Thetownend.com

Back in September there was real excitement and optimism with some excellent signings having been made.
There was talk on this forum about automatic promotion and the very least play-off's being achieved.
Now the latest topic on here is What a shambles and Power ripping off the club before he moves on...
From afar I simply can't see what has gone terribly wrong in 8 x short weeks
Except the manager has been sacked, players obviously not performing and now STFC are 2nd from bottom in the league and only the Wilts senior cup to look forward too.
Please, all the wise folk who approved of the signing that Power made explain their opinions of what has happened here..
Surely these reasons can't be all Powers fault to include
1/ There has been some serious issues with injures
2/ Cooper seemed disinterested after not leaving in the summer
3/ ........................... ???

COYMR's  ::)
 


 

Such a hard one to answer as there's no simple way of explaining what went wrong but the standout moment in my head is Col U at home. After all the signings and the excitement and the hype and positivity, Cooper managed to field the most shambolically set up XI in memory, Wes Thomas got injured and we lost at home to a pile of shite, who have gone on to prove what a pile of shite they are.

I've never left a game early until Saturday. There's absolutely nothing to enjoy about watching this side. Zero. Every single player on Saturday was shite, save Louis (who was marginally better). Not only were they shite, they were clueless and gutless too. Toxic combination.

They don't know what they're doing, they're (possibly) not good enough to do what they're meant to be doing, they don't escape that by working hard and fighting for second balls and as individuals, keep making horrendous errors. 

Up until Saturday I've been convinced we have the individuals to get out of this, but not any more. More despressingly, I've got no interest in going again any time soon, a sentence I never thought I'd say.

The plain and simple truth is that Power's recruitment for this season has been shown to be poor. Where, before, we spent cash on the likes of Luongo and Byrne the recruits have all be freebies (apart from the yet to be seen Jordan Stewart).

Whether he thought it was an easily repeatable thing I don't know. Some of the players recruited are way sub standard and there is the feeling that some of those brought in were done so solely with a view to a possible profit rather than actually be needed for the team - Bangoura springs to mind.

Easy after the event to criticise but it does make you wonder who actually recommended these players.

Unpredictability is a good thing, the sport would be fucking dire otherwise

The truth should lie somewhere between. We aren't as good as we thought, and on paper we shouldn't be as bad as we are.

Injuries well and truly stuffed us, and I think we will pick up soon. But whether its enough is another matter.

One nagging doubt overriding the others is that we are lucky to have picked up some of the points we have. The teams defence (not just the back 3/4) is a massive, massive worry. But we've added more robust players...and yet ...


gaaaaaaaahh

That would be nice, but we are very predictable at the moment!

Ask me again in January when we'll have an idea of how managerial changes affected things.

I hope we're unpredictable enough to go on a 20 game 5-0 winning streak!

Froggy pointed out the discrepency between some posters thoughts and seeming reality....


Not to say I told you so, cos I didn't, and not criticising anyone, but it's worth remembering that three weeks is a long time in football, especially during an injury crisis.

Quote from: Oxfordhater on Friday, September 11, 2015, 21:19:19

Quote from: joteddyred on Thursday, September 10, 2015, 19:49:17

Quote from: EldeneRed on Thursday, September 10, 2015, 20:10:45

Quote from: Benzel on Thursday, September 10, 2015, 22:36:32

Quote from: Kinky Tom on Friday, September 11, 2015, 00:05:47

Quote from: Flashheart on Friday, September 11, 2015, 07:40:50

Quote from: OOH!  SHAUN TAYLOR on Friday, September 11, 2015, 08:00:50

Quote from: Tails on Friday, September 11, 2015, 08:40:10

Quote from: JayBox325 on Friday, September 11, 2015, 08:51:06

Quote from: Nemo on Thursday, September 10, 2015, 19:00:37

There were some who pointed out the need for caution, because having to throw a bunch of players together and find a team is difficult....therefore the season's aim should be for 52 points and that being a decent achievement. A view incidentally, I still hold.

What is true as Tails pointed out elsewhere, that nothing much has changed from last year, other than we're shit. Power was always in the clear as long as results were OK, and always going to get a hard time when not. 

