Thetownend.com

Seeing as nearly all the reaction so far has been positive, some sobering thoughts on a  typically bewidering night at the CG.

Performance was absolutely dismal. Two poor performances and six points. This is either a truly awful league or we've used all our luck up already. Or somewhere in between.

It wasn't so much the abject lack of quality on offer that was disappointing, it was the way we set out to play: full backs repeatedly hitting fifty yard half-witted diagonal balls into a congested area on the edge of their box. Nope. On the few occasions that we tried to get it down and wide, a player as hopeless as Ricky Shakes caused all sorts of problems. Every set piece: intricacy over simplicity. Every outcome: waste.

For all the hullaballoo about fitness and organisation, Barnet, Barnet! were sharper and more cohesive, though utterly bereft of threat. Their goal came from a horrrendous Frank Spencer sequence of defending. I seriously can't remember either goalkeeper making ANY saves. Mr Wise will have to learn about this dungeon division very, very quickly. I shudder to think what the reaction would have been like if this was an AK team.....

But, for all that, uplifting too. Queues to get in, and buy stuff from the shop that all are glad to bear. The attendance being clapped. Graz getting a warm reception. We will (surely!?) get better. There was an almost tangible desperation in the crowd, please let us be quite good again, which will inspire (or choke) the team. Christian Roberts, head and shoulders above the rest, stood alone in being able to offer class and entertainment.

And the winning goal, surely one of the finest to grace the ground in a long, long time, deserved six points in itself.

Enjoy the ride, but don't expect a smooth one.

cheer up it wasnt that bad

as for Barnet looking sharper I disagree, towards the end of the game it was all Swindon and they couldnt get near us

tbh, i have to agree with some of that. imo, the performance against barnet left a lot to be desired. for long periods of play they looked the better side and tried hard to play competent football. i think we were lucky to get the 3, and by the sounds of it, lucky for the 3 away at pool. but, the points is all that matters, so bring it on

Another one of these "I'll post an essay therefore I must be correct" threads.

Whats done is done. 6 points out of 6 and a bit of luck (not like were due any or anything  :nuts: )

We need to look forward to Rochdale and beyond...not constantly bang on about whats been achieved (yes achieved) so far.

2 games into the season............not long enough to judge anything.

Look @ City last season. Abysmal start and ended up one of the most in form teams close to play offs.  All I'm saying is that we haven't peaked early however haven't had the chance to do anything to warrant all this "were were dismal etc."

People who criticise after two performances are very narrow minded and don't encourage confidence.

On a more sourer note that the previous post, no the performances havent been perfect, but the results have

However, Wise is clever enough to see the small cracks that have been papered over by the results, were as Kingy and Iffy would ignore them.

We won, but Wise still picked out our crap set pieces, Pook was awful  and we lacked expirence in midfield, again Wise saw this and changed it at half time....King would have waited till the 80th minute or something.

Wise will keep them on the ground, he wont let them get above their station he knows full well we've won nothing yet

but as fans, lets at least enjoy winning....its been a while!

And we seem to be forgetting that we've come up against two teams that have played very well. Ill doubt if we see much better opposition performances throughout the rest of the season. If we can win while we play crap. then happy days :D  :beers:

Barnet IMO didn't play very well in the sense that I dont think they will be going anywhere this season.

Its a known fact that good teams can play crap and win - we NEVER did that last season. Played crap and lost end of.

On that note, I am confident that we will come up with much better performances.

didnt you predict us to lose the game though....

 :D

The resident pessimist has some faith  8)

Yes. Winning two games in a row (in the ways we did) is not the norm for STFC :D  However you predicted us to win 5 nil.

I'd say we were both very inaccurate however your optimism is superb!  :mrgreen:

Isnt wasnt quite 5-0 but we won.... 8)

And you say you only have between 0-10 units per week ! :soapy tit wank:

although i agree the simple fact is we deserved to win on tuesday

lack of sleep... :?

