Thetownend.com

First league encounter with this lot for 30 years! Given our growing list of absentees, it's likely to be a tricky one.

Apparently, they've sold 900-ish tickets, so there may even be a bit of noise at the CG for a change.

Frank Nouble and Ben Tozer (remember him?) in their line-up.

Probably a scrappy 1-1 draw.

Nouble nearly signed for us in the summer according to today's Adver. When he didn't sign, I imagine that's when we went after Harry Smith (who's done well to be fair)

Newport have done remarkably well so far having only just stayed up last last season, should be a very tough game. Hopefully we can scrap out 3 points.

2-1 Anderson, Woolery (Nouble for them)

3-0 Town

2-1 defeat.

Just a reminder, the M4 is closed all weekend between J12-13.
Massive delays on the A4 diversion so I think i'll go cross country

 We'll need to see if we can field a viable XI today and hopefully have more than 3 on the bench.. if Tuesday was to nothing more than a blip, then it needs to be shown today.  Newport will be up for this as they'll have a large travelling support. Definitely hope rather than expectation for us, 5 home wins in 21 league games in 2017 so far..... thin gruel.

A weakened team will do well to get a draw, but of course they like to surprise us

All time low if were hoping for a draw against Newport.
4-0 win for us.

Apparently Newport sold all their allocation of 860 for this game.

Nothing but a win is satisfactory.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPe6ht0X4AILUaD.png)

Gordon for Iandolo and I'd be pretty happy with that line up

I thought Gordon played quite poorly on Tuesday lost his footing a lot and his shooting was wayward, I would rather have Woolery in for either of those IMO.

...and the yet again interesting exclusion of Vigs from the matchday squad.

Didn't he cry off on Tuesday saying he was injured?

Wheres Quagmires post gone?

Oh I understand that Pete but we've had no real official word since DF said "We'll take a look at the video of the warm-up" So is he injured or is he "injured".

Needs resolution this whole drama.

He’s on crutches, wasn’t much of a limp though and no cast.

DF on the radio now talking about it, saying he IS injured but that they don't know what or how and they need to get to the bottom of it......I and many Town fans have a theory on that ;)

Tozer in midfield for them, interesting I thought he was very over rated when he was with us at centre back.

Iandolo at left back, Taylor centre mid

Town started brightly, Smith having 3 or 4 awful touches, Dunne lucky to get away with a poor tackle.

Great chance for County, looking a bit shakey at the back from crosses.

Looks like Anderson has done a hamstring.

Anderson seems to have run it off, all Newport last 10 mins. Tozers throw ins are a constant danger easily chucking the ball 50 yards into the box.

Taylor looks comfortable in midfield, Iandolo not so comfy at LB but he looks ok going forwards.

Blimey we might see Brophy!

I hope not, Iandolo is being pressured by Newport down the wing, hardly anything coming down the other wing at all.

Great chance for County, well wide. Still all the attacking play from them.

Dunne, Smith and Mullin having off days so far, but the strikers have no service at all.

Not great so far.  Midfield is non existent.

Poor miss by Mullin after doing the hard work beating his man.

Labadie is a dirty fucker.

Mullin skys another from a similar position, poor.

Smith looking better up against Tozer now, winning a few headers.

poor game

2 mins added, just realised that Goddard was playing!

Well that was rubbish......

Average L2 match, chances for both teams but nothing clear cut, Newport probably just shaded it over all.

I’d say this is a bit kind to us.

I checked the match stats after about 30 mins and was surprised that Newport only had 56% possession as it seemed much more.

That said they’ve only had one clear cut chance

At least the iFollowers have the advantage of surviving that in the warmth.

Newport have had the more attacking pressure but we have had a fair share really, still could go either way probably a single goal will win it.

We have no midfield at all, Anderson the only one seemingly wanting the ball, Dunne and Goddard passengers, Mullin had 2 good chances by put both well over the bar, Smith only starting winning the ball after 35 mins when their centre back went off and Tozer was against him.

Iandolo is being pressurized at LB with Pipe, Ladabie and Nouble all taking him on, he looks lost at times with Preston covering for him often.

No options on the bench other than Woolery to add a bit of pace up front, Gordon could make a difference if he plays to his better standard than he did on Tuesday.

