Thetownend.com

............We could have had these results in our first 8 league games:

Lose at home to Wrexham 0-1
Lose away to Hereford 4-1
Win at home to Torquay 2-1
 Draw away at Southend 0-0
Win at home to Northampton 3-2
Lose away at Peterborough 3-0   
Lose away at Crewe 2-0
Lose away at Hartlepool 1-0

2 wins, 1 draw and 5 defeats.

We started like that in 1985-'86 season and finished with 102 points..........

Now I'm not saying we'll win 32 games this season, but maybe, just maybe, it's still a little too early to get rid of Malpas?




   


   

Genuine question how did we do the year before

Finished 8th in the old 4th Division.

You could be right then mate, hope we can go on a run half that good

Again genuine question as i dont remember, what were the fans like after those 8 games back then sutton?

Pretty thin on the ground, is the jokey answer. but too be honest it was just resigned depression, hoping against all reason to turn the corner somehow, although we couldn't see how. Bleak bleak days, nowhere near as bad as now.

Cheers sutton, after fitton's statement today i am just goin to see how it pans out,either way im sure fitton will do the right thing

Did you mean it's worse now or better now?

I read that as worse now

me too, but the sentence building up to it led me to expect the opposite which is why i was confused.

was it the season before that when there was under a thousand at chester?

Yes sure it was

Yeah sorry it was getting late and i added an unintended "as"  So to clarify it was way worse back in the early/mid 80's. Not sure about the Chester attendance but I certainly went to a game at the CG v Rochdale that was under 2k.

The Hereford game was bleak as we were 4-0 down and Calderwood scored late on. We still had a good few there. The fans got behind the team and instead slated the Hereford steward who looked like Woody Allen. The Peterborough away game was the one where the fans turned a bit. They were singing about the players being on the piss etc. Macari sorted it.

Could be worse. these could have been our last eight results!

lost away to Lewes 2-1
beat Cambridge Utd 3-1 at home
lost 2-1 at home to Crawley
lost 1-0 away to Kidderminster
Drawn 1-1 at home to Kettering
Beat Northwich away 2-1
Drawn 1-1 away to Ebbsfleet
Drawn 0-0 at home to woking


 :soapy tit wank:

The season really got going after the League Cup win, against Lawrie McMenemy's Sunderland

in early october.The league form suddenly improved in october,but it was really in early december

that we put together the start of our long series of wins.Sometimes, it just takes a spark to ignite

a season,here's hoping that friday night could provide this.

I dont remember the fans chanting we want Macari out tho do you?? I think we all knew we were better than the first 8 games that season but this time round is it the same??

Well - It could be ... we certainly have the potential - but I dont think the fans or the players truly believe that Magic Malpas knows what he is doing.

Heres to a magic next 8 games --

Heres what happened next in season 85-86

1 OCT Exeter City (Home) 2 - 1 Gordon, Calderwood
 5 OCT Rochdale (Home) 4 - 0 Coyne, Cole, Wade, Hockaday
 12 OCT Burnley (Away) 2 - 0 Gordon, Coyne)
 19 OCT Chester City (Away)1 - 0 Gordon
 22 OCT Stockport County (Home) 1 - 0 Coyne
 26 OCTPort Vale (Away)0 - 3
2 NOV Tranmere Rovers (Home) 2 - 1 Barnard, Wade
6 NOV Cambridge United (Home)1 - 0 Henry
 

So 7 wins in the next 8 games!! COME ON YOU REDSSS!

Oh Fatbury................you do make me smile sometimes

  I don't think Sutton or Chalkie are reliable sources of historical evidence...probably a pair of acid casualties.

 :) AACCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDD  :)

To be honest I wish we were playing to 5,000 fans because then the depression wouldnt be nearly as bad about the place.

Plus back then the players were on measly wages. Dont even want to know what Cox/Aljofree etc are on now. Just makes it seem like the stakes are higher. Plus player power means they may well upsticks if the going gets too tough, whereas before players futures were tied to the club.

Plus there are actually some good teams in this league.

I was looking forward to the Hereford JPT game, as a chance to break the negativity weve got in the league. But after Millwall I just dont want to watch any football at all. Not any team.

I know what you mean. I took a mate along on Sunday as Rich couldn't make it (so used his ticket) and I probably wouldn't have bothered if he decided not to go last minute.

