Thetownend.com

0 -2 STFC ... it is Saturday, right?

Back to winning ways today 4-1 to the Town. COYR

Eric 1-2 Ernie att: 2,821 (367 away)

Correct,  but we are away  ;)

The fact that the supporters coaches have already left before the thread starts is an indication of how the season has really fizzled out.

Have a strange feeling this is going to be a draw as they are doomed & half of our players are thinking about where they’ll be next season

After Flynn signed his 3 year contract in Nov 2023, we lost the next two and won just 4 of the next 23 games. Let's hope things work out differently this time!

Morecambe have had a tough run of games latele, winning 1 and drawing 1 of the last 6. The four defeats included a 2-1 reverse against Franchise, the lowest placed team they faced in that spell.

Their home record is P18 W4 D4 L10. Our away record in P19 W4 D8 L7. 4 away wins all season doesn't inspire much hope but 3 of those have all come in our ast 5 away games, and we've only lost 2 of the last 19 games overall.

Should be a routine win really, but you never know.

It's a strange place to be as a Town fan... the STFC rollercoaster means we're usually fighting for something at one end of the table or the other. To know we have no meaningful football for the next 4 months leaves something of a hollow feeling.

Holloway feeling?

Pre match what do you think of it so far? in The Eric Bartholomew.
Rubbish!

Gen Z & maybe millennials possibly wont have a clue who Eric Morecambe was. Don’t know.

Ah well, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Normally a case of having to outmanoeuvre the mobility scooters & their surprisingly sprightly owners to get to the bar here.
Nuisances.
Rachel's gonna get you...

A limited selection of guest ales here so will seek out hostelries with a view of the golden sands or should that be treacherous mudflats.

Nothing beats a seaside trip for the football and there are three more to come after this with Fleetwood, Cleethorpes and err Gillingham.
Can’t wait.

I’m glad that this fixture isn’t the crucial relegation 6 pointer that it once threatened to be.

Unbeaten here in 4 visits, but wouldn’t be surprised at a triumph of desperate need over collective mehness today.
Then again Holloway isn’t going to tolerate a half arsed performance.

A win would be welcome even if it does help to sadly doom Morecambe.

Just a case now of trying to finish as high as possible & to plan for next season.
Would be good to get through to the end with just the one double against us.

That would at least indicate that we’ve been competitive since the early teething problems under Holloway.
Still bad though to grasp at something that should be a given for any Town side.

Still, the dead rubberyness of the fixture will excuse the early second half exit to get back to Mancunia for a prior engagement.

Looking at tables, could be a potentially more Southern friendly L2 next season, which would be good plus the sides that could join us don’t particularly stand out as big hitters in terms of throwing money around.

Just thinking ahead to when the bottle of 3B is smashed against the hull of HMS Piss the League at the launching ceremony in August.

Gonna miss the first 15 mins or so probably as we have a family get together in Yeovil, but TBH the season is over now and just hope we can put ina  good showing in some essentially meaningless games.

See you later no doubt.
Meeting a few lads at Lancaster.
Bring me sunshine.

Me and the wife walked down the aisle on our wedding day to this song :)

A bore draw today methinks.

Sounds like a few new injuries from the presser, could be some interest in the team.

I think we might lose today. They have a lot to play for, we don't.

Fixed it for me (thanks) :)

Did you do the skip and hand behind head thing?  :)

Think we will lose.

Think that there will be several youths playing due to injuries.

The youths have a game today but it's a very young team out. Fair few out on loan but would assume from the list that Chard and McCormick are travelling at least.

From the Shrimp Voices forum:  http://www.shrimpsvoices.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29415&sid=c7af5e9155096c19d74fae6347b4796f


Re: Swindon Town (H) Predictions
Postby Redalert1970 » Thu Mar 27, 2025 4:52 pm

Gwion Edwards out for the season

Ged Garner out for Swindon game

Bare bones now for sure

Players out ...