Taylors free kicks and corners have been well off his standard the last 2 or 3 games.

Nouble booked and getting his knickers in a twist!

Good chance for Town, wonder what the odds are on Ladibie or Nouble being sent off! :D

Great overlap and cross by Purkiss poor end product from Iandolo.

Flitcroft needs to make a change.  Bring Woolery or Gordon on for some pace.

Indeed, for Smith or/and Mullin.

Solid stop from RCC.

Hmmm not good, Tozer scores an easy header from a corner.

Tozer? Bloody hell

Absolute bollocks.  Sub should have been made ages ago and why take Goddard off?
Another loss at home to a shit team on the cards.

Spot on, on all counts.

6,764 not a bad crowd, must be 800+ from Wales there.

Brophy coming on for Mullin, too little too late.

Poor subs today from DF, too little too late.

The poor home form continues.

Same old same old. No real quality or domination of games with usual game plan of staying in the game and picking up the scraps. Flitcroft’s subs become increasingly baffling at times, we are a frustrating team to watch and home form is becoming unforgivable.

You are missing the point, we are equally as inept.  Long enough into the season to make judgements now, so I will, without fear of being called negative.  We are rank average.  This lottery style football is awful to watch and has created a season, with maybe one or two games worth of exceptions, where nothing but a lucky break, error in defence or set piece separates the two teams.

For me, Flitcroft brings nothing to the table than any other Div4 journeyman Manager couldn't.  He has, probably, a top 6 budget, so on the balance of a season he'll probably get us into the play offs, but my god it is going to be a shit viewing spectacle.  I don't think we've had more than about 30 mins all season where you could actually make a good case for us being properly on top of a team.  There is not attempt to provide control, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special about how we play.

I probably come from a good place in that I didn't have to witness last season, and I do appreciate we had to completely re-build and start again and change the style.  However, the team shows no signs of change, we play now precisely how we played away at Carlisle, or home against Barnet, or away at Mansfield or at home today.  It is consistently average and I'd question if a top 6 budget should make you no better than any other team (I think FGR looked worse, but that team apart we've looked no better, no worse than any of our opposition).

Yeesh, you really do have to sell your soul to the devil sometimes, thanks a bunch Williams, look what you got us into.  Power - fuck the moaning fans, stick your oar in - if Flitcroft wants new players in January, he gets them with strings.

Awful season, may end in joy, could be mid table mediocrity.  The annoying thing is that our front four is good enough that a sprinkle of style and substance behind them would probably see us stretch this league.  As it is we'll continue with 6/7 months more of this random shit.

On the other hand pre-Flitcroft and new players some fans had real fear of us dropping again

That does pretty much sum it up, if this is Flitcrofts style then it’s almost as bad as Williams but on the end of the spectrum it is a lottery and results have masked a lack of quality. I will say Bury fans were right that all his cliches and sound bites in interviews though, they do get a bit tiresome.
Also the Vigouroux situation still worries me going forward as he seems to like a team of yes men (generally just signs those he’s previously managed) and anyone that deviates gets alienated.

I agree, and Power gets blame for allowing it, but also needs bigger balls now rather than being able to hide behind the "well, you asked me to keep out" argument he could easily do now.  The team under Williams would probably have struggled, this is better than that, but, it is not all it could be.  It is why I remarked i didn't see last season, because this would otherwise be the worst set of performances I can remember since King's time in charge.  Bereft of anything beyond a simple hit and hope style.  If last season hadn't happened, this would be unacceptable, so just because Williams was shit, doesn't mean we can't call this shit, because it is.  I think it is pretty abject for a Manager to create an entire team on a decent budget and provide nothing more than any other team in the same league.  I think Williams and Power deserve all the stick they get for allowing last season to happen, which probably goes back a full year prior to that in reality.

What Rob said and more.

Mid table Div 4 fare. Team with more threat at set pieces won the game.

Anderson and Dunne gave the ball away too often and should have been substituted instead of the two that were.

I'm frozen

Guess Reg still thinks this!
 













