nzlatic

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.

That’s true but wasn’t the Wealdstone guy highly thought of and touted by some as someone we should be looking at? Went to Notts County and results have been awful.

It’s making an already frustrating game unnecessarily more frustrating to watch!

I know Fylde will be taking it easy now but we are showing that we’re capable of playing decent football. But all it takes is for the opposition to apply a bit of pressure on the ball and we become absolutely abject.

He’d say it wasn’t deliberate. But I don’t think that’s the rule. His arms were stretched wide. If that’s a defender in the area then it’s a penalty. Kitching dragged back deliberately off the ball when overlapping into space. No foul. No play on waved.

And how long would you give that guy to build that?

One of the worst of a bad season. Conlon pulled back off the ball. No foul. Dallas taken out late. No foul.

You’ll be able to get a refund if you can’t watch live. Email: nationalleaguelive@streamamg.com They should refund you if you explain what has happened.

Then I’m not sure you needed to pay. Apologies for being the bearer of bad news but I think that match replays get put up for free. Buying the pass doesn’t give you any special access to replays, just the live feed. I may be wrong but I’ve been stung by this before.

Not sure if there’s a set time for that either. Just need to refresh near kick off.

They’re on the schedule link. Each match listed there. Nearer kick off the match will then have an arrow to click through to the stream. Replays can be totally random in my experience in terms of when they’re put up to watch. Next morning, 3 days, a week. Could be anything!