Frankly Mr Shankly

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We use Facetime and Zoom these days, Alf.

Typical, textbook Latics will be wins vs Rochdale, Halifax and Oxford followed up with a 1-4 pissboil against already-relegated Wealdstone.

No idea. I wasn't there and don't recall that being quoted. What he has said in a post match presser or two was we have virtually no pace or natural wide players at our disposal.

Amazing amount of positivity and negativity shoehorned into one post there.

Sprays a 20 yard pass across to Gardner who slots it in.

I absolutely would. He was one of the few who never tried to hide and even when he gets flattened as he did several times against Chesterfield and again by Altrincham's centre half (amazingly, given as a foul against him), he gets back up and goes again.

Apart from the Kitching take, it's as good as an assessment as I've seen on here. Summed up perfectly, particularly the need for pace and creativity. If we're not top of the division, but we're seeing a real upturn in attitude, performances, BIG wins and much better home form, I expect most will get behind it, even if it's not quite good enough next term. We just haven't had the sense of improvement even though there has been improvement. It's got to be tangiable and self-evident rather than a few points and places further up the board. A big, meaty win or two in the last few matches will go a long way to helping that, even if the cynics will call it a papering over the cracks.

That’s probably not far from the truth. I’m not sure it would be as end of days as it’s being made out here. The Rothwell’s are hardened business people and the projects they’ve undertaken in terms of redevelopments don’t marry up with a rhetoric of “if it doesn’t happen next season, we’re all buggered”. They want to leave a legacy behind, for the town to enjoy. if it doesn’t happen next season it’s likely a readjustment of the way the football team is funded happens and we work under a smaller budget with less marquee type signings. Which altogether might not be the worst thing.

It’s a fair assessment. Norwood’s always going to be a favorite. He has caliber that is far higher than all players at the club, Raglan and Garner aside. His playing time on the pitch reflects it. might be moot anyway next season if rumors to shift him off the wage bill are to be believed.

No, that’s not strictly true. He returned to the bench after injury vs Southend, came on and we scored two minutes later. He wasn’t "straight into the side”. He benched him again at Aldershot. Whilst I think you have a point, in that the Fondop / Garner partnership needed exploring more. I think there’s a lot of trying to fit a narrative in here. Ultimately, I don’t think he rates Fondop at all and I’ll be amazed if he’s offered a deal in the summer.

Like I said further up. Loans brought in most commonly don't work out perfectly. He did get Stones spot on to give him credit. The permanent signings I think may be too early to give judgement on. Conlon clearly needs to step up, and may well do with fitter, better midfielders around him and wingers to give the ball to.

He only signed three players on contracts in January, the rest are loans which always carry a fairly low success ratio. Garner will play more of a role next season I'm sure. Conlon needs hard working terriers around him to shine so I'm reserving judgement on that and Hammond is a low cost punt at buffing up a potential diamond. I get the lack of continuity hampers us, but he has to change and rotate with how he expects the opposition to form up, the conditions and who performs better at home vs away. It's a difficult balance to get right when you have few pace options and a midfield that generally doesn't like to tackle. I get the feeling, reading between the lines of his interviews (he's remarkably diplomatic compared to other NL managers), he'd jettison as many of this squad as he can over his time here, save for a small handful. Not exclusively, but a good start buys you a lot of wiggle room for bumps in the road. We did well to get into the frame (a run that really should buy at least some goodwill) but the recent wobble has coincided with upturns of form for three of our competitors. All the playoff contendors had got themselves into position before we got our shit together. Grimsby, in 21-22 would not have been promoted without a brilliant start to their campaign, which sustained a two month winless period. Alty went 6 losses on the spin, but now find themselves in fourth. Another, probably bigger, factor is not being able to convert wins when in front. Maidenhead, Dagenham, Wealdstone, Gateshead (twice), Southend and Chesterfield are seven matches which if we converted half of them into wins, sees us in the play-off places right now.

With Fondop suspended, think it's clear his options were limited. The regular switching of midfielders mainy speaks to me about how little he rates the crop he's inherited.

He has been playing behind the likes of Gardner and Hope. TBF, I'd not be ploughing down towards their goal line if I knew I had to pump straight back up to the other end immediately.

Someone's head who has too much time on their hands?

I suspect Walker isn't good enough IMO. Pathetically ineffective at Dagenham, which I know was only one match but it was made for him to shine. He was only ever used off the bench for the last 10-15 mins during his time at Morecambe. MM is just rotating a fairly bad / inexperienced bunch of players to get through to the end of the season. The only surprise was Garner not even being on the bench unless he's ill or picked a knock up on Friday (possible). It's quite probably he's more than sussed that he doesn't have a midfield collective who are up to task and ones he has (Green for example) are injured. Personally, the calls for sacking him at this juncture are wildly off the mark. I've been disappointed with how our season has fizzled out, but the blame lies squarely with the dreadful start we had which eliminated any insurance against big wobbles which nearly all clubs get in this division. We've simply been running on empty for 4-5 weeks.

What would be seen as the biggest surprise in our history? Promotion at Wembley this season or saying we'll stay up in 1993 a fortnight before the season ended? Surely the odds were longer on that?

I don't think it is but I'd agree in that it'd need a remarkable upturn in our form / tactics. I could see us getting four wins and still somehow missing out! It's a funny game, football.

They've called it about right. It's always going to be difficult to market another season in the Conference. £11-£12 per match for getting to most or all home matches is decent value still, despite the obtuse negative naysayers who just can't resist piling on.

If you have @GKing521 glass half empty outlook every time with Latics you’ll be proved right much more often than proved wrong. Running to his keyboard as soon as shit goes down though. That’s something else. Sophie Ellis Bextor in her theaudience days did sing “A pessimist is never disappointed” I guess.

How this is panning out just shows how important a solid start to the season is. We've played catch-up since October, really so to get anywhere remotely near in such a physically competitive division should be looked at as a good effort. I still hold hope we can nip in there in 7th but we'll need to go all out attack for most of those matches. Two of them at least will be on bad, bobbly pitches. Definitely not unsurmountable but the cluster of once-inconsistent teams like Gateshead, Halifax and Alty all stringing fat wins together at the same time are putting the bar a touch further away. I still think 74 points (I thought 72 would be enough last week) will get us there but that equates to four wins and two draws. Very little room for mistake. I just hope we can finish the season with at least a couple of commanding victories, even if it only serves as momentum to take into next season.

You literally can’t wait to throw your blanket of pessimism on here, can you. Five minutes after full time. It must be exhausting being you, no?

Which way of operating is there other than let the incumbent manager identify and sign players he wants for his team? The only one I can think of is the sign players and force them on the manager way of operating? And we all know how that panned out, the last time we did that.

Me. I know, let's start a shopping list thread, to stick in players who we think offers improvement and could be realistic targets. OWTB: Fuck it. Let's moan about Norwood / how shit we've been for 4+ pages. Never change, forum. Never change.