the core of our relative success - players who were too good for Academy football but not quite good enough to hold down 1st team spots at higher divisions just yet.  He got the Management team to play the Academy way, which meant they all settled in well and knew what they were doing.  Then we go an get Gladwin, not really one of those types (although a youth prospect, never in that class) and he thought he could keep that same model but polish rough diamonds.  The next two seasons then became a flow of useless shit who knew how to pass a ball but very little else and weren't that much better at the passing stuff to the extent they could outclass a team of physical types.

Relegation at least curtailed that, but it's brought about something altogether just as ugly to watch, but for very different reasons.

or Power just got lucky/helping hand from Tactics first season... either way...

He may have got lucky, but probably should have noticed the difference a little sooner once it became clear you can't just chuck a bunch of technical misfits together and expect the same results.  He has now, that is one thing.  It's just this entire division is like stepping back 30 years and is damning showcase for everything wrong about how we develop players in this country.  It's good in some ways, that this exists to sharpen the mind, otherwise we'd have an entire nation watching Prem football believing that English football is great, when in fact it's Aguero who is great, and Eriksson, and Fabregas, and so on.

It’s the utter mismatch between the defenders recruited and the forward players. Why have, essentially, dainty Anderson and Woolery chasing down launched howitzers from the non league defenders. It’s neither one or  t’other. Throw in a couple of skilful small types in midfield and it’s a right horlicks.

Either play Smith up front providing the knockdowns or play it (a bit) through midfield for Goddard/Gordon etc to thread balls into Woolery and Anderson.

can't disagree with either of the last two posts..

On a side note for a man who preaches discipline we don’t seem to show any on the pitch and it’s something Flitcroft needs to fix. Dunne & McDermott especially are a bit of a liability, the winner was completely avoidable and a needless freekick.

As Audrey says we just seem to have a complete mismatch in the way we set up, we spent a fair wedge on Woolery but don’t play to his strengths which is through balls for him to run on to.

As said elsewhere on here, we seem to be a mixture of players that has not gelled as yet and I am beginning to think that perhaps we never will. Defensively at times it is just a hoof forward totally bypassing the midfield to see what might break and now and again it does, but it is not pretty and I am none too sure it will be enough to see us out of this division. Having Goddard back helps the balance and might be more of the player that Woolery requires to set him up, but his confidence must be low as he was subbed once again today.

Overall we did not do enough to win today neither did we do badly enough to lose but conceding stupid free kicks in dangerous positions was eventually going to cost us and so it was. Flitcroft knows the problems and as we are well into the season now surely this indiscipline should have been be cut out?

Early doors Power's remit was to lower the wage bill... he had the benefit of TT's players and some left overs from the PdC reign, as the wage bill was further trimmed and the last of the PdC boys departed, TT's production line was severed.

So we now find ourselves probably somewhere around where our wage bill determines, at the start of the season, the aim despite Power's rhetoric is to stay in this Div and not slide further. So far so good on this.

Just for any of the old timers on here, what's the difference between how we are playing now & what Macari did to get us out of Div 4?

Get the ball forward as quick as possible & play in their half.
 

Macari's teams were the fittest I've ever seen. They did lump it forward and try to win the second ball. The main thing Macari did though was spot talent. Player for player I wouldn't swap any of the current team for Macaris. We were also very disciplined. Solid banks and lines. 
As for todays game, you just knew it would happen. Stupid fucking unnecessary fouls. The first half I thought we were pretty crap but so were they. The second half i thought we were far superior to be undone by our fucking stupidity was a real pisser. The new goalie looked good. Came and collected all but one.
Its got to be said the stewards and policing today was fucking useless. Town fans could have done whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Lucky the Town fans were mostly pissed and / or resigned to losing. A special mention to the guy in his 60s who at the end of the game tried to get over the fence and was shouting to the Nam fans "come on then I'll fucking take you all on". I spoke to him in the Sudeley Arms before the game and he appeared relatively sober.

Oh yes and their no 7 was a total cunt. Should have had 3 yellows in the game and then instead of celebrating the win with their fans decided to give it the big un in front of us. Fuckwit but when we got dicked there 5-0 at 4-0 their no 10 gave us the wanker sign.

Pretty much as good as it gets for them and probably their biggest match of the season so no great surprise they were lording it up. Doubled their average attendance today with plenty of Town fans in the home end.

Reg forgot his medication again?