Top post  :D

At the end of the day its the start of the season.  The current Swindon squad have only played with each other for 6-7 weeks.  We all know the performances haven't been of the highest quality - but we've picked up six points.  10 years down the line when you see the scoreline  Swindon 2-1 Barnet, you won't be saying 'i remember that game, its the one we played really crap but still managed to win'.

I think Wise and everyone else at the club realise that there is room for improvement at Swindon.  Judge Town 10-15 games into the season when the team have had more experience with one another and when Wise has drilled more tactics into Town.

did you go up to hartlepool?

can't comment on the performance up there - although giving away two penalties isn't exactly comforting - but i thought our performance against barnet was far from dismal. it wasn't impressive, it wasn't even efficient but it was just enough. it was sufficient to edge out a fairly solid and hard-working team.



set pieces are valuable at all levels of the game and league 2 isn't any different in that respect. the players seem to be working hard on set pieces and were out on the pitch hours before the game practicing them. the delivery needs to be better and the attacking of the ball needs to be better, but that will come. i hope.



disagree there as well, i think it was our fitness and fresh substitutes that won us the game at the end. last season, we'd have been chasing shadows by 70 minutes. however, barnet were a solid unit and with warhurst and hessenthaler in the middle they'll make things difficult for most teams but the key thing is that wise recognised this and amended the problem by taking off the ineffective pook and replacing him with evans, which gave our midfield the chance to get back into the game. king would have just waited until 80 minutes and put three men up front.



definitely inspire. definitely. mark my words 8)

What a load of shit.

Fuck off, please. I hate negative people.

Hello, forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it League 2 football we are watching?  If people want nice passing moves, 90 mins of sustained skillfullness and that little bit of extra quality, might I suggest attending the CG this season is not going to be your thing.

We are in a shit league (yes, it is) which is just a bit shitter than last seasons one.

We won't have great players in our team

We will see long balls from time to time

We will see players fall over the ball every so often

We will see wingers who don't quite have that killer ball, or killer pace

We will see midfielders that can't quite pick out the perfect pass 90% of the time

However, what seems likely is the other side will be a little worse at many games.

Just enjoy scoring more than the opposition and remember, we got 2 promotions in the 80's playing some god awful football, but it was damned fun to watch still.

Good post.

wasn't that post negative?

potty mouth, good you were polite after though

surely the best response would've been to ignore this thread/post?

Completely agree, slagging off set pieces etc. is daft really, fact is the players aren't in higher leagues for a reason usually, if you want fluid football then get a season ticket at the Emerates Stadium.

Surely there's no need for a post like this - someone who is new to the forum and takes the time and effort to express their opinion?

Looked like two teams getting to grips with the start of the new season to me.

I agree with most of it, but our set pieces should be better and hence justifiably critisised.  

There is no excuse for a professional footballer to continually hit the first defender with a free kick/corner.

Absolutely correct.  If our players could put together smooth, quick, passing to feet moves all the time they wouldn't be here.  We have to accept our limitations and enjoy what they did/do well, not focus on their weaknesses that they are bound to have at this level.  Well said that man!

Christy, If you think that was dismal last night did you go at all last season?

Now that was dismal. Or are you a ex-stayaway expecting us to batter everyone this season?

The team looked better in general than in 95% of the games I watched last season. Thats good enough for me.

Work rate was higher, organisation was better and there was more cutting edge up front. It wasnt perfect, but then I wasnt expecting it to be either.

There were some long balls, but as others have pointed out this is L2, not the champions league. players have limitations. I'd be inclined to say we actually had a few decent passing moves on tuesday night rather than focus on the long balls.

I'm never a fan of this whole realistic negative optinion lets just enjoy the ride we have had loads of negative times lets try to enjoy the good times.

Moaning about performances is all good and well but to quote a cliche 'great teams win when there not at there best' just look at Chelsea how many times last season did you see them play poorly but still pick up 3 points, in this league were going to have to fight, work hard and play poorly at times to grind out wins but the end result is simply we need wins and out of 2 games we have a 100% record cant ask for anymore than that.

I'm far more optimistic that we havent been fantastic as yet but still won both if we keep winning and then our form starts improving then teams in this division will be scared to play us, I for one am still on cloud 9, bring on the season and promotion.  8)

The performance on Tuesday was better than pretty much any game I saw last year, perhaps bar City home and away! (Which shows how much difference our support made imo!)