It just feels so empty right now, which is probably why I am so annoyed when we play bad, because I can no longer get excited by a match day.

To be fair you're probably nearer with that assumption than you thought! I rely on others reminiscences a lot to trigger my rather poor memory of games i've been to.

I don't get excited about to going to the County Ground either, it was always a bright spark to look forward to. Plus it got me out of the house away from DIY, the wife etc etc.

Last time I felt like this was when King went a bit loopy and started playing Van Der Linden up front week-in-week-out to rescue numerous 2 nil home deficits. I used to despair even more listening to his post match interviews, my head dropping lower and lower as he scattered various empty comments like 'I don't know what we're doing wrong' and 'our fans are morons' down the airwaves.

I always looked forward to games when Sturrock was in charge and I don't know why, the football wasnt exactly brilliant and we didnt set the division alight with results but I always felt we'd turn in a solid performance with good effort from the team. I just don't see that anymore.

Is it me? Am I just remembering Sturrocks reign with red-tinted specs?

Come on Malpas, get those boys working and win tomorrow night.....

No that is generally how sturrock's teams play, and we were no exception. Hard to beat, resolute with little flair, but if it gets the job done i'm not going to give two jots

I think the thing Sturrock did was get the players and fans united (except Toni and her mum and Yeovil Red, but they're all spazzers). It bloody felt like you were part of that team at times, even though you were only watching on.

Unfortunately for Malpas he's been criticised from day one, for not doing anything wrong. Now he isn't getting it right the fire is spreading.

yeah, thats right, great wasnt it?

It seems a lifetime ago now, back in a day when we had mis-matching North Stand seats and seriously under-manned food stalls under the Shrivenham Road stand...... back when Jerel Ifil was a confident, defensive colossus, back when we had a manager that seemed to motivate and drive confidence into all the players..

Christ I'm even more depressed now!

But Malpas still has the time, I don't have the optimism but I'm sure he can turn it around.....(I hope)

I'm gonna be positive "WE ARE STAYIN UP SAY WE ARE STAYIN UP"

I know what you mean. I dont believe it, but a small part of me is hoping we'll do a doncaster or a swansea...

I had a slight wobble Sunday, but now I'm back being my usual blind optimistic self.

We will be fine.

I feel as much affinity with the club as ever, a run of bad results, with piss poor performances won't change that...........

2 seasons ago Blackpool have 6 points after 8 games, they got promoted.

I'm already dreaming of a 4-0 victory tomorrow and chants of 'Maurice Malpas - Sexy Football'

The ace thing about the sexy football chant is that it's just as fun if we're playing shit.

Good, good, I like that.... I'm gonna be clinging to that till Christmas...... (hopefully that'll be when Town are top of the league... but knowing my luck it'll be when I'm rioting at the back of the Arkells baying for Malpas's blood with a hundred or so other brainless morons)

..more fun!

The other really good ambiguous football chant that I like is (it surfaced a few years ago at a particularly dreary away game)

"Its just like watching Penhill" etc etc etc

Class.

Is that for when we play like a load of drugged up singles mums on child support?

are penhill any good?

Judging by the coherence of your recent posts we seem to be attracting a better class of brainless moron so fingers crossed that the change is upon us.

That's it! I see it all now! It's the Malpas menopause ... which explains the mood swings at home etc. It's those hormoans.

Just get Maurice and the lads on HRT patches Mr Fitton and it will all be OK.

Hilarious!

Probably, I'm surprised that the chant didnt reappear on Sunday then..... perhaps we weren't not as bad as drugged up single mums, more like teens-drunk-on-white-lightning-and-screenwash.

Nah, I'm not a better class of brainless moron, I'm just a refugee from the Adver Forum, fed up to the back teeth of the same 'anti-malpas' 'we love fitton' 'isnt Aljofree a cock' soap box rhetoric that just gets recycled on a daily basis.....

screenwash haha?

you seem better than most of them. welcome.

they have a team in the top division in the Sunday Leagues if that helps. Im sure they won it one year as well.

WOW.

With King, I think everyone was stunned with Der Linden and Heywood going up front. But the ill feeling between the fans wasnt too bad that season. The strikers were rubbish that season and it seemed worth a go! We were shit, but we were shit together.

Easily easily the lowest bit, the last time I felt this depressed, was December 2002. We lost 9 games out of 11 from august to late october. In the middle of which was the fall out between players and fans at Cheltenham. In the Town End we were singing King Out week after week after week, and even when we did beat Mansfield we still sang King out, which promted the famous radio rant. It was nuclear fall out.

