JoeP

100% got to keep Fondop. Effort, scores, holds the ball up well, even defends.

Same last season. Wealdstone have become our nemesis. Fucking Wealdstone.

Can we just play Big Mike on his own next season?

We have no defence as well as no midfield! We're getting worse!

Same here - sorry, I was being sarcastic in my last post. I'd genuinely rather have Reid than Norwood!

Picked something up on the stream. Did our James give it back?

Norwood. Love that guy...

Worst striker we've got.

Big Mike being shit AGAIN!!

It's so bad it's funny...

He's better than a lot of people give him credit for - he gets ridicule because he hasn't had the relatively impressive career that that other fella has had. Scores when we were crap last season. Scores when we've been crap this season. Offers something different - something that's probably more suitable for this level than the other strikers do. He stays for next season, for me..

There's Big Mike being shit again...

It is disappointing. Give some of the kids a go who might be out of work because of our failure/potentially within a shout of a pro contract next season. Hmmm....

It is a strange statement. I don't think you need to be "the most experienced person here" to know what it looks like. Real Madrid look alright, Arsenal, Bayen Munich.. It sure as fuck ain't this...

Didn't realise these can actually still go down if we beat them today. It's live on National League TV, if anyone gives a fook...

Failure has never turned out to be a blessing for us. Many have predicted our last four (FFS!) relegations would be a chance to rebuild and come back stronger. It's yet to happen...

Get up at the first opportunity. Build our charge through the leagues in the division above. It's a hell of a lot easier surviving in League Two than trying to get promotion out of the National League.

Yes, agreed. It also probably needs to be tailored for this level, if York are also using it in the same way. It is a problem, if we're using it in the way I suspect. It should be an extra tool for recruitment, rather than the main tool. As I say, the fact that we have a collection of individuals, rather than a team suggests to me that our recruitment has been heavily stats/attributes based and it hasn't worked. I don't mind them trying it and it not working, but they don't seem to have gone back to the drawing board at any point. They seem to be persevering with the way they use it at great cost.

But this is the most potential we've had off the pitch for 30 years! You can't compare where we are now with the last 30 years of decline. "Something else to moan about" is another man's leaving no stone unturned. How can the stats recruitment model be completely discounted as an issue? We've got an imbalanced squad, who don't really seem to have much team spirit and don't seem to gel on the pitch. That sounds to me like we've just looked at a players attributes rather than the person too. From the outside, it looks like someone's been playing too much Football Manager, even without knowing the ins and outs of Statbomb, etc. Yes, it works at a higher level, but they're teams that can afford to throw 100 darts with the hope one hits the bullseye. We can't.

I mean I agree. Just because "that's not how recruitment is done anymore" in the game in general isn't a good enough reason not to do it like that, I don't think. I'm all for embracing modern ways of doing things, but it does feel we've gone balls deep into something that works for the top teams with lots of resources without really thinking about how it would work at our level..

Similarly there's no evidence we don't use them too heavily. Why would we have a stats department if it wasn't fairly central to our recruitment?

Given the approach was in place before and after his arrival, he's probably had no choice!

Could get quite cathartic this thread.. As LOF said in the OP and I've said elsewhere, we've used stats too heavily. We've brought in a (over-inflated) squad of individuals based on stats, rather than built a team based on a mix of ability and personality. Darren Royle takes a heavy share of that responsibility, I guess. Football's a simple game, especially at this level. We seemed to decide on an over-complex recruitment strategy and just thrown more and more (of Frank's!) money at it in the hope that it works, rather than taking a cautious approach and seeing how it works out. I'm still reluctant to put Mellon near the top of the blame pile. These players haven't played for two managers now and he still hasn't really put his own mark on the team with the aim of getting to "what good looks like". He seems fed-up. Maybe he's been mis-sold the club, in the same way that Norwood seems to have been. Maybe in spite of some good people in charge of the club, there's not a lot of shrewd football knowledge about and we're actually not being run as well as we or he were expecting. We've got a lot of these players next year thanks to the big contracts handed out and Mellon, understandably, is struggling to come up with an idea to move forward with them. That said, his reluctance to stick with a settled first eleven, his reluctance to try any of the youth players and his weird subs does have a few alarm bells ringing. As we're stuck with a lot of the players for next year, we've got to find a way of improving the squad with what resources we've got. There are some players there that would fit into a good team, if they had the right characters around them. Lundstram for example, has been disappointing this season but I think if he had more positive players around him, he'd be a real asset. Having positive players around the place is important, to perhaps bring the likes of Lundstram through who is a talented player but maybe has fragile confidence. I'd keep the Big Mike and Gardner mainly for that reason and with the possibility of the odd cameo. (Puts hard-hat on) With that in mind, the first person I'd move on is James Norwood. Yes, he's out top scorer, but I can't see him being so next season here (unless we get quite a few penalties again..). For £5k a week, I didn't think we were getting just a goal-scorer, but a senior player who would help develop the younger players in a positive way, but he seems to have the air of someone who thinks "this is shit and everyone around me is shit", which is not helpful. It's no coincidence that we were playing well without him and then went back to being awful once he returned - even last night we concede as soon as he walks on the pitch! It's nothing to do with him not smiling or celebrating - anyone who thinks that's an issue is an idiot. Similarly - anyone who keeps referring to that being the only reason people don't like him are also idiots. There's obviously something not right in the dressing room - check out the lack of congratulations and joy in the team when Gardner scored the penalty last night. With a modicum of extra effort over a couple of these final games, we could have achieved something - had the chance to play at Wembley. Something a lot of these players will never get the chance to do in their careers again. That seems to me like there's either an attitude problem or the club is so rotten, the players are devoid of any motivation for the club, the fans or themselves, which is the biggest worry of them all. We might need better players - but we definitely need better personalities.

Still had the audacity to bollock everyone else on the way back to the centre-circle...

Garner was. Held it up well, won free kicks. Bringing them both off so close to each other completely disrupted our rhythm..