  

Flitcroft would get the benefit of the doubt if he could point to something developing, but it isn't.  There is no change in over 20 games, nothing is developing, no partnerships, no little extra edge, no building a style.  It is what it is, call it for that - we hit it long and hope.  We have a good set piece taker and we'll rely on that and some cloggers in midfield and at the back to get it clear.  I'm not suggesting we do anything about it, just venting that it's awful to watch.  I won't be changing my assertion we will get into the play offs - the lottery team will get into the lottery.  I just reckon it could be better than this, no, it should be better than this - and I am consistent, I have said it when we win, because this performance was not that different to us beating teams by 3 goals.  We are not that good, we are not this bad.

We’re fucking Shit. I tend to give flitcroft a pass due to our away form, but he can get fucked if he’s going to moan at the press for being negative and then *continue* to serve up the exact same turgid shite week after fucking week

It’s like that Shane warne quote about Monty Panesar (which I think Robert T has already attributed to us this season). We haven’t played 20 games this season - we’ve played one game, twenty times.

Also to add that Matt Taylor simply doesn’t have the legs to play central midfield anymore

Thank god we have a decent away record.

At home we have made no progress whatsoever from early season 10 games in. This simply has to change

Also to add that Matt Taylor simply doesn’t have the legs to play central midfield any more


He doesn't have to if all he needs to do is hook it on or rake it 40 yards into the corners.

No room for complacency Ronnie. I think some of our fans assume that as Newport were playing in the Hellenic League at Moreton in Marsh, when we were winning Wembley PO's, we should be better than them.

Reality tells us however there's not much between the clubs atm.....

We've  games v the top 3 before the end of the year, + ColU at the CG who we often struggle to beat, so there's reasons to suspect we might be dropping like a stone come January.












  

Left after an hour so can't comment on the goal etc. but the first 60 mins were truly dreadful.  The team were clearly trying but there was nothing there.   

That was fucking terrible, a game with no redeeming features whatever. Apart from the ref, he was OK. But it was a dire game between two dire teams who seemed to be competing to see who could play the least football.

I couldn't believe how many misplaced passes and headers giving up possession we did. Thought we were better than that, though lacking in quality with a weakened team.

Utter crap.  Had a freebee in the sponsors lounge today and the football looked even worse from the Arkells than it normally does from the Town End
Flitcroft had no idea how to change the game.
He's obviously fallen out with Vigs and has no time for the impressive (IMO) Tom Smith.
Harry Smith is a big fairy.
No fucking better than the shit dished up over the previous 2 seasons.
Could be less than 5 thousand soon which is what they deserve.
Utter crap !!

I was sitting near Power last week at Yeovil. Make no mistake he was totally pissed off with the performance first half - what he was saying about Norris I can’t repeat.

But when the winner went in he went apeshit as much as any Town fan. So I don’t think he will put up with Flitters and an ‘average’ 4th Div team for ever, even if he does want to sell up. (Along with every other 3rd/4th Div Chairman.)

Today was a waste of a 200 mile journey for me, and about £60+.

To be honest I can see Power losing patience with Flitcroft before long, certainly a lot sooner than he did with Williams. He’s given Flitcroft a decent budget and he has wasted it all on a team of journeymen cloggers with no quality or resale value and alienated the one player who did have some potential. If we did go up we’d need pretty and entire new XI and a new style of play so it’s not even building for the future.  Flitcroft spouts all this bollocks about changing the culture at the club, but if this is his ‘cultire’ it’s not going to be much fun but it’s probably another one of the meaningless cliches he throws into every interview. We’ve been overran at times by some truly awful teams this season and our smash and grabs away from home have papered over gaping cracks.

Will be interesting to see how Power plays this.

Any post match comments from Flitcroft today ?

well, today was shit.

I got to B&M Bargains, had a panic I forgot to turn the gas hob off. Rushed back (with kids) and found it off when I got there.

Consequently we missed the first 6 minutes and I wish it had been 84 more minutes. For only in the 4 minutes of injury time did we ever look like scoring.

Newport were shit too, but a bit better than us in midfield. And so I don't begrudge them the win.

We didn't create, and Flitcroft didn't change anything to make sure we did.

I don't fault the effort really, but ...

Oh, and I don't rate Smith.

Humph.

Yes. The usual bollocks:

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/sport/swindon_town_2014/15684211.Town_boss_rues_lack_of_conviction_after_slipping_to_home_defeat/

Not ruthless enough? You’ve got to create chances to be ruthless, I do sometimes wonder what game he watches.