Edwards
Garner
Taylor
Moore
Ray
Mcadam
Lewis
Hendrie
Redalert1970
 
Posts: 4774
Joined: Thu May 23, 2019 3:27 am



Might be a game that is difficult to predict with both sides being hit by injuries.

Ripley
Sobowale Wright Freckleton Cain
Ofoborh Kilkenny
Ameen Nichols Westley
Smith

Lots of running in that attacking three. Clarke and Delaney both missing isn't ideal.

2 - 2 draw today I think .

I'm not impressed with that line up at all. Holloway promised us we'd all be going what the hell is he thinking??

Where's Bycroft playing as an outfielder and an u-16 on the bench?

Ah, the drum.
Timpani, timpani they've all got it timpani.

A result that would do neither team any good, in any event I think it's adios Morecambe.

With respect, a win for us is just nice to have. Season is over as a contest

Is the camera dirty or do I have a tech issue?

Rain drops, I think.

Cheers

All a bit "nothing" at the moment isn't it

Agricultural.

Wet and dirty. Having to watch Morecambe channel as Swindon very stop start

Ditto

We did a shot

Pen shout v Freckleton not given

Yeah not just you, same for me too

That’s a blatant penalty!

Blatant Oscar-winning performance!

Not sure where you get that from tbh, even the Morecambe commentary said it was a dive

Camera man needs to invest in a cloth, i feel like I am watching this after 12 pints

Might have been a touch of saarcasm in that comment.

You can never be sure on here :D

I rate Jon Smith as our best co commentator

Cleaned but more raindrops, now, thanks for suggesting that.

FFS !!!.

1 down

Jesus Christ

FFS !!

Weak defending, but surely that was a handball?

We're in danger of having provided 18% of Morecambe's points this season.

Not been at the races to be fair. They look pretty threatening from simple long balls forward. With 4 draws in a row and losing here, in serious danger of that Holloway momentum stalling slightly

Shocking defending again.

Season drifting off to a mediocre end!!

That was as good as the scoreline suggest

That was worse than last Saturday.

Harry Smith has been so isolated for weeks now. I'm really not sure the three behind him works without Drinan.

Morecambe first to the second ball and Town allowing themselves to be exposed defensively against only basic and direct attacking.  Deservedly losing this at HT.

Westley seems to be playing more centrally, with Smith playing either side ineffectively.  Expect changes at H.T. to bring Smith into the game more.

Players went all out to secure new contracts in that first half

Managerial contract-extension collapse in form incoming.

Only been half watching, missed the goal. Has looked really poor from what I've seen.

Been off the boil the last few games, we were awful last week.

Anyone gonna nudge the camera man to wipe the rain off or nah?

Fucking Mickey Mouse league.

Camera just wiped looks worse, wiping again.

Time to do whatever the fan version of 'go on a manager holiday' is in football manager.

I actually did yes!

Almost a superb ball from Cox.

Sounds like a euphemism.

This is unwatchable.

In both senses of not being able to see much and it being a dire game when you can see.

Do you think Holloway will praise this performance to the same levels that he did last week?  OUTSTANDING..

This is absolute bloody rubbish

Who smeared vaseline over the fucking camera.

The cameraman jizzed when they scored

"Everything is f*^&ed up and the points don't matter".

I cant see us losing this.

I mean I LITERALLY cant see it!

Have we got any points this season when Clarke hasn’t played

Ameen is the only player showing any type of threat when he gets the ball, they need to play through him

Well that's fucked that, Ameen taken off.. 

We have a few draws without Clarke but only 1 win at home vs Newport back in September thats the only win without Clarke playing.

Off: most of them
On: everyone else

I guess that Holloway doesn't agree with you.

Edge of their box, end up going back to Ripley. :facepalm:

Unbelievable.

Great chance for Smith, his header save from 6 yards, he should have scored that.

Well he certainly didn't agree with my view of last weeks game, so no surprise there.

Smith missing chances lately,the likes of which he was dispatching a few weeks ago

£450 season ticket to watch this shite?  ;D
No thanks.

From what I have seen Morecambe have more fight in their belly for a relegation battle than Carlisle did.

Fast forward to summer.