Observations from today. Charles-Cook did well. Commanded his area well & made a decent save from the pen despite looking off his line by the time it was struck. The full backs weren't too bad although Purkiss' mobility again looked questionable & he doesn't offer enough going forward. Would like to see if Knoyle can offer us an improvement in that department. Preston did well & coped with their CF relatively comfortably. Lancashire seems to be all arms & always looks like giving away free kicks/pens. Dunne was & is poor. Tom Smith must be wondering what he's got to do to get a look in, looks a far more competent player in all areas from what I've seen of him so far & that was in a league above. He's exactly what a League 2 team requires. Linganzi, for his size, doesn't seem to dominate midfield as he should, he & Dunne shouldn't be starting games together imo. The amount of time & space afforded to their midfielder in the build up to their 1st was frightening. Of the front four only Norris comes away with any real credit. Held the ball up well & worked hard although never looked like scoring. I just never get the feeling he's gonna score when he goes through one on one. Anderson flatters to deceive for a PL loanee, hard to believe we were pinning so many hopes on him a couple of seasons back when trying to get him in on loan. Gordon offered nothing & deserved to be hooked at h/t. Biggest concern for me is Woolery who looks an absolute shadow of the player I saw on his debut. Seems to be massively lacking im confidence. I'd like to see him played through the middle again. He came on there on his debut & completely changed the game. Exeter were shit scared of him & I'd like to see him given another run there as the wide thing just doesn't seem to be working out. & Harry Smith, like Tom, must be wondering what he's got to do to get a run in this side. Was excellent last week & took his goal really well. Today was crying out for him at 1-1 with 20 to go but DF brought Mullin on who should have started in place of Anderson or Gordon.

Tom Smith isn't even making the bench. I'd like to see him given a run. The foul by dunne for the penalty was real fucking dumb. Mullins looked good in his small cameo. Goddard also did well. We really need to try something different in midfield. The wide players offer fuck all protection.

I fear anyone expecting any substantial changes will be sadly disappointed.  This is us, we have 34 more games of it.  We;ll have to hope we get more wins than losses, which seems probable overall.

I'm not sure that a 4-2-3-1 formation is best suited for a more direct style.
Seems nobody is ever near enough to pick up the headers, that are won, when it is launched up to Norris.

With 50% of games won so far, there is enough there for a play off challenge.
Then again, most of the other teams in the division will be thinking the same thing.

Just a little more quality in the midfield play to keep the ball for a bit longer in the opponents half would make a difference.
Alternatively, bring in a proper left winger in January and with Gordon on the right, just go full hoof mode and play Smith & Norris together. (Being devil's advocate here).

Good debut from RC-C.
No concerns for as and when LV moves on.

Tom Smith offers more bite, composure and passing ability than either of the starting centre mids, what does he have to do to get a look in?!

Sent from my SM-G930F

The league is shit, but what really did our fans think it would be like?

Cheltenham were shit, were were not much better, we can't win there and were only beaten by a single goal so its not like last time we went up there and lost heavy to those dirty Northern bastards.

We need link up play between our hoofer defenders and out strikers, Dunne and Linganzi are not it, they are both average Division 4 players at best.

We need another centre back instead of Lancashire, Preston looks like he has a lot of potential, we also need a fit Hussey to create things for us.

Under Macari we played quite similar but we were fit, every player back then (Coyne excepted) could run for 100 minutes per game and chase everything, out players are not fit yet, they haven't gelled yet and we are not playing very good football, I don't expect the playing good football under Flitcroft but the other 2 I hope will happen.

Fitness is key in this league, there are no stand out teams and we could still easily win this league if we gel and get fit and stop the pathetic mistakes at the back which have already probably cost us 8 or more goals so far.

I'd agree that they were fitter & overall probably better players (although we know how that was funded ;) ).

I guess the point is that it wasn't the greatest football to watch, but we were so desperate to get out of Div 4, and from about this point in the season always looked like winning that we didn't really care about how.

I guess the problem is that as fans we now expect Macari like fitness & effort mixed with greater ability (a bit like Matt Ritchie), but we can't afford that.

Ritchie was a League Two player with us, so not impossible.  Rohan Ince is the sort of tough tackling midfielder with a bit of quality that would be ideal (if unattainable).  Tom Smith should be attainable however.  Does the manager think he is too small - or what?

A lot of our fans are finding it difficult to adjust to our new status, what they fail to get is that any success we've had at this level previously, was on the back of spending money we didn't have.  Power won't do this.  People need to understand that when you slide in this day and age, it can keep going into the Conference and worse. You can see plenty of clubs who were regular opponents of ours like Wrexham, Tranny, Orient and HPool down there. It happened to Oxford and Rovers. For the likes of Stockport and probably now Torquay, it's even worse.