That was as bad an advertisement for football as there can be. Newport were truly shit but we managed to be worse. I know we've got injuries but Flitcroft has got to take some shit today. I felt sorry for Dunne who had to do the work of 3. How many more times do we need to prove that Goddard is fucking useless in midfield. Taylor has no legs and was another waste of space in midfield. His crossing was crap today as well. Why not keep him at left back. Here's a novel idea, why not put a midfielder in midfielder. Give Smith a run and that gives less disruption to the team and at least you've got 2 grafters and would allow a more attacking midfielder alongside.
The midfield is a real problem and has been all season.
Shitty goal to give away but we couldn't really moan too much.
Ref was probably the best I've seen at the CG this season - the lowest of bars though.
Good support from Newport today.
Lucky we've got a couple of decent home games coming up over X Mas as I can see crowds going right down the shitter.
In my opinion though this is still considerably better than last season - at least we've got effort. Get the midfield sorted and we could just do it although I still think top 10.

He does talk some rubbish at times.  Norris has scored most of his goals from penalties, where you damn well should be ruthless.  It goes to show his thought process though, everything else is being played to plan, he just feels we haven't put enough chances on target.   That's because what we saw today is what we have seen every week, and it relies on the front men putting the scraps away, nothing more taxing than that in the tactics sessions i doubt.

Yup, this is the plan. We play percentage football, because that's Flitcroft's brief - do what it takes to get the team to be effective and get us up - and that's the way he thinks we will do it.

Oh, er, yeah, yeah it is.

Oh, and the ref was OK.

And Vigs is the better keeper. But if what is reported is true then he's coming across as a bit of a wally- that it sounded from the Flitcroft interview he declared himself injured...

Furious.  Went to the match for the first time in ages without the children and the bloody referee wasn't shit!

Honestly I was waiting for that opportunity to shout cunt loudly in public but he was perfectly adequate.

Mind you football was still a pile of bollocks.

Haven't read back yet.

Flitcroft has to take a kick in the bollocks for this one.

Should of changed it well well before he did...all around me saw it was coming.

Too little, too late.

Equally, not impressed with a manager conducting that business in public. Looks like he's more keen on establishing his own side of the story than getting a
 good player back in the team. "Team more important than ego" applies to the manager as well, in fact all the more so.

You could have shouted it at most of our midfield tbf

Hope whatever has happened becomes public as both are coming across as a pair of twats at the moment. Flitcroft is showing piss poor man management though and hardly surprising he failed higher up the leagues where egos are more prevalent.

We had a midfield?

Was at the game on a freebie as well so got to hear what Flitcroft had to say before the match. Knows he has a lot of work to do to try a build a "team" ethic as he started from scratch and looks to what Sean Dyche has done at Burnley as an example as what can be achieved. Has agents already in contact about January and looking to get players in without a doubt. The Vigeroux situation was questioned and was painfully obvious to me that that it is a player thinking he is bigger than the club, so no real surprise there. He would like to see the younger players making a breakthrough but knows that they need more time to build strength and fitness for Divvy 2, mentioned that Gordon was out of his depth at Grimsby and he is one of the better youger ones. The injuries have hit the squad hard and difficult to replace like for like.

Regarding the match, it was a pile of crap from start to finish, looked like we were at the start of the season where no-one knew who was supposed to be doing what. Luckily the Stevenage game does not mean a thing in real terms jut get it out of the way with no further injuries and then move on.



 

Newport trashed the Groves Company on Fleet st apprently

true, but he's between a rock and a hard place on this. say nothing and people speculate.

sadly think it's increasingly unlikely we'll see him again. and that's a shame as he's clearly our best keeper.

Fine, so say something (briefly) that plays it down and deal with whatever it is internally. Instead he's (presumably deliberately) added fuel to the fire and invited speculation. Weak, poor man management

Caused thousands of pounds worth of improvements

We appear to have decided to play long from minute 1, which didn't work.
Did Smith touch the ball in their penalty area?
I felt sorry for Iandolo being dragged off (Taylor and Dunne were playing the exact same position in the first half)

Problem is he hung Vigouroux out to dry the moment the ban happened, he was overly critical of him in the press so can only imagine it was the same behind the scenes.  Seeing the way Flitcroft is on the sidelines towards the officials I’d have trouble biting my tongue if he took me to task for something similar. It’s piss poor man management on the face of it and is coming across as a shit Di Canio marginalising players that should be playing, it’s a repeat of the Caddis fiasco. I remember reading the player churn at Bury was ridiculously high so hardly surprising if this is the norm for him...

