Thetownend.com

I'm going to say it before anyone else does and probably get slated for it..... Ok we are told to "give the guy a chance" but I can already see the Maurice Malpas experiment is going to go horribly wrong. We dont look like scoring and our players confidence looks shocking. His tactics are shit and now our fans are starting to see what Motherwell fans were saying.

Did this guy get his coaching badges etc from the Andy King school of tactics.

Realistically Malpas is going nowhere however something needs to change.... BRING BACK BYRNE!

fuck off gaz, one pissing game.

it was all roses after the cheltenham game...

gazza in knee jerk reaction shocker

It's not just one game though is it. We are playing like a pub team since he came here.

Malpas should be given more time, but I'd like to see Williams given the boot and get in a decent experienced coach to work alongside MM and DB.

Williams doesn't seem to add much to the set up, apart from his darts.

no we fucking havent.....

Please provide some examples of when we've played like a pub team?

Im not saying I agree or disagree with anything anyone has said on here however one thing I will say is the way we played under Byrne was superb at times.

Akishodi looks like a pub player, albeit a very quick one.

Brighton at home !!! :shock:

The problem today was that we couldn't handle Walsall's front 3 system. They'd obviously done their homework on Macnamee on doubled up on him all game.

That said, Malpas didn't show much tactical nouse to try and change things around apart from throwing another striker on when we were already 2-0 down.

Key words -  AT TIMES

ok like today, Northampton, Crewe, Notts Forest, Huddersfield... oh I'm sorry i get what your saying. Pub teams give more entertainment?? You tell me if we have had say.. more than 5 shots on target in all these games put togather. FUCKING SHAMBLES. MALPAS OUT.

I know it's a knee jerk reaction but im still not sure that we appointed the right man in the first place?

Crewe was dreadful   :(

Whilst Northampton wasnt brilliant, it was far from fucking pub team.

Also for large parts of the game we competed well with Nottm Forest and didnt look too out of our depth

Look the point im trying to make is earlier in the saeson we looked good and maybe would have taken something from Crewe, Huddersfield etc, but for fuck sake, we can't even manage a shot on goal in most of our games.

Today we looked like a group of players that were total strangers to each other and we seemed to have zero motivation.

It is no co-incidence that since Malpas has arrived:

1) Even the normally reliable consistant performers ala Ifil- are not performing and making silly mistakes
2) He seems unable to get anything like the  best from the players. We knew the side is not he finished article however performance levels since he took over have taken a sharp dip
3) The football is totally uninspiring-crowd is quiet as they have nothing to cheer about
4) Tactically he does not have a clue
5) He has turned us from a decent mid to upper table side into relegation fodder.

We wre better when Byrne was in charge- at least we producd some decent entertaining performances. So far Malpas is living up to his reputation

Malpas out

Hes no manager - Ive given him his chance

Thats our worst defeat since Iffy was in charge ... Bart says it all really

Here we go. He's only been here a month. Give the bloke a fucking chance  :-))(

With all due respect Jock, how on earth do you know? We had all this a while back when Mike Walsh was Assistant Manager and I had to come to his rescue by defending his magnificant cone gathering skills.

Seriously, how can any of us know what any coach/assistant manager adds to the team? What did Kevin Summerfield contribute when Sturrock was in charge? :shrug:

BTW, a 136 check out is not to be sneezed at :wink:

I'm just going to say that on the subject of Malpas, I fully intend to change my mind on a weekly basis on whether I'd prefer him in or out until the end of the season.  If we win, hes in if we lose hes out = simple  8)

This website will result in me smashing my laptop! Fucking fickle twats

Night

Shock horror! We get a bad result (and it does sound pretty dire, I'll grant you that) and Bart comes out the woodwork :?  I wouldn't mind but what comments did you post after the Cheltenham game? or the Luton game? You moaning fucker.

And fatbury....fuck off.

^^^ What OST said.

 :goodpost: That's the way forward.

True... if you read my post I said, realistically he is not going anywhere and that something has to change. so what is it that needs to change?

It aint one game though

The football has been dire since he took over

I was tempted to start a thread entitled "How long until Bart posts"

Bart, why did you only feel the need to post after a bad result/performance???

Granted, there are too many performances like this then some questions need to be answered regarding MM. But somebody recently posted the games/points ratio of MM compared with Byrne and Sturrock and MM was top by far.

Again I have copied the link to this thread and will save it for Tuesday and or the Leeds match should we do well.

To be fair though the football under Wise and Sturrock was pretty gash at times as well.

apart from, shall we saw Swansea home, Walsall away, Forest at home and Cheltenham at home...