I think the key point is the point that we haven't spent any money on recruits, and instead adjusted our wage budget to accomodate the signings of Thomas and Ajose.
Look back to last years team and we splashed out money on Byrne (100k), Luongo (400k), Foderingham (100k?), Obika (250k), Smith (100k) all with a view to making some profit on these players. With the selling of Byrne we lost one too many of these talented players and haven't coped
This seasons model seems to be getting players for free with a view to a profit but players like Barry are just not ready for league football, let alone league 1.
We will have to spend in January to stay up and will have to recruit players of similar ilk to Luongo (maybe Moncur from Colchester) with the view to cashing in on these players in 18 months time.

Who's gong to break it to NZ Robin that we're not entering the Wiltshire Senior Cup?

Between regular contributors to this forum, there must be hundreds (maybe thousands?) of years of collective experience of lower league football.  And no-one (myself included) foresaw the predicament we’re now in.  Not even Reg.  ;)

I find that fascinating.  Basically, we’re all rubbish and we know #### all.  We’d be as well supporting a game of blind darts or ‘spin the bottle’.  We’re all emotionally (& financially) invested in a game of chance.

Whilst not something of Power's doing...the lack of things like the WSC and Combination games, have helped to drive a wedge between the proper hardcore fan and the club.

Really? Were there more than 50 hardcore Combo and Wilts Cup regulars? And if they spent that much of their life at the club, are they that easily discouraged?

Edit: this is about you, isn't it.

When you watch home and away and can see that Barry and Rodgers are squad players at best and Pyjamas has been disappointing.
It is then difficult to understand the next week they remain in the first team.
If that is due to injuries, tactics or something else then it remains a concern.
If the 3 mentioned were replaced by "better" players and yes they were not part of the starting line up then I would feel mildly optimistic.
If we continue to play those 3 regularly then we are in trouble.

Some of it is down to poor signings, you look at the nucleus of the team we have that would make the starting XI we do on paper have some decent players, but it looks like the 'squad' players we have bought in are clearly not good enough to cover,

The excuse by Cooper was used that these are young lads and shouldn't be playing week in week out, but I don't buy that, many look poor players.

It also seems that Power has brought in players for the sake of it rather than bringing in players to play in a system, the defence was seemingly ignored as you don't sell defenders for big money so this was looked to be patched up with loans, I suspect maybe some of these players were recommended by agents as the next big thing.

We are now into a losing mentality having gone 13 (?) games without a win, although injured players coming back have not been part of this the mentality flows through the club.  

Ling has a huge job on his hands to lift confidence and get the team to a point where goal scoring chances are a plenty, that does not help as the coaching team that has 'coached' during this losing run are still in place.

The Balmy signing makes me laugh.

Saturday - 'sorry mate, not good enough, we dont want ya'
Tuesday - 'hello jezza, erm, you free for 9 months?'

You get a fucking lob on over this I swear!

If you listen to the Twitter army what we need is Ty Belford to play.... Because he says nice stuff after games on there it'll make all the difference.

Personally, I think Marshall and Randall are better than a couple who have been playing recently.

If they were good enough last year why no look in this?

I'd rather see either of them than Balmy any day of the week.

Randall instead of Pjyamas for sure - dreadful player.

Not really about me particularly, but it's just a source of sadness how slowly over my many years of supporting the key link between club, fan and community, has been eroded to the point where we are now....  more or less non existent.

This of course just mirrors a trend in broader society, where the collective has largely been degraded to be replaced by individualism.

Yes, we're all boo-hoo at the moment but how the fuck can Bolton recover from being £172m in debt?

He's our highest rated player on FIFA 16...

Which one?

Gartside is a high up in the FA, so this gives him some political leverage....necessary when deciding which organisations should go to the wall e.g. railway works or banks?

Ojamaa is not a dreadful player. He is, however, the next Lukas Magera - 84 games and 25 goals in the Czech top flight since leaving. A proven player, but proven in a completely different environment to the one he's being asked to play in.

He'll leave in the summer if (when?) we go down, and crop up in an easter European top flight and do very well again.

Maybe, just maybe..... if we passed him the ball before passing between the two CBs 23 times he might have the space to do something.