Then we got a good couple of away wins, but there was still loads of ill feeling, but then we got drawn away to the scum and for 2 weeks the build up was immense. Everyone got well excited and everyone pulled together. Getting beat by a goal from direct throw in, doesnt begin to sum up the misery.

Then the next week we had Crewe at home while they were looking forward to Arsenal. We made Crewe look like AC Milan and they sprayed it around everywhere and smacked 3 past us. We havnt reached those levels yet. Its more just the boredom of it all at the moment. We need some good Cup games this season now. Otherwise it is going to get pretty awful if things just drag on as they are. Plus King did seem to make spurts of progress, where Malpas only manages a couple of games before returning to same old.

With Sturrock and Wise it just felt like reputations were on the line, the stakes were high. In football player terms Malpas has had a great career, but he is well low profile. No one outside Swindon or Dundee United supporters gives a crap if he messes up.

you wouldnt go into a 50/50 with someone from penhill though would you

yeah, that or turps...

I've retired from football, so no.

....because of a bad 50/50 tackle received whilst playing Penhill? Say it's so, it'll bring a wonderful symmetry to this thread.

no, against amesbury actually.

Good post, crikey I remember that Crewe game now. You're right we havent plunged to those depths yet.

You're still so bitter that you can't use a capital A? You've got janaageitis

hehe, so true. They were cunts though.

inflicted by some pissed off warmongering squaddie I'll wager.

squaddies son more likely, or an army cadet. he was only 15 after all.

The Heywood/Linden up front thing wasn't as ridiculous as some made out anyway. Heywood was a lump who'd played up front for a bit up until quite late in his youth career (I think anyway, I swear I remember it coming up in an interview), and van der Linden always seemed like he was a step above in his general on the ball football brain ability than most of the rest of the team so probably worth a go even if he was just holding up the play up there. He scored our only goal in an away draw at Wrexham I think. I went, but all seems long ago now.

I always rated Linden as a player, thought he was quality, shame him and King apparently never got on.

I remember rumours that loads of the players didn't get on with King back then, but it never seemed to be much of an on the pitch issue for the fans as it's become with Malpas. It's a strange one really.

In fact the whole King era is a bit strange. Took over a pretty shit team which he kept up. Then maybe slightly unfairly got sacked in the build up to another broken promises regime. But there seemed to be anti feeling towards him as soon as he got his job back, I guess the public knowledge that he only got the job because we couldn't afford to pay his compensation was the main reason.

Then of course despite some shocking runs of bad form, we never got horrendously worse under him until you could pretty much put it down to the overdue things going shit in the upstairs. Then even when he got sacked it was a bit of an odd one, he'd got out of just as bad runs of form before, but the bad feeling between him and the fans had reached a point where it was untenable.

Strange all round really.

 I think I might have the wrong end of the stick here, but are you talking birds...I met an ace Penhill bird a couple of years back, well dirty.

  Her husband was up in front of the beak for domestic violence, she wanted out, and while he had some sort of restraining order, she thought she'd have some fun.

   "I'm all yours " she said, "but you'll have to be prepared to take on the baggage"
 
 This included a heroin addicted daughter and a son with an ASBO.

   "Let me think about this, and I'll get back to you after tonight" says I.

  I decided against a 50/50

   

 

I never used to believe all your womanising stories until I started running into you in Old Town and you always had a different bird on your arm. you old bounder.

Sheer class... :D

I will admit to having been well pissed at the Hereford game as I was at virtually evey game in the 70s and 80s. I'm sure there was a Woody Allen lookalike. Never tried acid but being a shade under 50, there's always time.

I've never tried acid.

I have. Just the once. A major, major headfuck for me..............

I have... it burned my tongue something chronic.

It hurt so much I dropped the battery I was sucking it from and it burned a hole in my hoodie.

etc etc etc sorry cheap joke I know.

I've tried Acid. Made a massive schoolboy error and thought it hadn't worked so went to Tesco to buy a massive bottle of vodka instead.

Let's just say the drive home was quite interesting.

**Disclaimer**

I do not condone taking illegal substances and driving.

Ha ha good one axs!! 

 I think it's probably for the best that you don't fB...your head is full of sufficient weird shit, as it is.