I repeat, in case you missed it the first time Bart, you are just a moaning fucker.



FACT!

OST did you go today?

We never played badly under sturrock did we. Its not like we lost 3-0 to stockport under sturrock, or looked unimpressive against yeovil this season. Or lost 3-1 to cheltenham earlier this season under sturrock. We're mid table league one, we're gonna have bad results and we're going to have good results. Its the way it goes

That batch i agree with we should send him back and get a youth teamer in.

Barts right though the football side of things has been perfetic i grant him that :x

malpas has the charisma of a slug and aint set the world alight. but fucks sake he's been here for about a month!

No I did not Bart. That is not the point. I am not disagreeing with what you said about the game today. What I am saying is, you NEVER have anything good to say after we have played well which makes you a moaning fucker. Do you deliberately miss the point of what people say as well as being a moaning fucker?????

You're all moaning fuckers

Stop moaning.

you could understand a lack of passion pre malpas as the players were being fucked about with their wages and even thought the club and their jobs might be gone at any moment.but yesterday passion,effort,pride you would see more in a kids game down the park thiss morning.we were 6 points off the play offs and a game in hand now were 8 points off relegation and the fans are back to booing half time and singing what a laod of rubbish at full time. what a waste of £20 is malpas scottish for iffy.

I didnt go yesterday but Malpas has to be given at least to the end of the season and calling for his head nows seems a bit daft to me.He does seem to be making some odd decisions though.I think he would get away with  a bit more if he didn't have such a dour personality

 Iffy is Scottish, so I guess Iffy is Scottish for iffy.

 FWIW my take is that probably Malpas/Byrne/ Williams isn't working out.

  AF was obviously grateful for teh job B/W had done, being a decent bloke, didn't want to sack them (also probably didn't want the extra expense) so they got thrown in together to make do and mend.

   Williams I believe is on some sort of trial basis....so may well be favourite to go....AF may well be persuaded by MM, that DB has to go.

   A simlar breajkdown happened years ago between a Mr L Macari and a Mr H Gregg.

My own take is win, lose or draw we won't know the full extent of things until after the summer (i.e. next season) when he's had chance to shape his own team. Even if we win promotion (:)) he's still got Sturrocks squad so we still wouldn't know if he can do the job. Similarly if we go on a bad run you can't say he's a failure. As you say, t's all far too early to judge.

I guess that's what happens when a manager leaves, players go, players come in. That's why we need stability and I guess that;s why Malpas was chosen in the first place.



That, and many other reasons. His previous managerial record, strange tactics at times, the  fans are also suffering from bignamemanagerloss syndrome (It's happened before, Roy Evans left and King came back. This time Sturrock has left and Malpas has been brought in). It all means a number of fans are ready to turn  on him already. :roll:

I won't be getting on his back. But I am concerned just I was when he was appointed in the first place.

Points per game:

Malpas = 1.38
Sturrock = 1.47
Byrne = 1.11

Look how spectacular we were before Malpas. Get a fucking grip people  :-))(

I'm not fickle, I never wanted the fucker in the first place  :P

In all seriousness, at the end of the day he's probaly still settling in, he's got a lot of shit players in his squad and I wouldn't say we're underachieving... we're a mid-table side.

What has to be said is that with Fitton on board, that has to change in the summer, we can't be a load of also-rans with our new financial clout next season

I think I predicted 16th for this season, so all our Managers have been exceeding my expectations generally.

We are a mid table team and by that measure we'll win as many as we lose.  We have come through a very turbulent period for the club and now have some foundations to build on.  I'm not going to start judging anyone until the beginning of next season, when we've had a few months to settle everything down.

what else is there to do? 8)

The majority of us expected mid-table this season, and so far its proving to be what we'll get (bar either a horrendous/unbeaten run til the end of the season). Next season we should realistically push for play-offs.

i can put up with losing but being bored shitless for £20 and 1 shot on target a game isn,t my cup of tea. :cry:

We have beaten relegation fodder Luton and Cheltenham.  Torquay United arguably would have had more shots on target against Huddersfield, Forest and Walsall.  I will take that back, Salisbury City, with their subwoofer manager, would arguably have had more shots on target against Huddersfield, Forest and Walsall.

This guy is more destructive than Darth Vader a.k.a. Dave McKay.

We will get shellacked at Oldham and humiliated at home to the Yorkies.

It takes a rare ability, in a matter of days, to turn a decent side into a bunch of no hoper's paralyzed by fear.

Why should I have confidence when the players have lost there's.

It's an unfortunate side effect of losing that generally a team will have played shit.

