Dave_Og

8 minutes ago, Lee Sinnott said:

Chesterfield will sign Stockport players and we'll sign Chesterfield players...

Quite possibly but, more importantly, who'll sign ours...?

3 hours ago, Frankly Mr Shankly said:

Really not arsed who goes up. I’m not in a rush to go back to either club.

 

thought Alty looked tidy for a period in the first half but they were simply outmuscled by Bromley, who ultimately had more nous. It’ll cost Bromley a lot of money having to rip up that 4G pitch of theirs. Do they have to do that and relay a new one over the summer if they win the final?

Yes they do. Sutton did it I think, not a great investment as it turned out 

1 hour ago, Worcester Owl said:

Unfortunately, you are confusing the real world employment market with the football equivalent. There is not much that is logical about the latter.

There might be less logic but there's still some. Unless we just chuck money at ii

2 minutes ago, nzlatic said:

Stattos may have to help/correct me here, but I was looking at our list of managers because of our high turnover rate and I think I’ve discovered a bit of a weird stat. If Mellon stays til the end of next season that would be the longest time an experienced manager will have been given by us since the 1960s. Anyone since then who’s served longer has been in their first full time managerial role. 

I do know that if that happens he'd be the first since Lee Johnson to start and finish a season 

4 minutes ago, nzlatic said:

I get what you’re saying and I’m not saying it definitely wouldn’t be a factor. But the emotions on display after being shouted at for 90 minutes then getting a microphone shoved in your face should be something players would understand so they might place a little less stock in it than the corporate world. We’ll have to wait and see, if we get another Southend away to kick off next season then we’ll know we’re in trouble. 

I think we'll know sooner than that. If we get to within a fortnight of the new season and have failed to sign most of a new starting XI we'll be in bother

57 minutes ago, nzlatic said:

I dunno, I think it’s pretty unlikely that prospective signings will base their decisions on a post match interview. Or even think to go back and watch them at all. As Lags points out it’s much more likely getting booed on and chants about what a waste of money you are will put someone off. 
 

But is that such a bad thing? We need players who can meet the standards expected by the manager and the crowd, if they’re put off by those things then they probably weren’t the right signing in the first place. 

Every time since the internet was invented if I've been interested in a new job I've gone onto the potential employer's website to get a flavour of what to expect. I wouldn't have expected that!  For years the club has had a justifiably toxic reputation and now, just when we have hope, our manager is reinforcing it.  I honestly thought it was a disgraceful and disrespectful rant, made worse by the subsequent apparent revelations about what might have gone on. Reid was banished and fair enough as Mellon appeared to be setting standards. That's no good if he doesn't stick to them himself.

2 hours ago, Lags said:

 

He certainly could have told his truth as he see's it in one minute,  then walked down the tunnel.  I very much doubt that would have cut it either. 

Any player he tries to sign will watch that. It's not a great advert for the club or him.

4 minutes ago, TheBigDog said:

I am going to stick with the trend - it was a poor interview. (see online comments)

 

And I’m not convinced that he is the right man.

If he'd said what he said in thirty seconds I'd have given him the benefit of the doubt. But to say it will over and over again for nearly fifteen minutes was beyond the pale for me 

I see Marta has retired; another dream dies

15 minutes ago, Wardie said:

Oh, I didn't realise you were meaning the interview. Sorry Dave, I took the quotes from the Oldham Times article..I should have said. See how easy it is to get mixed messages.

Ah!

3 minutes ago, Wardie said:

Yes, someone has already made that observation and he didn't actually say "at the other end of the table". What exactly was the "Other end" when he took over? If he had said the wrong end of the table, then fair enough.

It's all down to the interpretation of words.

Ok m certainly not going to listen to it again but I'm sure he said relegation 

6 hours ago, Wardie said:

Mellon's comments.

"The way it is now, everybody that's here has got another year's contract so it's difficult because everything's pretty much tied up, everything's already been spent on the group that's here and the frustrating part is the group needs a lot of help and we won't have the ability to do anything about that, even with the outgoings"

I take it he means the contracted players who remain and there is no budget left, even if he gets rid of some?

"It wasn't a team that was flying at the top of the league, the manager unfortunately lost his job because the team wasn't performing for him, and it's all still here."

 

Players deliberately not performing for Unsworth and now doing the same for Mellon, so just not performing regardless?

"But I said weeks ago this needs major surgery and I said on game two when we played Fylde at Fylde, I said to people 'I think we're in trouble. I think I've taken over something here that could be in trouble, and I mean at the other end'."

The other end of what? Does he mean the Board?