Cox FK just wide.

Will we ever win again now Holloway has a 3 yr contract?

Not sure I can stand another 15 mins

We're all victims of an on camera smear campaign.

Att: 3,419 (345 Swindon). (I think he said.)

This has been so poor, don’t want to hear Holloway dress this up as he did last weekend. It’s been poor for a fair few weeks now

Yup. Utter shite

Can’t argue with that. 

The only thing in our defence is that Morecambe are fighting for their lives, we have settled on a mid table finish.

Four points from five games now - not what it was. 

3 mins added.

Glatzel has a shot from 25 yards, pretty awful.

FT 0-1

Its only our 3rd defeat in the last 19 games, it was poor but we have nothing to play for and Morecambe desperate for every point they can get.

No its not good enough but it just is what it is at this point in the season.

Why don't I care about the outcome?

Wimbledon could be interesting now. 

Compared to where we were pre January, it’s night and day. However, it’s pretty damming that we’re having to view being 15th in this league as some form of progress. Oh well.

Congratulations Morecambe.  Showed some dog.  

For the same reason the players don’t care as much as they did six weeks ago when there was an edge to the matches.

Thank Christ that's over

Because the season is done. It's been shit but we looked nailed on for non league at one point, now we aren't going down.

The litmus test for Holloway’s three year deal won’t be from today, but it does reinforce my general anxiety over the arrangement. He should absolutely be given credit for taking this utter dross away from the bottom two and to safety as quickly as he did, but at the same time, is that three year deal worthy? Not for me.

Was our upturn in form a dead cat bounce?

The curse of the 3 year contract.

Broadly agree - absolutely think Holloway has earned a go next season but it does feel ott to give him three years and build the club around him behind the scenes.

Still, the problem at this club is not in the manager's office (not unless the match day guest has popped in from the office he doesn't have next door!)

Agreed. Still not convinced he can get us out of here

So, I think that Jolloway did well to get a tune out of this lot and change them from relegation certainties to mid table obscurants. He did that by simplifying things and hoofing it forward.

But, there is a lack of speed and quality in the squad. If we want to challenge next year, we need better.

My money is on him only completing 1- 1 1/2 years. Either it’s going shit and he’s off or it’s going great guns and the club cash in when there is interest from a higher league.

Well Morecambe had something to play for I suppose. However, do some of the players not want a contract? The importance of having Ollie Clarke in the team has already been pointed out but we need more like him. Dead wood needs shipping out and IH needs to plug the gaps with quality players who have fight in them like Clarke.  

We don't really know what that three year contract is structured like. Break clauses and the like.

Guy's poor wife isn't well either.

He's earned it to have a crack and if it doesn't work out we are in deep shit again, assuming Clem is still in charge by then.

What's the alternative anyway?

3 Year deal is to long - generally a managers lifespan at this level is 12-18 months, and with our record with managers 6 months is long term

1 year rolling or 2 year deal would have been a good contract, and considering 6 months ago Holloway was retired.

But Holloway will be judged properly from next season, this season he has comes in taken a poor looking team who were at rock bottom, and pushed us to mid-table.

He needs a good pre-season, the last few years there has been no organisation, manager has come in and had a few games against local teams, a game with a league team, and pre-season has been at the training ground.

Hopefully Holloway is given money to get the players away somewhere for a few days, a bit of team bonding and something different instead of the usual day to day, the impression is they will be worked hard and it will be tough with him but that will be good.

Yep, I was waiting for the cavalry to come over the hill, but........................