 I may be in the minority, but I think Flitters has got the his metier spot on.  He's halted the slide to non league, and we're at least semi competitive in most games. OK that we've lost as many home games in 3 months as we'd lost in the previous 3 seasons in Div 4, doesn't look good, but needs to be seen in light of our current status.

Cup game coming up, which is in itself a novelty.. let's at least avoid a replay either way

The above from Flitcroft concerns me... that rather large part of the game dictates how much pressure you're under and what chances you create.

Flitters probably knows his football history and Town's role in developing the long ball game...

The long-ball game is a tactical gambit in thrall to ludicrously minute statistical data, so it's with some delicious glee that we can pinpoint its genesis almost to the exact minute. At around 3.53pm on 18 March 1950 – sometime during the half-time interval of the Third Division (South) match between Swindon Town and Bristol Rovers – the accountant and former RAF wing commander Charles Reep whipped out a notepad and pencil from his overcoat, and prepared to begin taking notes. Many, many, many, many notes.

Reep was embarking on the first great statistical analysis of football, and he quickly came to the conclusion that "85% of goals tend to be scored from passing sequences that involved a small number of passes, usually three or less" and that "two-thirds of goals come from balls recovered in the last third of the pitch". Teams should, he argued, adjust their tactics accordingly. There was no point playing possession football; better instead to hoof it upfield and deal with what unfolds there. (A simplification of his theories, but not by much; for "hoof", read "reacher", which is what Reep called "a single pass from the defensive third to the attacking third of the pitch".

Most teams in English football play some sort of long ball game.... however there are degrees of directness.

Gets a mention here as well.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-analytics-can-teach-us-about-the-beautiful-game/

The overall conclusion (from 2014) appears to be that tiki-taka is the way to go.
Come back Luke all is forgiven.  :eek:

If only the rest of his teammates could be on the same wavelength when Dunne moves the hot potato on first time without looking.

If you'd told me that during my early years watching Swindon - when Swindon vs Cambridge was regularly covered by the nationals (yes, honestly) in a kind of Hoddle vs Beck/beautiful game vs long ball/good vs evil way - I would have been gutted.

Or maybe he just thinks that percentage football is the most effective way to play in Div 4?

Whereas Williams' team was the exact opposite, all about possession in the middle, nothing in either box. Shame we have to lurch from one extreme to the other - somewhere between the two approaches lies a decent game of football.

I completely agree

I'd much rather watch a bit of long ball - done well - than the turgid rubbish you see in italy and spain.
I loved it when England beat Spain in a friendly a few years ago with about 30% possession

Much as I loved the hoddle/Ardiles "football" era, I also loved the macari "Hoofball"

Macari's team was just very good at playing accurate long balls to players perfectly suited to playing that way.
Macari deserves a lot more credit than he gets, because of "Newcastle-gate"

As many of you have already said, we're woeful at home - performance and results-wide.

As fellow old cunts will know, Macari cobbled together a team consisting largely of misfits, bad boys and alco / gambling / sex aholics in the 80's, and was successful. We'll never know exactly how much influence the old brown envelopes had on the motivational aspects of that side, but they were fit and could play football as well as hoof it when needed (Ardilles proved they could play football when he arrived)

Whilst times have changed a bit, at this level it's still possible to put together a side that will compete on fairly low wages. Flitcroft has done OK so far, but has quite a bit more work to do if we're going to get out of the basement at the first time of asking.

I don't like what I'm hearing about the handling of Vigs. Granted, Dicanio used to get his word in first whenever he fell out with players - Caddis, Clarke etc. so there's nothing wrong with Flitcroft doing the same. However, Vigs is worth money in a squad full of distinctly premium average players, and we cant offload him or anyone else until January, so it would be unwise to handle whatever is going on in public. Also, by doing what he's doing, he's unnecessarily increasing the pressure on Charles-Cook and himself because everyone knows Vigs should be playing.