 

"The owners of this football club and Darren Royle are absolutely fantastic, unbelievable people. People that I couldn't speak highly enough of. Absolutely terrific people. But this, what's been put together at the minute, isn't matching up to what needs to be done in order to win games of football at this level."

 

I'm sure he's having a go at the Board here.

He baffles me.

He said at the other end of the table, with crystal clarity 

2 hours ago, nzlatic said:

I guess I disagree that sweeping changes are needed and that the chances of them happening are miniscule. It's defeatist for starters, which I'd rather not be. But I also don't think either of those things are true. We wouldn't have needed to convert many of our draws to wins to be in the play offs (4 to be exact) and that's with a squad that had some major positional gaps. So I don't think we're a million miles away from competing higher up.

 

I also think there's plenty of scope for moving players in and out. Most of the contracted players who we may be wanting to move have had decent careers elsewhere.

 

There's a lot of time for them to make advances over the summer and I don't think it requires recruitment to be perfect to do so.

I wasn't particularly defeatist until Mellon's interview which I found absolutely extraordinary.  I'm usually of a mind that managers shoudl be given plenty of time but I change my mind on that after listening to that. Just diabolical

1 minute ago, nzlatic said:

The reality is we need a squad of around 24 players. We now have a squad of 20 and a number of that squad will leave as they are clearly not in his plans:

Kofi Moore (probably a season loan)

Joe Nuttall

Alex Reid

Mark Shelton

Kurt Willoughby

 

That brings us to 15. I don't think we'll stop there either. I think more will go out of what's left. Which for the sake of argument brings us to 12 players. If we want a squad of 24 then that's another 8 signings, plus the 4 rumoured from the out of contract list. 

 

That's still a massive change from where we were last week. But with 16 of the 24 in my hypothetical situation being existing players who have worked with Mellon, that brings an element of continuity when it comes to what he expects from his players.

It's not really a massive change though - it's just a theory that may or may not come about.  If he has a squad largely made up of players he'd worked with before, and largely ones he's said aren't good enough, we're in big trouble.  It all seems to swing on how many of the out of favour we can offload and how much of their wages we will still be paying.  Room for manoeuvre is clearly very limited and means that the half a dozen or so that we will probably sign all have to work out, hit the ground running and be injury free.  On recent form in the recruitment stakes I'd rate that as being a very long shot indeed.

3 minutes ago, LightDN123 said:

The reality is, we only need 5/6 others to come in. Assuming they are all starters, that’s half the team. 
 

Why the piss boil ? 

Perhaps because we cannot make a single mistake in recruiting those 5 or 6.  That's a very unlikely scenario at the best of times.

8 minutes ago, PeteG said:

The out of contract players could sign pre-contract deals with any other interested parties though. I'd like to think if wanted to keep any of the players we'd have the decency to tell them and make them an offer now rather than keep them in limbo. It may well be that they have made some offers but shouldn't they let the fans know?

I'd rather they had some conversations in house and told us next week. Are pre-contract deals really much of a thing down here?

Seems bit weird to be in a position to release the released/retained list when we are still in May if we want to retain any of the players that are coming to the end of their current contracts.  The contracts don't end till the end of June so if we are interested in retaining one or two then plenty of time for a discussion with them.  Today's news item seem pointless

34 minutes ago, Frankly Mr Shankly said:

 

I am too but it's not a personality contest. He missed seven matches because he wasn't professional enough. Fans love to see a committed player, but with Fondop it borders on reckless and stupidity. Four red cards over his two and bit seasons with us is fairly damning.

Bit harsh given he missed four matches because of a refereeing decision that was simply wrong

9 minutes ago, JohnG123 said:

Bit like a poker game now.. any he might fancy (Fondop) the nearer to August the cheaper the deals that are handed out..........................

Fondop might have had enough of this anyway

37 minutes ago, LightDN123 said:

The issue is, we are now going into next season with the exact same 5 centre backs. We only need 4…

 

It also stunts Sutton’s growth and we have at least two promising youth centre backs, who will not get an opportunity. 

Has any youth player we've released in, say, the last decade gone on to have a decent career?

Just now, Only Blue said:

I know Dave but if he gets nervous about playing and is brave enough to tell us all then a bit of support for him wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

It's all relative what worries you, I worried when my pub team got promoted to the Oldham Sunday premier league

 

 

I play pool on Tuesdays for the local pub (not especially well - it's more of  a social thing)  We were in Division Two of Three this winter, there were eight teams of which three were promoted and three were relegated.  Division One is way too serious (One bloke I played from up there in a cup competition had a whole sleeve of pool based tattoos!) so we weren't really fussed about going up but we are competitive enough not to want to go down.  Mission accomplished, we finished fifth.  Love a comfort zone!