I'm still cautiously optimistic that Flitters has begun to arrest the slide....by creating a bang average Div 4 side, that's good management, because it's where we are.

Just felt the need to keep this for posterity.

I would imagine Power had a bit more than 'bang average' in mind when he spent (reportedly) 350k on Woolery...

At what point of the season would flitcroft be under pressure from power? As long as we are within a few points of playoffs I think he will last the season. Surely power watching this team would feel like the fans however. I'd like flitcroft to be asked directly about playing style.

At the Cambridge game the standard of passing and hoof startled me. I could find players with more composure in the local leagues than players like purkiss

I don't pay much credence to our undisclosed fees stuff, Woolery is a fella who's got to 22 and has a handful of FL starts, so he's not exactly proven quality.

Bang average is good.

 Look at BPV and Spireites, both doughty opponents of ours over many years, and last season we lost 3 of the 4 games against them, drawing the other, however thus far have failed to halt their slide.

When he was appointed I really didn’t notice any Bury fans banging on about him being wedded to hoofball. I presume when Power interviewed him he asked about what style he would he play. Maybe he said I don’t give a shit how you do it, but get us out of this league.

Irrespective of results I just can’t watch the garbage being served up at the moment. It’s such a waste of the talent we do have up front. Feel sorry for Woolery and Anderson who are being branded poor but chasing balls with snow on doesn’t play to their strengths.

It won’t take much to get in the play offs, tbh. But for the fans to buy into it the hoofing has to be moderated.

The problem with hoofball is that you really need a great target man otherwise the ball is given away. Norris is not a great target man. Against Cambridge our defenders had plenty of time and still hoofed it. If the midfield don't come short what else can they do. The problem we've got is that Norris wins very little in the air and when he does the wingers are very wide and the midfield fuck knows where. The defenders are good for aerial bombardments but shit when ran at - typical for this division. The forwards are ok. Gordon is decent, so is Anderson. Norris is hit and miss but greatly improved. Woolery had a good cameo v Exeter and has been total turd since.
I'm not sure I see a play off place at the moment. On the positive side I felt that if we kept our Swindon way then we'd go straight through the league.
Overall were doing ok but fans are walking. The football has been shit but it always has been at this level. I predicted top 10 but outside play offs. I've seen nothing to change my mind.

Dont know why the club announced the fee they paid for Woolery when they signed him tbh, talk about setting the bloke up for a fall before he even started!

Living abroad and not having much opportunity to see live games, I was really looking forward to watching the games on iFollow this season.

After watching Exeter live and Barnet on iFollow and listening to a few of the other match commentaries, all the enthusiasm I had evaporated. The football is total shite. Every couple of games, after a win normally, I summon up the interest to watch or listen to the commentary (the last one being Forest Green), hoping that the team has settled down into a proper footballing team. It's not though. It's still shite and I'm resigned now to the fact that every game this season is going to be depressingly poor, win or lose. I can't remember the last time we had such a poor footballing team and I've been supporting for nearly 40 years. Have we even managed to string together more than 3 passes in a game this season before it's given away or hoofed? Even when we were shite in the past we still tried to play a bit - either passing the ball around or with players that could run at opponents (even Macari's team......).

no idea what's going on with Tom Smith. he's not the Messiah, but he's looked pretty reasonable when I've seen him play.

must be a really shit trainer

I've heard he's a bit of a cock but that's not really been a hindrance to being a town player in the past. I don't see much with liganzi. Dunne looks our likeliest leader but then gets sent off and gives away a real dum shit penalty. I really don't see what we've got to lose with Smith. At least put him on the bench.

If you sign players like Woolery and Anderson then surely you should play to their dtrenghts, ball played into the channels on the ground so they can beat slow defenders with their pace and get balls into the box or put them into 1 on 1 positions with the keeper.

You can't expect them to win balls in the air hoofed up from the back against defenders that are 6 foot 2+.

Flitcroft must be able to see that surely?

Norris although playing quite well in front of goal is not a target man as such and will not win most balls hoofed up to him either.

Play to the players strengths and we will start scoring, Anderson and Wollery will beat most defenders in this division for pace so let them.

As for Smith, I can only guess that Flitcroft does not think he is physically able to fit into our side yet, he has the ability but maybe not the body strength our style currently needs, or he is very poor in training.

Last season's side was much worse.

Yeah my cousin has first hand experience of him being a bit big time and that was before he scored at Crewe.

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