nzlatic

Does every fanbase make such an effort to dislike it’s own players so much or is it just us?

I find it a bit amusing that fans booing players on or jeering players numbers going up is ok but a player shouting at his teammate is not being supportive.

They’ll be down by then and it’ll be their last home game at this level against a former premier league team with a full away end with a lot of our fans expecting to see a 5-0 thrashing. Textbook definition of banana skin!

Halifax 2 up at Oxford so a win looking likely for them today. I think Barnet, Bromley and probably Solihull are safe for the play offs. Which would leave 3 spots for Aldershot, Altrincham, Gateshead, Oldham and Halifax to fight over who are separated by just 4 points. Will be tight!

This is why we can’t have nice things. Almost since he arrived Norwood has had digs from the fans about such silly things like not smiling or not changing his Twitter picture. Or even that he doesn’t put enough effort in?! Hes a consistent scorer and a big game player. He’s playing lower than he should be. He might cut a frustrated figure but I don’t blame him, we’re not performing as we should often enough. I know who I’d want in the team in a play off final or if we’re trying to win the league next season. I like Fondop, don’t get me wrong I think he’s an important squad member, but what is his hero status based on? He rarely scores against the better teams. It looks like it’s because of the effort he puts in but also mainly because he’s great at geeing up the fans with fist bump celebrations. Norwood is a nasty bastard but he’s a winner and we need more of that attitude.

The ref was shocking. The Garner booking was a joke when you look at the fouls he never carded. And the shove on Norwood at the end was clear as day. We should have had a chance to win it there. No idea about their pen as someone must have kicked the plug out for 10 minutes. For balance, I also thought Gardner looked a mile offside for his goal but not seen anyone else say that so maybe just me!

Yeah what Mellon said made sense. If he’s going to play wing back then either a forward or midfielder needs to overlap occasionally. That hasn’t been happening recently. I think Hammond might have done it a bit at Eastleigh but not 100% on that. If he’s left by himself out there he’s ineffective. So Gardner playing in either a 4 or 5 on that side should really help him out.

I’ve been critical of Kitching recently but I thought he had a really good game today.

All in all a good set of results for us today

Sheron showed his pros and cons in the same passage of play a couple of times. Did something great then gave the ball away too easily. But I think he earns a place when trying to pick a balanced midfield out of our squad.

Really? The performance and result must be much better than what you were expecting.

.

How many games has Cook had in charge of chesterfield? Maybe look at that before crying that Mellon hasn’t got us up to their standard in 20 games.

Parts of this thread read like a four Yorkshiremen sketch of negativity. 3-0 defeat? Luxury! I used to dream of getting beat 3-0 at home by chesterfield. We’ll be 6-0 down 5 minutes before the game kicks off. The league will relegate us 2 divisions at half time for playing 15 centre backs and on the way out we’ll be made to lick the boots clean of every chesterfield supporter there. And we’d be grateful for it.

In contrast to some of the miserygutses on here I'm actually really looking forward to this one. Think it has the potential to be a really exciting game. I don't think we'll see much different in the line up, but for what it's worth this is what I'd go with. It's pinched from how Stockport lined up and where they played Madden... Hudson 3 - Hobson, Raglan, Hogan 4 - Gardner, Sheron, Conlon, Kitching 1 - Norwood 2 - Garner, Dallas Norwood naturally drops deep anyway, so him coming late into the box during attacks could cause a bit of trouble. This could create more of a link between midfield and attack. Madden played this role for Stockport so age shouldn't be a problem. Wasn't 100% on Gardner but he's played that narrow right side role before and done reasonably well if I remember right. But, like I say, I don't think he'll move from the 352 with Sachdev coming back into the side.

Well, I'm not sure I'd be expecting to see us playing football necessarily! Having a good go at it would do me.

Chesterfield will be feeling the pressure a bit. They might be champions later that day with a win so we should see this as a real opportunity to go at them from the start.

Yeah I assumed you’d be fine if they did let him go. I was just asking if you think they should let him go if we don’t make the play offs. That’s ok if you don’t want to give an opinion.

I know your thoughts on his appointment. Can’t change that though. I was asking whether you think he should be sacked if we don’t make the play offs.

Does it make you think though? Do you have an opinion? Should he be sacked if we don’t make the play offs?

No.

This is where I'm at. If you put our current position in a long term context of where we used to be etc, then I can understand why it might be hard to get excited. But I'd rather look at it in the here and now... we're in with a shot at our first promotion in 33 years!!

Possibly. But it's hard to pin on something simple because the team has changed so much game by game. Whether that's deliberately or forced. He might look to settle the team down going into the last few games. I think he'll need to if we're going to build enough consistency to win 3 play off games.

I thought we were heading that way but form has fallen away. If we'd carried on Mellon's 2 points per game from when I started this thread, including beating Bromley, then we'd only be 3 points behind them with 8 to play. But I think the gap is too big to the top 3 now without a serious upturn in form. My prediction is that we'll be 5th or 6th, but it looks like it'll be really tight so could be anywhere from 4th to out of it completely.

Thought I'd have another look at the form table seeing as we're on a bad run with no win in the last 3. Despite that we've not been too badly affected when it comes to league position. Over the last 4 games, only Barnet (3rd), Aldershot (4th) and Halifax (5th) are in the top 7 of the form table out of the play off contenders. Solihull are 8th and the rest are miles off including us unfortunately... Bromley (15th), Oldham (16th), Gateshead (18th) and Altrincham (22nd) Over the last 10 games, only Aldershot (4th) and Gateshead (6th) are in the top 7 of the form table. Barnet (9th), Halifax (10th), Solihull (11th), Oldham (14th), Altrincham (16th) and Bromley (18th). When looking at the 4, 6, 8 and 10 game form tables, only Aldershot are in the top 7 for all of them (4th, 5th, 2nd and 4th respectively). They're the only truly consistent team over that time, others have had good runs over a smaller number of games. I'm going to do that thing that loads of people hate... put a positive spin on things! Putting the quality of football aside, there's nothing in that data that suggests we're at serious risk of dropping out of the play offs. Purely because almost all the other teams are having equally iffy runs. So it still looks like there's every chance we'll be in the play offs. Then you look at the potential opposition and there's no one there that you'd expect would blow us away - even the best form team Aldershot only just edged us and we were absolutely woeful. I'd imagine that Mellon is looking at the end of the season as 8 build up games before a short end of season cup competition. And the only things he's bothered about achieving in that time are 1) enough points to make sure we're in the cup comp and 2) win the cup competition by whatever means necessary.