1 minute ago, JoeP said:

 

A lot of the players were signed who've won things in the past might have been pulled through by the other players who were in the same team. 

 

We might have signed these players based on stats and previous achievements, when it was their team mates that were keeping them going. 

 

It's becoming obvious with Lundstram that he needs the right players around him more than most. Alty's player of the season last year, but not even a glimpse here. Alty, meanwhile, have barely dropped a beat since he left them..

Yep, team game - but teams rarely win promotion when they have weak minded players in their regular starting XI

42 minutes ago, nzlatic said:

eI think playing for Oldham in the national league is comparable to playing for the top premier league teams. Relatively of course. You’re expected to perform and you’re expected to win the league. That’s a huge difference to playing for someone who would be delighted with a play off place so needs the right sort of player who can handle it. Added to that, there was an extra layer of pressure on Lundstram particularly because a lot of our issues early this season were partly blamed on him being out injured so by the time he came back we’re all expecting to see a world beater. 
 

Those side of things need work on too as well as physical attributes. I think he looked a lot better when he came back after Mellon gave him a break. So I’m hopeful he can kick on next season. That’s why recruitment is so crucial and probably so difficult this summer. We need more players who will keep moving forward when the pressure is on (metaphorically and literally!) and not ones that will shrink like too many of ours have done this season. 

There's a real dilemma here.

It's just bizarre that so many of our players appeared to be weak mentally - Many have played at a higher level, many have achieved things in their career that are what we as a club aspire to. But they're mentally weak?  It makes no sense at all.  Mellon seems to have preferred experience over youth during his career but here he has a team of largely experienced players who have proved they can play at this level, at least, but we're left with spineless performances against clubs with a fraction of the resources.  OK, we were light at right back and in midfield but it doesn't excuse some of the stuff we've seen which has looked a lot like throwing in the towel.

So, we'd prefer a good blend of young dynamic players who, pretty much by definition, will be taking a step up if the come here even if they are coming from a higher level club where they played in, say the U23s, and gnarly NL experience.  If our first question of that younger cohort is can the cope with the pressure of playing for the mighty Oldham Athletic and the only way of finding out is by signing and playing them, then we really are stuffed because the chances of getting that right, say, 75% of the time seem to be pretty remote based on recent experience.

Many things that I struggle to get my head around, one would be Lundstram.Apparently he'd struggled to adjust to being at a bigger club? He's not got much of a career ahead of him if that's really the case. It's not like he's moved to Real Madrid 

19 minutes ago, LaticsEddie said:

I know its early days in the Betfred League 1 but I cant help draw comparisons with whats happening at Yeds going from strength to strength to us.

 

They, like us, have had a recent miracle takeover and club rebuilt. Both clubs sacked a manager shortly after their takeover and from there the similarities seem to end.

 

Latics went and recruited an unproven youth coach to their first job in charge, let him have free reign of the clubs rebuilt structure and gave him a summer to recruit. After an interim Mike Ford reign, Yeds on the other hand appointed a new and progressive coach but with a fantastic record at a club a division higher and a wealth of coaching experience in the mens game with top clubs.

 

On the player recruitment side, in the close season the Latics modus operandi seemed to be signing the "best" player from teams in our division or around (Lundstram, Ward, Willoughby, Hobson) or those that agents touted to us (Norwood, Raglan, Dickinson). All signed, in hindsight, with no clear plan especially given we were supposed to trim the squad and ended up with an excess of strikers and centre halves and 1 full back and winger. This lead to a massively imbalanced squad which is undoubtably a factor in us missing out on the playoffs.

Sean Long spoke earlier this week about recruiting for next season and spoke about building a team that will gel together and not just "buying your way" to promotion with big names. I can only assume the thinking was the same for this season with a blend of experience and youth and players that seem to play with passion, belief and for their team mates and shirt.

 

The Yeds also have a identifiable way of playing, and an attractive one at that. Long constantly refers to their system and the freedom to play outside of it, a system that relies heavily on defensive workrate.

Latics dont have a style of play. 80% hoofball, 20% misplaces passes on the deck.

 

Of course their are different factors at play between the sports but the point is broadly the same, the recruitment through the club needs a structure and plan, from the boardroom down. This summer will be a massive one for us and we could do with having a chat with out eggball friends.

Agreed although it is a bit of a joke of a league - only nine teams and the only points that two of them are likely to get are when they play each other.  Further tests to come when they play the only realistic challenger and hopefully next season