- You have a mid-table League One club that has finished lower than the previous season for 7 straight years. You have to build a completely new squad and somehow make them gel instantly. You pull it off in emphatic style, winning the title with a record points tally.
- The following summer the club begins to go into meltdown off the pitch and after buying just one player, a right-sided utility man, all other purchases are called off. You can only add free transfers and loanees to a League One squad. But you nearly take this team to the play-offs in its first season at this level.
- Yet more uncertainty the next summer. No contracts for key players whose deals are expiring, and indeed your own. With only free transfers and loans available, you are left with just one senior striker 2 days before the new season before two out-of-favour forwards are hastily drafted in to fill the squad.
- The squad is again competitive despite constant off-field rumours, uncertainty, and unhappiness. Under a new owner, you then have to sell your top scorer and talisman, as well as the core playmaker of your team, currently enjoying his best ever form for the club. You can replace them with foreign loans who know little of English football, and you know little of them.
- You make some poor tactical decisions, like good managers do every week across the divisions, like one of the club's greatest ever managers did not long ago - often to to the great anger of supporters. But despite having no choice but to rely on two academy players at the very heart of the side, both in their first season of senior football, and having your player of the season for two consecutive seasons almost permanently sidelined, and still going without a notable striker, you stay competitive and nearly reach an FA Cup semi-final.
And now you should be sacked?
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All this hindsight bollox , I thought with , Harriott , Church and Tudgay on the pitch today that was attacking enough
We were shit and the sad thing is Sheff Utd were shit as well
Personally I was expecting a relegation fight and we've got one. Does anyone really believe that you can take Fuller, Haynes, Kermorgant and Stephens from last year's squad, fail to even adequately replace them and rationally and reasonably expect anyone to keep us out of a relegation battle?
I didn't expect an FA Quarter Final. Keeps Powell ahead of the expectations game for me. Now to keep us up with this ramshackle collection of players.
What's church and sordell then?
Apart from being crap that is!
We must be more offensively minded than in recent weeks if we are to have any hope of getting out of the bottom three. Ajdarevic must start. Wilson must play right midfield with either Cousins or Nego behind him and Church must be dropped in favour of Reza who given his short time playing at least knows how to get a shot on target.
If we don't get three points at least from the next two then I think that's it. Millwall at The Den is a traditional embarrassment so we had better damn well win on Wednesday.
Beyond parody
less funny than Michael McIntyre
taking knives to a gunfight
What do you know about things that add up, you work for the Bank of England
Nothing to argue against there, surely ?
Our squad was no worse than mid table teams like Bournmouth or Brighton, yet because of our lowly position, they have snapped up two of our best players.
Did QA carefully consider the starting squads of those two clubs compared with ours when he wrote that? If he did I would be very interested to hear how he comes to this conclusion. For anyone else who can't be arsed, here's a quick link to Brighton's squad list. I really wonder how anyone can look at that and take QA's assertion seriously. And then do you know why that squad is so much stronger? because their wage bill is about three times more than ours, that's why!!! As for Bournemouth of course in most people's minds they seem like a 'small' club but the fact is that they have some Russian oligarch, for reasons best known to himself, pumping money into the club. Richard Murray keeps reminding everyone who will listen of that fact, but no, people prefer to say that Bournemouth snapped Yann up "because of our lowly position" WTF???.
Dear oh dear, we are all hurting, but it would be nice if people faced up to a few facts rather than just looking for easy scapegoats.
I was merely saying I do not think it was achieved through effort, skill or tactical awareness, it was just one of those days and we got a lucky break.
"Our squad was no worse than mid table teams like Bournemouth or Brighton." Sorry, but that is so so wrong. Have a look at their squads & then think again. Even Bourenemouth spent a couple of million on a striker.
I'm not sure if any of our currently fit players would get in the Brighton team.
Did Harriot's miss yesterday (which is typical of his form this season) give you any indication, as to why he's not featured much ?
Yann is scoring at Bournemouth because they have wingers supplying crosses & decent attacking midfielders supplying him.
Cousins is played wide, because we don't have a decent right sided player apart from Wilson.
We've tried Green & Pritchard numerous times & they don't cut it. Solly is injured, so if we play Wilson on the right, then we have to play some light weight kid at right back, called Nego, who will likely get spanked.
I do agree with you on the negative strategy.
Might flag you for the McIntyre insult... ;-)
On that basis SCP's job is hanging by a thread, unless he gets 2 or three wins on the bounce I can't see any future for him at Charlton.
I would prefer he stay, but on results he's in the departure lounge.
We don't have any Championship standard wingers. Harriott's not there yet, he's not a regular goalscorer or someone that looks like getting many assists. Stewart was slightly better but not by a great deal, and we didn't manage to keep him. Only Wilson looks a reliable wide midfielder at this level, and he's not an out and out winger, we'd probably still need that type of player elsewhere in the team. Up front we lacked numbers but had Yann, now we have more players but have no target man and none of the players we do have only occasionally provide a threat.
The midfield was the weakest part of the team in League One and attacking wise at least (Cousins and Poyet have added something but they're not going to regularly score and create goals) it's not been improved at all. Up front BWP scored 20 or so in a lower division, but he struggled with the step up. To push on we've needed better attacking players for a while now but this season it obvious that we desperately need them.
With no loans looking like coming in it looks like he's going to have to give Nego another go, or try Cousins and Wilson the other way around. Cousins did a job at RM for part of the Sheff Wed game but we can't continue playing him there. People moaned about Pritchard on the right but he looked far more comfortable than Cousins does.
We also need to fit Adjarevic in somewhere, it might leave us with a weak bench attacking wise but maybe getting that first goal (or even two...) may give us more of a chance to actually win a game. I'd like to see him behind a striker as he did v Sheff Wed. With his size and touch he's the closest we have to a target man or striker with a physical presence. Clearly he won't throw himself about like Yann but he's definitely a creative threat.
Powell's been trying to fit his best players into the team. Unfortunately that doesn't give us a balanced midfield which really doesn't help us when we're already a team that struggles for goals. With the number of games coming up Powell's going to have to rotate the squad. Hopefully we'll see balanced line ups, even if we are weak in one or two positions, because playing the best players isn't working. We even beat QPR with Danny Green starting on the right of midfield...! He didn't offer much going forwards but he probably had a better game defensively than he usually does, and at least he was comfortable in that position.
Powell will be a success for us if we give him the time and appropriate opportunity. If I had any cash I would invest in that.
Says it like it is.
Such a shame some of us can't see this problem is NOT of SCP's making & that he's doing his best with a threadbare squad.
I'm certain he wanted to keep Fuller & Yann and although he was sympathetic to Dale's situation, would rather he had stayed too.
He has the 2 years running POTY sidelined with a long term injury which totally disrupts the ideal pairing on the right hand side.
He has to play 2 of our young guns more frequently than he would have liked & hopes upon hope that they will continue to cope with the pressure.
And he has another relatively inexperienced player in Pritch who excelled last season but who now, for some reason has seemingly lost much of his confidence.
Is it any wonder he has to juggle his minimal resources even if it means playing a square peg in a round hole sometimes ?
Our man is something special.
And some of us won't know what we've got 'til it's gone....