Completely agree with this, we are not playing in a style that suits Ojamaa, if we actually looked out wide quickly players would see he quite often has acres of space, we are just too slow and too predictable to make use of him, he wants a quick ball out wide, or a give and go, neither of which he is getting, and if he does happen to have the ball out wide, we've usually got disinterested midfielder's not looking to help him, or absolutely no one in the box for him to cross to.

Doesn't really matter what the reason is, he's still dreadful for us.

He's as dreadful as everyone else at the moment, and is dreadful as an attacking force becuase we're so so so bad at going forward it's painful to watch.

I'd argue the Branco's performance at Rochdale was one of the worst individual perfomances I've ever seen from a CB, but becuase he and El-Abd passed the ball to each other 30 times, people seem to think he did ok. There's so much more wrong than disappointing individual performances.

You've said this about a million times, yet I've never met anyone that actually thinks this?!!

Dont really understand why people have a go at Belford for engaging with the fans? 🤔🤔

Don't think anyone's really criticising him for that, just the assumption that being a nice bloke makes him a good footballer.

I also think that when someone's beard length exceeds the length of their hair they lose all credibility (excluding bald people who can't help it).

I think selling Byrne was the tipping point. We didnt replace him with anyone remotely as good and have been shite since. The trouble is without him and with Nathan T injured it becomes tough to play the formation we want to.

Of course its not just that though. Power has signed some dross as well. 14 new players and about 5 of them are decent. Sadly we got unlucky and the dedentish ones are the ones who have got injured.

I also think something wasnt right behind the scenes with Cooper and coaches. We knew he wasnt getting on well with Williams if the media is to be believed.

Completely agree with you Rich. I thought that he was a cut above anything we had and pulled the opposition defence all over the place, double marking and so on. He really made the space to score, even when it wasn't him running at them with the ball.

Needs must I guess and he had to be sold to fund..erm, what? A big hole indeed.

I appreciate he's your friends boyfriend but it's just to highlight the fickleness of our fans more than anything. I'd say Twitter is the main reason for the Miles Storey love in because he says nice things on there every so often and retweets people now and then. Christ by being on Twitter it even allowed Jed to win over a fair few of our supporters

But back onto the point it's tweets like this I'm on about @sharront1979: Seriously can @tybelford be in goal Saturday 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓  
There's quite a few on there saying he deserves a run of games and there was even a question in the phone in last week asking when will Belford get a chance...

There just seems an irrational love in for some players and I don't really get it. In the case of Vigs vs Belford why does Belford deserve a run of games?  Yes Vigs is very raw and a rookie but in the 3 years he's been with us Belford has never looked anything more than an aveage backup at best. So surely if people want someone else in goal we should be looking elsewhere altogether?

Agreed, but if 2 years ago we had said to someone we'd sell him for close to a million they would laughed at you as he was very poor during the first part of his stay. He just highlights that it can take a year or so (or a change of position) for a player to come good so can't just write players off based on a few games.

Belford has never kept a clean sheet has he? And he did terribly in the home game against ?Colchester. Vig would have probably saved both of the goals he let in.

There is certainly a section of our support on social media who specialise in talking out of their arses. Twas ever thus, of course, but there's very much a hive-mind thing and a community aspect where people's bullshit gets reinforced. I'm pretty convinced that very few of them go to games, and their support consists of following people on Twitter and texting into BBC Wilts that our defence looks very frail even though they're listening to the radio. A strange breed indeed.

The guys behind me in The Town End slated Gladwin and demanded he be subbed every game up until he went on that run. If anything it highlights our ability to improve a player... I didn't rate Byrne at all until last season, wasn't particularly sold on Gladwin either.

As for Belford... He is a lovely chap, I've met him a few times and he's been nothing but pleasant. If he was a better goalkeeper than Vigs than absolutely, put him in the team. Unfortunately, I don't think he is.

But who knows given a consistent run of games he may be decent - he only gets the odd games here and there how can he show his form ?

The defence in front of his does not exactly inspire confidence.

lets be fair to him though he was never going to replace Wes, but pre-season when everyone was of the opinion that another keeper was being brought in and they was going to fight it out for the No 1 spot nobody complained about Belford being shit then.