nzlatic

442… Sutton RB, McGahey in centre mid, hope and Gardner wide?

Nah F that. It’s the latics way to start believing again the closer you get to kick off. Let those hopes get up!…

Was looking at Cook’s record at Chesterfield as it gets referenced how far behind them we are. He got the job in Feb 22 with the team doing really well and only getting rid of the previous manager due to off the field stuff. By the looks of it he got 20 points from 19 games and they clung on to 7th, ending with 3 wins from the last 12 games. Season 2 they were doing really well then had a big blip of 3 points from 9 games mid season. Ended strongly though and finished 3rd. Then this season they’ve walked the league.

It’s staggering that red isn’t overturned. The slowmo shows he’s first to the ball by some distance, left foot takes the ball away, right foot stays on the ground. The fylde player swings for the ball, misses, kicks Fondop’s left leg while falling over his right. Not late, not dangerous, not high, not even a foul. All there to see on film. What an absolute joke. No point in even having appeals.

I think the fear of making a mistake is a thing, but that fear doesn’t come from the possibility of the crowd groaning. It’s bigger than that. Put it this way, a player could have a great game for Brentford against Man United. But put them in the other team and the expectation that comes from playing for a club like that could mean they don’t perform as well. And I shall now resign from this board for comparing us to Man United.

I don’t think they’re ignoring him, I think they’re just panicking in certain circumstances. We either have no plan, so Mellon is just not actively doing anything at all in terms of coaching or tactics. Or there is a plan but they aren’t carrying it out on a consistent basis. Which is the most likely? Personally I think the second. In our best performances we’ve employed a mixture of direct and short passing. Eg Garner goal at Maidenhead (direct) and the second goal at Eastleigh (passing move). To me that makes sense as the sort of football you’d expect from a manager like Mellon. But when it goes to shit it is just aimless hoofs. Why do they do it? Who knows but I don’t believe it’s part of a deliberately set out plan. In my opinion it’s the pressure and weight of expectation that they’re struggling to deal with. I owe an apology of sorts to @GKing521 here because I now do think it is an element of mental fragility. I don’t agree with him that the club has a losing mentality permeating through it, but I think some players are struggling with pressure. That might actually only take a few squad changes to fix. So we might not be as far off success as it currently looks.

When they play like they did first half yesterday, or away at Aldershot or any of the other games where they’ve had a total nightmare I don’t believe that is intentional tactics. That isn’t direct football or long ball football. It’s total disorganised, panicked chaos where they look like they haven’t trained together let alone played together. I do not believe that Mellon and Brabin stand on the training pitch working through patterns of play that involve them passing slowly backwards then just hoofing aimlessly into the middle of nowhere while the strikers chase after it having no idea where it was meant to go. If that was the plan then why don’t they start Fondop every game? It’s not pragmatic football that just isn’t bringing results. I wouldn’t even know how to describe it. It’s non football. So what is the reason for them doing that? I don’t believe that’s the plan. I think they take it upon themselves to do it under certain circumstances. Mellon isn’t absolved of any blame of course, he is the boss and he needs to work out how to get them to not do it. But I don’t believe that just bringing in someone who plays it on the deck will suddenly have us climbing the table. I think we’d still be seeing the same pant shitting spells this group churns out regularly.

But we have had games where we’ve played decent football. Are you saying they ignore him in those games but listen to him the rest of the time? Or he tells them to play in those games, they do it and win so he then says don’t do that again, what I want you to do is aimless punts forward out of defence? And even though doing that is killing our play off chances he persists in telling them to do that each game? Unless he’s an agent sent by Rochdale fans then that would make no logical sense at all.

I’ll add to this - if mentality and coping with pressure and expectation is a problem, then we need to bring in a top sports psychologist as well.

There absolutely must be! Not in the grand scheme of football obviously, but there certainly must be when it comes to playing for us in this league - where we are a sleeping giant. We urgently need to go up for financial reasons (loss of EFL payments). The investment in the club facilities by the owners has been done so we can compete higher. We have one of the biggest budgets in the league. Fans have been starved of any success for decades and now can see that investment in the club and on the pitch so expect to see results. The pressure is on the players and the manager to deliver on that. It seems that pressure is too much. We have plenty of players capable of passing a football. Even if Mellon is wanting a more direct approach, we have plenty of players capable of delivering wins playing that way instead. But it doesn't look like direct football, it just looks like complete panic. Just look what happens when a team puts any sort of pressure on the ball early on in a game. And there'll be even more pressure next season where we'll rightly be expected to be consistently top 3. This summer we need to fix the gaps in the squad but also need to focus on character.