Holloway:
- Wasn't expecting it to be like that
- Thought we would do more damage to their units
- We are a lot better when we play with more desire and effort than we did today
- Really disappointed to say the least
- Expect us to be better than that
- Hardly anyone creates lots of chances against this lot
- We got caught doing the wrong thing. We should have been getting it wide
- When we think we are good and can pass it around, we lose shape
- They don't seem to understand how we win games. Holloway has just told them that
- Kilkenny and Ofoborh: Didnt anticipate having totake them off. But, they kept getting caught and didnt do what Holloway had told them to go (get it wide, from context)
- If Clarke had been playing he would have stopped that goal
- There were 3 challenges that we should won.
- If thats them trying their best to show Holloway that they want to stay here then they had better think again
- Just win the basic challenge
- That aint good enough. Simple as that
- Look like he's lucky to get a contract after that today!
- A vision? Just trying to win some games would be nice!!
- Starting to growl, Holloway said: I dont want to talk about a vision after that.Thats the biggest pile of crap I've seen in ages. The pitch didn't help, but its the same for both teams. They were men about it. It aint good enough
- They didn't play much better than us! But, with a performance like that, the best you can get is a 0-0. But we've lost that game! It aint good enough.
- Absolute disgrace to give away a goal like that. Cost us the game!
- Person next to them should be screaming 'Go on! Win it! Why aren'ty we doing that?
- Raising his voice, Holloway growled that he's going to have a battle on his hands if they think they can fanny around with it and look good
- Then at the end, with 3 mins left, what were we doing passing it around the back! Do you think we talked about that all week? Absolute....!!

Could be a fun bus back!

Holloway sounded royally pissed off, which he should be - for not clearing the ball for the goal and for playing Kennedyball particularly over the last three minutes.

I personally (& I really hate to be negative and pessimistic) don't see anything getting better until Clemente et al clear off.
I am not really enamoured with Holloway either, but I don't have to be and hopefully he does well

Thanks NMH, refreshingly in agreement  with Ollie

Performances like this could be a blessing in disguise, not so much to convince him who Holloway wants to keep (I’m sure he already knows) but more so who he wants to get rid of. Considering how down in the dumps we were when he came in I for one can stomach a few turgid performances.

Although that’s easy for me to say having not been subjected to them.

Like the players, that’s me done for this most awful of seasons. Can’t  see what can change if we are going to be recruiting from a similar pool of players due to our budget.

This. Looked like they were on the beach already today.

Not sure anything than lower mid table we can achieve without new owners

I've not been since Tranmere and I can't see myself making the trip up again for a game the rest of the season and potentially beyond.

The sad thing is, I haven't really missed it the last few weeks.

It won't. And if Holloway manages a miracle us in the third tier under this lot will be a disaster.

Not sure there will be much interest from higher leagues to be honest,no matter how well we do

These players are the same ones who have shown play off form up until the last couple of weeks. I don't think they've suddenly become poor.

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22BXW9PLn5k

We’ve won twice in 9 games, that isn’t play off form.

I said up til the last couple of weeks. The previous games were play off form no argument

I don't think I've seen such an inconsistent bunch of players, played very poorly as a team at the start, Holloway seemed to get a tune out of them .and we looked half decent, then the last few games we don't look like getting anything even against very poor teams.

It was, but that was when he was getting the best out of them.

Something seems to have changed to me. Last couple of games the players showed a lack of effort.

Losing Drinan (who showed his best form ever) running up and down the wing has been a big loss. One we haven’t been able to replace.

Some of the wins have been when Holloway has gone for shit or bust. A good team wins without putting 5 forwards on the pitch at any one time and needing the opposition to go down to 10 men.

I also do not think they suddenly became good.  Holloway clearly simplified the game we play and used the limited assets we do possess.  In a league like this, you can string some results together with a not great bunch if the become well organised and have a way of fashioning some chances up top.  The problem is the team is just not good enough to sustain it.  They are not as bad as the first couple of months, they are not as good as the good run.  We are probably about where the talent suggests we should be in my eyes.  This is, along with last seasons team, right up there in terms of bad squads we have had in our history.  Results over a season support that - it's exactly where we are headed.  I think the good news is that we at least have a core of competent players this time (vs last season), and some good additions would improve the team, but do we really have the budget to upgrade say five or six of this bunch?

This is a mid table squad playing to the level of a mid table squad. They’ll go through poor spells where you start to worry but then pick it up to avoid the relegation spots, they’ll go through good runs but fall short before they reach the playoff spots and above. They won’t be consistent enough over a whole season in either direction to trouble either end of the table (bar extraordinary circumstances).