It's been dull as dishwater for about 11 years now bar the odd occasion, we should be used to it and the current Manager is by no means alone in producing a team that doesn't provide value for money viewing.  Last season was hardly rip roaring stuff, we were efficient in a kind of Bolton way.

Glad to see you're not going OTT then. This "decent side" turned into whimpering jellies by the terrible management has been inconsistent throughout and played some good and some bad games under Wise, Sturrock and the interregnum. Take off the rose-tinted specs and we've had some shockers all the way through the past two years. And we've played some good stuff as well. But by and large we've been inconsistent, even when we did enough to get promoted - if we'd been a stronger side, we'd have done more than managing to scrape home into 3rd place in the piss-poor bottom tier. We can be a decent side but there's too many 1st choice players you can't rely on to turn out  a consistent performance from week to week.

To take two, just look at the constant arguments over Roberts and Zabooub are the finest players ever to grace the division or workshy layabouts who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the hallowed turf. The truth is they're neither, both, on their day, can pull off brilliant games with real skill and can turn the opposition inside out. But neither can do it two games on the bounce, and usually not even for a whole game. Which is why the arguments about them are so polarised - they both clearly have the ability (which is why people stick up for them when someone just blanket says "Zabooub/Roberts is shit") but neither seems able to consistently display it (which is why some other people get so annoyed with them and are more inclined to seize on the mistakes and ignore their good play). It's harsh to just focus on those two but they exemplify the problem well - you just don't know which Roberts/Zabooub you're going to get from week to week.

Fact is we have too many players who CAN play well but who don't do so consistently. When you've got three or four first choice players who are inconsistent/unreliable like that, you've got a team that's also inconsistent/unreliable. And with that kind of team you get some fantastic performances (Swansea/Forest at home), some quite good performances, some poor peformances (some of which you scrape a result from) and some terrible ones. And you finish mid-table. Which is what will happen to us this season. Which for a side that's just come up from the league below isn't a bad result, leaving aside all the crap we've been through.

Crozzer you are spot on

Malpas has got to be given time, agreed the performance was total shit with nobody coming out smelling of roses, but to call for the managers head is just plain daft.Give the guy until the end of the season and if we continue to play shit then perhaps you will have a case but he has to be given time.

I'm sure he's just as annoyed at the performance as we are but is keeping his feelings private for the changing rooms.

The trouble as well is if you looked at our bench on Sat did we really have a play that we could have brought on that may have been able to make a difference  (other than Roberts if he felt like it...which he didn't) ? the answer is no and therin lies a problem, not enough quality in reserve.

We played worse that that under Sturrock, but hey Malpas isn't a big name.... We moan about the lack of loyalty showed to us but look at the loyalty we're showing Malpas!

Bit early to be suggesting we change again - I suppose we have to at least give mo mo the chance to have the summer - but he's certainly no luggy or wise, is he...

oh piss off bart. i sugest you resd the post above yours, probably the most sensible one in the whole thread

im not gonna moan about malpas as i think we should see what he can do with his own signings.One thing i will say is that is the first time i have ever left a game early and imo that was the worst performance i have EVER seen from swindon. I can accept getting beat but when every single player is strutting around like they dont give a fuck im not going to watch it

 :goodpost:

Well reasoned argument...you should run a supporters trust or something  :wink:

Brighton was worse IMO, but I see where you are coming from macca. I never leave games early and I left as soon as the third went in.

I left at 2nil and for the first time ever im thinking whether to bother going on saturday

Exactly right Paul D. We played some shit games under sturrock, which seem to be totally glossed over as a period of unparrelled sucess in the history of STFC in the current climate.

some of you drama queens need to get a grip. It will be fair enough after another 4/5 games like that but its just so fucking knee jerk at the moment.

paul d great post.
crozzer you have exaggerated things hugely fella.
and bart are you ever fucking happy with anything?
change the record for fucks sake!
give malpas a chance i say

Its definitely made my decision to not bother with Oldham tomorrow.

Im still going to do Leeds, Orient and Brighton away but they're going to need to buck their ideas up.  If we lost in fighting spirit then I wouldn't mind so much but when we lose without really making any effort thats what makes me reconsider.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/jehst/tacticsyou128484231666406250.jpg

You know when we were discussing protests and stuff and everybody was like yeah it'll be good when we can just talk about football again blah blah blah. Well you were wrong you're still a bunch of retards when talking about football.

Shame on the lot of you.

This constructive post was bought to you by the letter S and the number 15.

All players in this team are inconsistant, not just ours and not just Zaaboub and Roberts. It goes with being a League One player. If any of our players were  consistant they would be playing at a higher standard.

