Thetownend.com

It's been a real Roy of the Rovers weekend for football, after our great comeback yesterday and none of the top 4 winning against some lowly teams.

Great goal by Ji to steal a famous win at the death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny9o1Q_lRoI

Disappointing not to see O"Neill run across the pitch and celebrate though.

A mile offside too. Makes it even better.

Yeah, you wouldn't see Paolo doing that, totally our of order :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

It was a shit game. That is all.

All premier football is shit. Real men, real passion, real fans, real football. Championship, L1, L2 and below.

You're right. I had to support someone else during the 93/94 season.

I sometimes wonder who I'd support if Swindon ever made it to the top flight again.

Well did support the town during our disastrous PL foray for two reason. One the ex MIL bought me my first st and secondly I doubted then and still do that we'd ever get to the said promised land in my lifetime again.

In fact I said to NW in a conversation about two years ago that I would not support the club (as in a season ticket, merchandise etc) while it was in the PL. I will always love the town but to me, old school and all that there is something perverse about the PL. Sometimes I wonder why I subscribe to Sky sports, vary rarely watch any other games on it even England games and certainly not a friendly one.

I'm of the opinion that people can support whoever they choose.

Personally I'd love to see Swindon Town play at the highest level possible.... Otherwise, what's the point of wanting Town to win games?

On your first point do you value all fans of any club on equal merit?

Good to see the linesman giving the forward the benefit of doubt, can't have been more than a few inches offside and I'd prefer to see more decisions like that - better than having goals disallowed incorrectly.

Don't take this the wrong, however, you/we need to be realistic.

STFC in the premier league? I think our chance has been and gone.

You'll need a 40k capacity ground and fill it every home game. Look at the size of Swindon. I've been here since 1963 it's doubled in size.

Yet we get at the moment, 7-8K fans with a hard core 5k season tickets @ £260 for an adult we used to get and I know I'm going on a bit but the high teen in the late 60's, mid teens in the 70's and down to 3k in the early 80's. So let's say in Div 1 8-10k with 7k season tickets @ £300. Championship we might get 12-14k with 8.5k @ £350.

Unless we get some crooked foreign businessman willing to pump eye watering amounts of money to get us to the promised land we'll always ways at best be a good solid L1 team and a respectable Championship team. Otherwise we'll get financially fucked over like last time and take years to get back on an even keel cause make no mistake about it the current investors will be long gone by then, in fact they'll be gone after we have fully developed the ground and established ourselves in the Championship, just my opinion.  

I will always be grateful for them rescuing us from the fat bubble and squeak who was squeezing the life out of us and the Wills family but I doubt they've got the balls to stump up amounts of money that we would need to a) get over the final hurdle & b) sustain us there, with b being the harder of the two to achieve.

In the PL the "home" side of the ground with be about 25% of a n other teams fans who have a ST's another 25% who you'll never see again after we get relegated and 25% of the remaining 50% will drift away over the two or three seasons after relegation. By then the begging letters from the club to take up a ST or watch the club die etc, etc will be knee deep in the hall.

Yes we can dream and I'd be delighted for the club to be successful, winning the occasional promotion and giant killing in the cup is where we are, have and always will be I'm afraid.

Its no better though is it. A wrong decision is a wrong decision and brilliant when its in your favour but less so when it isn't.

Supporting Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal et al is easy to do in this Sky Sports generation and I do think it's more like following a television soap than a sports team. Lazy.

But life is too short for me to argue the case of the frustrated lower league fan to those who feel that the Europa League is the end of their world... So I let them get on with it.
 

Fatbasher - occasionally, just occasionally  a Blackpool or a Swansea manage it while financially disadvantaged.

Its not impossible. Its just nearly impossible and would be another fleeting visit. For me establishing ourself in the Championship would be an immense achievement. A million miles off but do-able.

Shocking defending.

If you can't dream of getting to the prem then what's the point?
The premiership isn't shit,its fucking superb. Ask any fan of a team getting relegated from the prem if they would want to stay up. No brainer.

I agree entirely, I was after all "there my son" as they say. We scraped in via the play offs were under capitalised and had a nice but unconvincing manager. They get up there as you say and then they come back down as we did and as happened. Preston are in L1 now. Once the parachute payment dwindles the good players dwindle more or less straight away with their relegation get out clauses. It IS do able of course it is same as us winning against Wigan but it will always be Roy of the Rovers stuff. Much, much harder now than the 90's.

I reckon it's worse having a good goal disallowed than a bad goal allowed. Plus I'm pretty sure the rulebook says that the benefit of doubt should go to the attacking team, no way could the linesman have been sure it was offside so the right decision was made.

if the daft prick was in line with the last man he would've seen it was offside. at the angle he was looking Ji would've been level

Agree. As they broke out of defence it was apparent that Man City thought the ref was going to blow for FT. No one tracked back. Sunderland looked as if they were just going to jog the last few seconds until they realised that City had given up. Glad they scored, whether it was offside (which it was) or not. Not because I am any fan of Sunderland, but because I have never ever been able to stand the arrogance of Manc twats on either side of the red/blue divide. The fact that the blue ones have been moany for years and have now bought themselves success makes the defeat even sweeter. The only redeeming thing for them is Bibotello who is mad as a box of frogs!

If the goal had been scored at the other end there'd be no inquest to the level of what has been in the media the last 24 hours and everyone would more or less have accepted it as one of those things. The fact that the linesman nor the referee gave an offside decision means it was not off side no matter what the TV show, in a word, tough.

I agree....but the facts are if Wimbledon score an offside goal beating us today i might see it a bit differently....as no doubt the City manager,players and fans will have done.

Well, yes and no. If Wimbledon score a goal that's shown to be offside via TV, it's a) a goal & b) tough on us. Them's the breaks and each player, manager and fan have to accept that before kick off. It is after all part and parcel to what makes this beautiful game so addictive.

Although I have no stats to refer to I always think when I see a dodgy decision or goal for or against us that the season will even it's self out. Exception to that is playing a premier league team who will always expect every decision to go in their favour even a "Tom Daly" special in the penalty area.