Thetownend.com

to just survive (oops drop :-[)
 :eek:  >:( >:( >:(

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/football_league/article4454010.ece?token=null&offset=60&page=6

So one place above relegation, on your bike!!!

 :-[ :-[

Sorry Just to stay up, they have Hereford above us, Millwall and Northampton and nice to see they do their homework on lower leagues the bulk standard newspaper prediction Leeds, Leicester and Hudderfield as top 3 :doh:

Its best to ignore this stuff I find,do they normally get stuff right?

442 are usually pretty close, i remember the season we went down they predicted us for 23rd, everyone was shouting 'we've got thorpe and cureton, we aint going down' etc etc. shall see what yhey say!

Most bookies have us at 3/1 to get relegated.

This scares me.

what odds to stay up? finish in the top half? etc

Well i think we will win the league,or go close....so bollox to The Times!

the news of the world had us down to finish 17th yesterday.

Well, we've lost the nation - hundreds of pubs across the land will have us down as relegation fodder.

Here's to proving them wrong.... Praying to prove them wrong... Begging...

Good, keep us under the radar, let the likes of Leeds underestimate us. We'll surprise a few this year.

i think we will prove them wrong.by how much i have no idea mind.hoping for a decent play off push personally

If cox stays healthy we will stay up.... if not. I think we are buggered. Cant see goals coming from anywhere else really. Our defence in the 2 games I have seen has looked pretty unstable.

Blimey thats a bit negative. We will certainly struggle for goals without cox, but not badly enough to go down. I'll agree about the defence though. No clean sheet during pre-season untill tonight spells a slightly worrying tale

Does it? When Parkin left we struggled would be same if we lost Cox.... Saying that the team that season was considerably worse all around... Our defence as it stands will leak goals whilst we will not score as many. Cox's goals wouild be the difference between going up and down IMO.

Heaven forbid  that one of our other strikers actually step up to the plate though. It's sad that we can safely assume our other strikers will be rubbish.

 It was pretty obvious we were in trouble the season we went down, I predicted it myself, contrary to opinion it's not something I do every season....given reasonable fortune we should be safely mid table this season.

Thing is with the defence we've swapped it virtually every half, whilst MM tests the fitness and works out the best ones. I think we'll be fine at the back, and very dangerous going forward. A lot depends though if any players come in before september, another 2 goods ones and we'll be top 10 at worst.

If paynter gets a string of games together finding the net it could be different. Cant see Peacock or Sturrock scoring goals if Cox was out although I do have a bit of faith in Joyce.

I havnt been to one friendly match and havnt seen one in 3 years....i save my dosh for the real thing,i just dont like any sport that isnt competative,in fact i think our defence will do the biz but really wish we would get another quality striker to go with Cox.

Relegation year had too many loan signings - far too many. I'm happy that we've not done 6 out and 10 in - I'm also hoping the bond between the players will be good and their understanding on the football pitch will be better as a result of it.

We,ve got one, unfortunately he's normally on the treatment table!

i dont get the doomongerisms(not a real word but you catch my drift)
we have only lost comminges of any note from a half decent last season.and have gained timlin and nalis. plus hopefully a fit corr will come to the fold this term.
we should be looking up not down this season.

But a defence that was dodgy at times hasn't been rectified: if anything its been weakened. I dont think it will be bad enough to get us relegated, but it will be our achilles heel

I believe myself and reg thought we would go down that season.

Infact opening day away at Barnsley. Michael Pook starting left wing. I turned to my mate who I had gone with and told him we'd get relegated.

Anyway, I agree with Arriba about the doommongerism around here. We've lost 1 first team player and gained 2 more thus far.

We've got arguably our best two players (McNamee and Cox) for a whole season.

IF Barry Corr can get fit it will be like having a new player

PLUS we wont have to change manager next season and have a transition period during the season like we've had for the last 3 seasons.

If we hadnt of changed managers last season we would have finish top half. If we hadnt of changed managers the season before we would have won League Two as we were easily the best team there.

If we get Betsy, then our first choice front 6 would be Cox, Corr, McNamee, Tmilin, Easton and Betsy. That is a very nice set of front players.

Cox top scorer is worth a bet. Each way to go up is never really worth it anyway.

We are long odds on reflection of how we played second half of last season. Players should be ashamed of some of our performances then, especially away.

That'll be in the pre-season games  I take it, with a back four that changes at least every 45 minutes and generally includes at least one first year pro or triallist. Generally that does lead to a bit of instability.

I'm not worried about relegation at all this year. I wouldn't like to predict where we'll finish, but I'm expecting us to make the top half and will be very surprised if we are any lower than 15th by the end of the season

I believe if we keep relatively injury free, we could obtain a top 10 finish.  The squad is definetly improved from last season, even though we had Macnamee, Kanyuka, Timilin in Jan, there weren't fully fit, but now will be. 

There are a number of reasons for my predictions:

Malpas also changed the style of play which took some getting used to and as we improved a played better football, most of the players seemed to excell from that, I noticed as the season ended Peacock seemed to score more or much more likely to when we play passing football.

The player camp seem pretty happy with the Management team as even some of the players told there maybe surplus want to stay.

I also like the way we are holding out and only trying to get in players that are an improvement on what we have rather than getting in numbers for the sake of it, gotta be better for the long term.

I just dont see us finishing bottom half unless we have very bad luck with injuries.  Our side is a million times better and more commited than our league 1 relegation side.

If you look at the side that started against northampton last year our likely side against Tranmere is much, much better.

The defence will probablly be fairly similar, except maybe with the addition of Kanyuka who looks good.

Adams, Pook & Sturrock all started that game. Timlin / Easton / Nallis and Cox will play this year instead. And you dont have to be a genius to work out that Macca is much much better than that french twat Zaaboub.

If Cox and Macnamee stay fit for most of the season we'll do alright.

In some ways I feel that Barry Corr's fitness could have the greatest impact on our season though. IF (very big IF) he can play at least 30 odd games when fully fit we will have a chance at the play offs I think - He scores gaols and wins virtually everything in the air. I'm all for Malpas getting the team to play football this season, but in Lague 1 you need a bit of power up front at times. With Corr we would be a very dangerous side going forward with an excellent blend of pace, skill, power and ariel ability.

There is the added bonus of Fitton perhaps getting the chequebook out for re-inforcments in January if we are doing fairly well.

The biggest issues we face are away form, and general inconstancy. And Billy Paynter. Malpas needs to do something to make us harder to beat away from home and get a run of form going. far too often last season a couple of decent performances were followed by shite and it was back to square 1.

So basically after all that our season depends on luck.  :)

Good luck= Play offs or thereabouts
Average luck = upper mid table
bad luck = Lower mid table.

I don't think you can underestimate the effect that off the field politics has had over the playing squad and managers of the past 18 months. With players getting paid and a clear goal to aim for I think things can only improve. I do accept that we do have an over reliability on players such as Cox and Macca but with the possibility of Betsy coming in and the youth players coming of age where they could play a role I am very positive about this year.

Cant add anything to that, or disagree with it .Spot on sir!

I'd generally agree with most of that apart from the bit about Corr. I dont think hes played enough games at this level to prove he'll be a huge assest to us.

He came back into the side and had a purple patch for about 4/5 games but hes done nothing to suggest he can be consistent. Not because hes rubbish just because he is always injured.

Yes thats the optimistic football fan in me coming out again.  Theres no reason to believe that Barry will stay fit for longer than about 10 minutes. But given his ability and the way he played with Cox for a few games last season I cant help but think "what if"