Ifil for example is one of the best defenders in this division, but once every few games he makes a hash up and the word inconsistant was invented just for his passing ability. Which is why he's not playing at a higher level.

Inconsistancy is the nature of the beast in this division.

I'd argue Ifil's distribution was pretty consistent, actually ;-)

I thought the 6-2 defeat at home against Blackpool in 1986 was a bit of shocker to be honest, as was the start of the 85/86 season.  Turned out Macari wasn't half bad though.

Under McMahon we absolutely mullered West Brom away in 1995 but still got relegated.

In all honesty, I haven't seen much difference in our performances and style now compared to Northampton away at the start of the season lets say.  We all just want a bit more now.  Maybe it's because we have the stability that it's coming home to roost that we've put up with years of abject performances because we always felt that's what we should expect given our financial plight?

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:  :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

The only tactical thing I was disappointed Malpas didn't consider was put Robbo on the left and Minge on the right.

What else could he have tried? At least he had the balls to play 3 up front, something Sturrock didn't do.

I think it was more to do with the players being shit than the manager. Whether he didn't motivate them or not is another question. There is nothing to suggest either way.

[old shit thought played to death]Perhaps the players went out on the lash the night before?[/old shit thought played to death]

 You've got your facts a bit wrong here Rob on the top bit....totally different though, in that Blackpool game we were something like 4-0 down at half time , came out fighting second half, and had the TE right behind the effort ....including kiddy who took a corner for us out of the TE.

 Scored a couple of goals and at least went down fighting....three of that side never played for Macari again, such was his dissatisfaction.  I'd be quite happy if Malpas was similarly brutal and  several  of our lot didn't get a chance to disgrace the shirt again.

 The Baggies game....we sold JAF staright after, and didn't replace him, which is why we went down.  (Also 4 down that year, in typical STFC style we have to pick that year to finish 4th bottom.)

That's the point though, the odd game or bit of a game (I'll trust your memory of the 2nd half, I just remember it being awful for some reason) isn't much of a yardstick.  Lots of other things need to be considered.  Given everything we know, I'd suggest most clubs would be over the moon with mid table this season, Luton would probably swap places in a flash.  Give the poor man a pre season and a chance to build a squad.  Every Manager in our histpry will have games where it looks like the team are a bunch of Sunday League cloggers, equally even our worst Managers got games of seeming brilliance out of the team.

Leeds did really shit last season but they hung onto Wise & Poyet and before Poyet left for bigger and better things and Wise left for the cash money money, it looked like they were going to go up.

I think the stabilty we've craved off the pitch needs to be mirrored on the pitch. Given the fact the owners have given us 3 years to get promoted it should be little wonder that we won't do it this season.

 Your argument contains compelling logic, unfortunately, we're talking about football management here.

 Despite appearances and what Andy King used to say, most football fans aren't idiots.  MM has inherited a reasonable position,  and I think most would have expected to see some small change for the better, among our players, maybe a bit more passing, perhaps better movement off the ball, some innovative set plays etc.

 Only the mongiest mong on thisis, would realistically have expected a PO place this season....the rest hoping to see signs of improvement.

 Instead we seem to have the wheels falling off with a resounding clang.  Tomorrow is a key game,  by rights when you've had a shit performance, its often possible to use that to bounce back....eg after losing to Blackpool, we went out of the LC at Soton,  but won the next league game v Rotherham....incidentally Fraser Digby made his debut.

 A while back, we got mullered  6-0 at the CG by Ipswich,  but won on the Monday at Uddersfield.

  Anything less than a draw at Oldham...suggests MM isn't up to the task.

Alex Ferguson almost had Manchester United relegated in his first year!

People are comparing saturday to Brighton. Brighton the team were ravaged by injuries and suspensions. And it was the worst the takeover thing got.

There was no excuse yesterday. Ive followed some pretty shit teams at Town and not moaned.

Im not affraid to say that Malpas has absolutely RUINED our team. 6 weeks ago at Walsall we looked fantastic. Now we can barely muster a shot on goal.

Id planned to go to 5 or 6 more away games this season, but after Forest I shelved that. We didnt have one decent shot at Forest or Crewe and apparently Huddersfield was even worse. Im in utter shock that anyone could have us back at square one so quickly.

This isnt even Andy King. Its Colin Todd! Honestly, this bloke is bad bad bad news.

 Au contraire youthful Tails...when Ferguson started ManUre were 20th in a 22 team league, which is why the Orange One got the sack.

 By season's end they'd risen to a semi respectable 11th, losing just 6 of 29 games, and proving difficult to beat.  In other words some progress.  He also managed a double over Liverpool, again the sort of result which gain you some leeway.