Frankly Mr Shankly

MM's fewmin at Halifax / The League going off his pre-match presser, isn't he? And rightly so. Having to play just 36 hours ahead of our [potentially] final match of the season is a disgrace and I'm glad he pointed that out.

Quite right. I guess the alternative is to traditionally scout at step one, but there is a huge potential you may be missing a great player that's just not on your radar and SB narrows that. When the takeover went through, there was a school of thought that we wanted to build the infrastructure that was ready for L1 football so that when the rise through the leagues happens, as expected, we'd be ready to compete straight 'out of the box'. SB is part of that and I'm sure data is used by almost every club from L1 upwards anyway. It's only when bumps in the road happen, that some rudimentary narrow-thinking commentary arises such as "A lot of the players are terrible. It must be Stats Bombs fault". It's also reasonable to expect that SB might not flourish until you've used it for a decent amount of time. High performance IT systems adapt and evolve to your business model over a set amount of time. I don't think the casual fan is in a sound enough position to provide much convincing critique on a system like that unless they've used it regularly themselves.

I came across some footage / highlights of Wolves reserves who play at Kidderminster. I couldn't help noticing how well their pitch looked. Would it be Wolves paying for a top-end pitch as part of the deal?

I'm sure opposition teams pull off quotes like this to stick on their dressing room door when they come here. It's the only way I can explain them turning into Real Madrid for two hours when they play us at home.

Something about how closely Mellon's run had mirrored DU's run from Halifax at home to the day he was sacked at Bromley.

It was only when I was looking at soccerbase how closely Mellon's run had mirrored DU's run from Halifax at home to the day he was sacked at Bromley. Five draws, three defeats versus four draws and three defeats.

I'm surprised. I knew we had a lot of midweek games including both Sheffield clubs. Didn't realise that they were as clustered together. Oh yeah, the FA Cup had such a big demoralising effect. I remember us playing West Ham at home the Saturday after. We lost 1-2, against a pretty poor team. It was light and day the difference in form from Feb-March to April-May either side of those matches. I don't blame them for what happened after that. We needed instant promotion and the cloth wasn't just cut, it was hacked to ribbons by the board.

Is with me. I was in Thailand at the time and remember being in an internet cafe desperately trying to grab any information about the game that evening. I think that match only moved to Thursday to accomodate Sky Sports who showed it live. I don't think we had another match that midweek. Anyway, Southend have moved above us who may have put themselves tentatively in the frame too. What an achievement from them though. My personal first choice when looking for DU's replacement was Maher, who perhaps may have been attracted away amongst the chaos that was going on there. I've got a feeling he'll stay there post-takeover and become a club legend, more than he already is. Potential to be a top manager. Wealdstone are fucked though. They're going to need a result of some kind at our place aren't they?

This was because we had John Kelly in midfield and Tribe of Toffs just happened to release that song a short while before it. Going off topic, I was too young to make an accuratre assessment but was John Kelly a pile of shit? I had that feeling he was.

All this "Unsworth wasn't that bad" rhetoric is plainly weird isn't it?

I reckon I've heard that meeting Joe Royle at that awards dinner anecdote about three times Andy @BPAS

There's not really been much of a precident at our level and higher though, has there? They've left zero wiggle room on this though. Could be a Monday, Thursday, Saturday run of fixtures for them. It needs looking at by the NL though. That they've not got a pitch fit for purpose is nothing short of a disgrace, as much as they'll blame the terrible weather. Where would they play a rearranged match anyway? Has to be all kinds of logistical issues given the crowd is much higher than the 30 or so fans it would affect in Truro's case.

The more I think about Norwood, the more I think David Unsworth put his entire eggs in one basket expecting him to be a silver bullet solution. Problem was* the pennies left in the budget went on Freeman; a player that had 3 overlapping yellow 'Whoops!' price stickers on him and Brennan Dickenson; a Rolls Royce with every warning light flashing**. * Yes, I know the real problem was DU... ** I have used this analagy for Dan Gardner...

If they bring back Fish n Chip crisps with a wagon wheel chaser, I'm balls deep into this outrageous crackpot idea!

Such an overly-simplistic way of assessing it.

Love this. The charlatan who recruited dreadfully and destroyed any hope of a good start gets a free pass. 5PM man comes in, axes as much dross as he can and gets a shambles of a squad into the playoffs is lambasted because said team runs out of gas.

Oh I agree ST made a contribution to it. But the dreadful start and playing catch-up, for me, is the biggest single contributor to missing out on the play-offs, if that is what happens. Personally if being in the play-offs in Feb doesn't excite you, it explains our slight difference in expectation levels. I 100% agree with the rest of your post though. Bromley and Barnet are well-oiled NL machines now and their position this season demonstrates that. Solihull could be tagged in the same group for me. Canny operators.

I think we need to let this one play out. I was only correcting your opinion that a centre forward was needed in January and Norwood's six week hamstring layoff proved it. The staff would have suspected this was a likelihood particularly when it came out that Norwood would have missed the Eastleigh match if it passed the pitch inspection in January. If we'd have used the money elsewhere we'd have had Fondop and, er, Hope up front for those matches.

Being 5th in Feb was the fault of Unsworth, not Mellon, surely? You'll probably be proven to be correct. Nowhere near though would be mid-table or lower in my book.

He came in very useful during the period Norwood was out with a hamstring injury so I'd suggest he was needed.

Eyresey is his agent, so he's bound to recommend him to clients. When he arrived he struggled with a niggly injury, didn't he? I don't think it was entirely down to MM not fancying him. For him to go on record saying we're suffering with a lack of wide players, it doesn't align with being 'badly used by MM'. Sometimes it appears to the average passer by that you've an agenda against management because they don't or didn't listen to you. Would that be a fair assessment?

Nowhere near it?

Does Stats Bomb (Stats Bomb. You're my Stats Bomb) give you data on midfielders who put in a massive crunching tackle within the first minute? I think that's where it's coming up short.

Can't really argue with how I saw it in December. We're not battle hardened enough and mentally weak.

They might have gone in with the 'Fax lunatic fringe