We were not great, but we played SOME nice football in our better patches, and how you can say Barnet looked fitter is beyond me as we peppered their end towards the end even if there were few clear chances.

And they only had about 2 shots on target all game wit ha strikeforce that is keeping Graz on the bench. Defending like that is what could help us do well this year, not walking it round the opposition

Piemonte speaks truly. We mixed the game up quite well, and looked fitter near the end, no comparison with last season's mainly hoofball.

There seem to be two main streams of disagreement to my original post.

I completely understand the 'we won, so shut up and enjoy it' responses.  There's logic there.  However,  I still think we'll have to improve significantly to keep winning, and it's hardly demanding Champions League standard to expect more than three shots on target against a woeful Barnet team, is it?  Of the 15/16 games I saw last season, I'd say this wasn't as good as (top of my head for starters) Yeovil, Huddersfield away, City, Colchester, Swansea, Bournemouth, Walsall, Gillingham.... I believe we're capable of getting better and will, but well remember that it took years of misery to get out of Division Four last time.....and won't get too excited, too soon!

I don't understand the point of the abusive, sniping and dismissive responses.  Is questioning the tactical approach not allowed until we've lost a few games - when it will be open house.  And then some.  A fine welcome to the TEF indeed.  And even if I was a newbie or a returning stayaway, what's the problem?

i've certainly got sympathy for you mate. you make a completely well reasoned and largely completely true post and get shot down because we've won twice?

for fucks sake people i expected better from some, but just because we've won twice in a shight division people think the set up is exempt of criticism? what a load of bollocks. like christy said imagine if king was in charge, there would've been more than one of these threads.

there's no doubt we're riding the crest of a wave and long may it continue, there's nothing better than breaking 7k on a tuesday and having that real buzz about the town and the club again.

but as far as me and clearly christy is concerned, we're all town fans and all want to win, but if you think the last two performances merit mass celebrations, you're sadly mistaken. for fucks sake DV85 is predicition 5-0 wins. get a grip people.

i'd give anything for us to carry on getting better and grab a play off if not auto promotion place, but its not as easy as turning in a largely rubbish performance and waiting for a wonder strike in the 93rd minute to win games.

just for one minute imagine if that shot had hit the post, how differently would you have perceived the performance?

We are going to piss this league - FACT!

I do not think for one minute this season will be easy but from what I have seen so far this team is perfectly capable of doing well this year!

Barnet were never looking better than Swindon in my opinion and if one team was going to win it going into the last 20 minutes you would have said it would be us. The fact we won makes it easier to be optimistic yes, but we were easily the better team out there

I still dont agree. To call that "utterly dismal" is just silly in the context of some of the performances last season. I'd agree to an extend that some people are going over the top, and yes there is still significant room for improvement. (most of which can be achieved by training more on set pieces and replacing Pook with Evans)

Compare Tuesday night to Tranmere at home last season also on a tuesday night. THAT was utterly dismal.

At the end of each game Wise, Poyet and Tuttle get together before they meet the press and go through the team player by player. They look at each performance and 'rate' it.

They all know that we are far from the finished article, a fact openly admitted by DW in his post match press conferences when he says that there is a lot of work to do and a long way to go.

To date he has spent nothing on transfers, only on wages! I don't believe that this is by accident. If he has a budget set by the board he doesn't need to waste money early on. If things aren't as they should be at xmas he will have all of his money available to do sort it out.

We are no where near perfect, no one at the club has said that we are. The only people saying that we will p==s this league is the people on the fans websites.

Lets measure our enthusiasm with a little reality, if we were playing attractive passing football we wouldn't have the players we have. DW clearly sees ability there, he's stacking his reputation on it, and i for one believe that that means a lot to him as he is a proud man with terrific standards.

Give him a chance, give them a chance and support them as best we can, whilst appreciating that this is a steep learning curve for all.

Roll on Rochdale!!

Excellent post broomfield, spot on the money!!