I’m not making excuses for them I’m highlighting their deficiencies. We need work out who isn’t mentally up to coping with the pressure of playing for a club expected to win promotion and replace them with players who are.

We need players who can handle the pressure and expectation. We don’t have enough of them now and it’s costing us. It’s no coincidence that our better performances are in games where the pressure is reduced - Chesterfield, Barnet at home, our better away form in general. Out of the play offs (reduced pressure) and we steadily picked up points. Get in the play offs (pressure increases) and suddenly they can’t win a game. Until we do that then it won’t matter what manager we have or what style we play, ultimately too many of them will crack as soon as the heat gets turned up.

So Mellon instructed them to play football against Chesterfield, saw they did it reasonably well, saw us go 2 up, saw the crowd respond to the effort even though we drew and then since then has deliberately sent them out to not play that way at all? Despite our form being shit for a month. That makes no sense whatsoever. The pressure/expectation was off them in that game so they played with a bit of freedom. Simple. That pressure will be there in the majority of the games we play in this league. It’s up to Mellon to put a team out capable of dealing with it. This hoofball stuff is a red herring.

Not that it really matters a great deal but I think we’ll win the appeal of Fondop’s red. He wins the ball, doesn’t leave the ground.

He’ll be under similar pressure if he starts his 2nd season like Unsworth did. i think we’ll get a good idea of where we’re heading over the summer. There were still some glaring squad issues that weren't resolved last summer. That should be job number 1 for Mellon this summer.

I disagree, to an extent. He’s not an Allardyce type appointment brought in on a 6 month deal. He’s been brought in to get us promoted yes, but giving him a 3 year deal implies the club accept it’s not necessarily something that should be expected immediately. His record shows that given time he usually achieves it. Of course the last few weeks has been a huge disappointment. Once in the play offs we shouldn’t have dropped out. But in my opinion that shouldn’t disqualify him from the opportunity to address the squad issues over a full summer.

Track record is all I have to go off obviously. I have no idea what he's like as a person or what the players are like as people, so I am not qualified to make that judgement. Neither are you. His record is one of success when given time. You and many others now, have decided you don't want to give him time because he's not been a hit in his first few months. Whilst also incidentally, slagging off just about every player on the books. If so many of them are not up to it, doesn't that suggest the manager should get more time? It's just far too simplistic to say when things aren't going well... sack the manager, replace all the players. He gets a 2nd season for me to try and prove he's the right man, despite how shit they've been this month.

I wanted Daryl Clarke but he went higher up too. But in terms of a manager with a track record of getting promoted out of this division I don’t think we could have done better.

Could he have picked one with a more impressive cv at this level than Mellon?

It’s whoever is in charge of recruitment. Or it’s the recruitment team as a whole. I don’t know exactly what the set up is. But it’s clearly a more in depth problem that just saying “that guy is to blame, sack him and it’ll be ok”.

Is DR in charge of signings? I don’t think he is. We’ve employed a coaching team and a scouting team with a head of recruitment. Just because he’s introduced a stats based element to the process doesn’t mean he’s running around choosing players like Bazza and Mo.

Someone sold the club’s soul to the devil in the late 80s. We had our fun in the pinch me years. Probably got another 20 years of this ahead of us.

Aldershot pumped 4-0 at Maidenhead. Halifax lost at Hartlepool who just got pumped 7-1 at Gateshead. What a league.

It’s a fair point. Hard to ask for better owners, facilities being invested in, a manager who’s had success at pretty much every club he’s managed, a squad with plenty of quality players who’ve had success elsewhere and are largely highly rated by fans of those clubs. Yet collectively as a team we have not lost the ability to regularly chuck in shit performances and to crumble under the slightest pressure. It’s been the same for years. It’s absolutely bizarre. Mellon will get the summer clearly, so all we can do is hope he’s identified the issue and will have it fixed for next season.

Finish mid table but we win the passing a lot? I’m not sure that’d wash.