The cliche-ridden post match interviews and northern anecdotes were mildly amusing during the summer, but now the winter is kicking in and the season half-way point is upon us, I'm expecting him to take things a bit more seriously. Also I'm expecting him to do likewise with fan opinions; we all know Taylor is a great asset with his trusty left foot, but his legs can't hack it in the middle (he wouldn't fucking be anywhere near SN1 on a match day if he could) so play him where he's effective.  Tom Smith is young and relatively inexperienced, but is a right handful and has a great engine - whereas Goddard is severely limited. Up top, Harry is a Swindon and District player who's punching above his weight.

Can't be arsed to say more, but I'm as pissed off as everyone else.

The honeymoon is well and truly over for 'Flitters' and 'Fuch' I think.

I prefered the Macari teams, they played solid at the back and everyone wanted to play for and with each other and our fitness levels were amazing, we also played a lot of very good football under him too it wasn't all hoofball by any means.

This season when we get the ball down we can play some good football but all too often we tend to hoof it up to Smith or Norris and with respect to them both neither is a proper target man and if we do want to play that way then we need somebody built for it like Akinfenwa, Nouble or Obika (not that I am advocating getting him back as hes burnt his ties).

Smith is far too lightweight and Norris not good enough to play the role.

For me a good target man would be a priority in January, send back Smith to 'Wall and try and get somebody else in instead who is stronger and can hold the ball up.

I think we also need at least 1 or even 2 central midfielders, Elsnik looks good when he is fit but Linganzi is frustrating and Dunne seems lost in a lot of games.

With those 2/3 additions I think we will make the play offs and maybe more as this league is really pretty shit and no teams running away with it, all it takes is another run of 3 or 4 wins and we would be top.

I managed to make the game at half time so only caught the second half, wish I hadn't bothered. Piss poor really except the last 2 minutes but that was only because Newport sat with a flat back 8 and invited us to pump balls at them. It was pretty clear after about 5 minutes that the 4-3-3 wasn't really working so frustrating that Flitcroft didn't make changes sooner. I actually thought Brophy did ok when he came on too.

In all fairness, the side that started going on that little run has been decimated by injuries. I think any team would struggle with that level of absence.

Injuries yet again seem to be fucking us up badly, when you look at our injured list almost all would get straight back into the current team...

Vigs(maybe or may not be injured), Elsnik, Hussey, Conroy, McDermott and Linganzi.

And Norris

Oops yeah forgot him.

This league is "really pretty shit" because it is Div  4 and is made up of shit teams. Swindon being one of them.

It is and we are, but it won't take much to rise slightly above their level of shitness.

And I come back to the same point I've made before, it wasn't this shit the last couple of times we've been down here. The standard really is a lot worse.

I remember it being this shit. Just not us.

Yep that’s exactly how I see it as well. Our style being similar to most teams this time around makes it look worse

I remember it being more fun last time we were here, but I can't remember much at all about the standard of the opposition.

Like JJ said, it may not take much to make the difference and I expect we'll see some new arrivals in January. We can't expect Flitcroft to get it right straight away with what's almost a completely new squad. The nutty Italian had a massive budget to play with.

We won the league by 5 points. We were much better than the rest of the teams in the league

I remember the league being pretty shit but as others say we were better, the same could easily be true this season with just a couple of new signings.

The mental Italian used 41 first team players that season, our budget was probably 4 or 5 times the size it is now, there is no comparison, Paolo wanted the best....the board gave him what he wanted.

I am sure Flitcroft knows exactly what positions need strengthening in January, and its not that many TBH to make us competitive, probably 2 or 3 new signings at most that won't disrupt what we do already have.

The league is and has always been shit, we have been lucky in the past with Macari, Wise/Sturrock and PdC in that we were better than almost every other team in those seasons but the standard has always been shit in Div 4.

Under PdC there was a massive "feel good" factor in and around the club, we felt we were going places, that the manager cared, we had an owner willing to invest in the team at the time, but things change, lets just get out of this fucking division and start to build upon it again.

We are in Div 4 completely on merit.  It's that rise bit which is difficult as we've only a few obvious advantages over most of the sides in in Div 4.