We’re where we should be right now, in that middling pack.

A big part of the drop in form (chicken or egg!) has been that Harry Smith has scored one goal in two months. He's still winning headers but the finishing has dried up.

Nobody else in the squad has more than six goals for the season, and one of the ones on six is a centre back. Only one other striker (Tshimanga) has more than three.

In a word no

There is an argument that keeping Delaney, Clark and Drinan fit would have seen us maintain better form.

But let's be honest here, we had a great 10 game period around January,  but haven't been up to it for the rest of the season.  Nothing has happened suddenly. We've reverted to type.

Also, other teams have worked out to play against us. Stop Harry Smith, and without the pace & effort of Drinan, we don’t really have a plan B.

We’ve had a few injuries but don’t really have the depth in the right places to replace those.

Clarke has been a huge loss - I expect our PPG with Clarke & PPG without Clarke are night & day.

You could argue our 3 most important players are Ofoborh, Clarke & Smith but also players we don’t really have like for like replacements for. Probably on a lesser level Drinan too

…but let’s also not beat around the bush - those two two twos in a week against Salford & Doncaster basically ended our season. The play offs were a far distant hope but a hope all the same. They’ve gone now and the performances have dropped.

Some players will be on the beach particularly if their footballing future is secure others probably taking their foot of the gas a bit to avoid injury particularly if they need to find new employment for next season. If their employment is going to continue here then Holloway probably knows enough about them already & if they will be looking for work else where they’ve probably got a better chance when released of going on trial somewhere to win a contract than busting a gut here in dead (to us) rubber matches.

The side / squad is probably roughly where it deserves to be.  A season of Kennedy & we’d be a lot lower, a season of Holloway & we’d be a bit higher.

The fact that we have a manager most of us are ok with already signed up for next season & the fact our season is done (in both directions) by March is a nice change of pace.

Now is the time to blood youngsters, try fringe players, experiment with formations etc & actually start strategically planning for next season.

I didn’t watch or listen to this game - but as I have consistently said all season, this squad is a lower mid table squad - 15th is a bit higher than I thought but after 5 without a win we look as though we will finish a little lower anyway.
With a small number of exceptions, our wins and defeats have been by the odd goal either way, and the style of play since December is basically geared to getting it forward and hoping to win second balls or force a mistake in key areas. Some weeks it’s worked, others it hasn’t and we’ve conceded in similar fashion. 15 draws also points to this.
A real problem is we have several players who are probably among our higher earners - Hall, Delaney and Clarke - who have probably managed about 40 starts between them. We need a few more durable ones like Kilkenny and Wright in next year’s squad.
However, the ownership is of course the real problem - and the cycle will continue until they go.

The win %'s with and without Clarke surely can't be a coincidence. Not with almost a whole season of sample size. So his absence has really hit us.

He's rarely spectacular either. So is his organisation that vital? apparently so.

The stats don't lie with Oli Clarke, but its not a sustainable situation.

Clarke is 33 in the summer, and you can already see injuries taking a toll this season.
A promotion winning side is better than having Clarke as a regular starter, see Clarke's role during Mansfield's promotion.
Clarke has been somewhat shoe horned into the team in a back 3, or even back 2, just to get him on the pitch. Is he really the best option if we had a better selection of CB's?
Ofoborh/Kilkenny looks like the best CM combo to build the team around going forward.

So yeah Clarke has been influential this season, but for where we want to get to, we need to build a different looking side that does not rely on forcing in a Clarke.

Clarke has played in 25 (22+3) of our 39 league games. He's good, not sure he's Ollie big up good, but we really don't have anyone who can step in for the 1/3 of games he misses.

Also a bit of a shame he's being put into the back 3, we miss him from midfield a lot.

League appearances by defenders:

Wright 39 (38+1)
Sabowale 35 (26+9)
Cox 23(19+4)
Freckleton 21 (19+2)
Delaney 20 (18+2)
Hall 13 (11+2)
Minturn 7 (3+4)

Not ideal.