Our current status needs pointing out... there are only 3 sides below us who've not relatively recently  been in the non league namely Crewe, BPV, and Chesterfield, all 3 are presently in the mix to drop. Power can say what he likes, but realistically for this season Flitters' job is to halt the slide, and begin the process of re-building the club.  So far he's done OK, but the rest of 2017 is crucial, we've got the top 3, top 2 at home and ColU who we often find difficult to beat at the CG. Crewe away may present an opportunity but we don't need to enter 2018 sliding again.

It doesn't matter how may times you say it Reg, survival, or "halting the slide" is not the realistic expectation.

It's not the expectation of the manager, the club or (most of) the fans, and nor should it be. Start accepting we're a middle-of-the-road L2 club and you never know, we might start becoming one. Not going up this year is a failure for this club, this manager, this squad and our fans.

I think people need to remember where we were end of last season and the radical surgery that needed doing. When we've been relegated before I don't think we've ever been in such a state on the pitch. Gutless capitulation after gutless capitulation interspersed with Colketts fancy flicks and Boos inability to be a footballer culminating in total tedium and soul destroying Saturdays.
We were a team capable of going straight out of the league. The first thing was to stop that happening. We've shown that is extremely unlikely to happen.
We've got a team that will compete to the last minute and leave it on the pitch. That's a good start. There is a reasonably good level of organisation. Defence is not bad. The forward line isn't too bad. The midfield is the problem. Neither supporting the defence of helping create. Get this right and who knows. Easily sorted if there is a desire to do so although Flitcrofts comments about anything outside the 18 yard boxes being unimportant worry me.
As for Flitcroft, I think he's done alright. Got it wrong Saturday. Couldn't really care about the spat with Vigs.
My expectation was top 10 outside play offs and that remains. A good January and who knows.

I don’t buy the ‘going out the leGue’ shit. We were a helluva lot worse in 2010-11, and even before the Di Canio announcement I don’t remember the same level of pessimism

Pretty much spot on, although pre season I was expecting/hoping for a top 7, I still see nothing to change that.

Get a tackling midfielder and a creative midfielder (Elsnik is not bad when hes back to fitness) and one target man and we can easily compete at the top.

Excellent post, agree with everything said,  but still live in hope that we will improve enough to secure promotion automatically,  can't be bothered with all that play off/Wembley crap. January should be the point where with a decent midfielder or two we see the tide turn.

As far as I can tell, nobody believes that we are suddenly going to go crashing down the table. We just get the odd cryptic hints from an individual will never go so far as to directly predict that we'll lose a game, but is never afraid to point out that we might do.  ::)

Stating the obvious, we can cope very well away - we have won 70% of our games, most of them quite comfortably. Each of the 3 defeats have been narrow, and they have usually been due to a late goal.

When we have won home games, it has been against form teams - Wycombe hadn't lost away in 8 months, plus Stevenage and Cambridge had started the season pretty well. Stating the obvious again, our record at home to out-of-form lower table drudge is appalling and is the reason why we are now outside of the playoffs.

If Flitcroft cannot quickly find a way to significantly improve our record in such games then he will deserve to come under pressure.

I think Chesterfield and Vale's early season struggles is a good indication of where we would have been if we hadn't changed things up. I think if Williams was still in charge we'd be bottom 5 or 6. Most of the games I've seen us pick up points I've honestly felt like last season would have been a defeat.

Another season of Williams and his tippy tappy technical bollocks would have finished me off, and not with a happy ending.

The way I see it now, the football is awful, the manager may not be up to it and we may get stranded in this league. But I've restored belief we are trying to get out the bloody thing as a priority, rather than shop windowing a bunch of kids first to a set plan.

And yeah, it is just opinion about where we'd be had things not changed. Football wise I think we'd
be struggling. Fanbase wise we'd be dead.

We have hope.

Exactly how I feel Batch. Although I think I'm a bit more optimistic in that I still think we'll have a tilt at promotion this season. As in we may not get promoted but we'll be close enough for long enough that I'll be able to keep kidding myself until March or even possibly April.

Last season i was the hope that got us. Every. Bloody. Time.

I feel different about it now. It's more a hope based on actual results rather than just hope on it's own.

I lost the hope last season after the January window transfers.

That's the fundamental difference, I don't turn up expecting us to be rolled over this year.

Whether its entertaining or not is a separate but valid argument.