Frankly Mr Shankly

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.

41 minutes ago, JoeP said:

 

Saturday against West Ham, Tuesday against Sheff Utd, Thursday against Spurs and then Norwich on the Saturday says Wiki.

 

I remember vague rumblings of injustice at it, but in reality we were just demoralised after THAT goal... which happened 30 years ago tomorrow!

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. 

10 hours ago, TheBigDog said:

30 Oct 1999 Oldham Athletic v Chelmsford City W 4-0

9 hours ago, Dave_Og said:

No bells

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.

19 minutes ago, JoeP said:

 

Was it not something similar in '94 too?  We lost to Spurs on a Thursday and drew with Norwich on the Saturday and got relegated. Penalised for FA Cup run.  And a shit pitch.

 

We ain't got no dogs in the fight here.  No chance of making the play-offs.  Lets not worry about who plays who when.  We've got bigger issues!

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? 

6 hours ago, diggleblue said:

Do you remember us fans singing "John Kettley is a weatherman and so is Michael Fish"

2 hours ago, Only Blue said:

No-one really knew the words of the song apart for the above line and just belted that out at the top of their voices.

 

Happy , innocent days

 

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 

48 minutes ago, daniel said:

Are the allowed to ask to play the game elsewhere? A few in NLS like Truro and Taunton I believe have played at Gloucester due to their pitches. They could ask to switch it to BP to give them a better chance of winning?

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.

34 minutes ago, JoeP said:

 

I'm no Norwood fan, but it's a reasonable return.  If the "recruitment department" thought spunking all that money on him would guarantee 30 goals from him, they really have mis-judged it... 

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...

On 4/6/2024 at 3:02 PM, frizzell54 said:

Why not change it all back to how it was.

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

17 minutes ago, deyres42 said:

There is/was no mess to mop up, it is a squad full of previous promotion winners.

Such an overly-simplistic way of assessing it.

1 hour ago, deyres42 said:

We got into the top 7 comfortably with like a third of the season to play, all we had to do was maintain reasonable form - the way you are talking it is as if we've always been on the outside looking in.

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.

24 minutes ago, League one forever said:

If we’re going down that road, ST contributed to being 5th as well as Mellon. 
 

It’s all semantics though. 
 

To my mind being excited for a couple of weeks in Feb is nowhere near to getting promoted.
 

Dave- a caller on the phone inn last night, made a great point. Sides that can sustain a playoff push throughout the whole season are serious contenders. This season that’s Bromley and Barnet. They don’t have runs of 1 win in 10, and they definitely don’t have two runs like that in a season. We are pretenders at the minute, not contenders. 

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.

4 minutes ago, oafc1955 said:

But we haven’t made the playoffs so perhaps we could have used the money elsewhere. An 18 month deal for a 36 year old who doesn’t look too mobile and spends a lot of his time on his arse seems poor value to me!

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.

6 hours ago, League one forever said:

Aye.

It’s better than last season, but being 5th in Feb isn’t close to promotion. 

Being 5th in Feb was the fault of Unsworth, not Mellon, surely?

6 hours ago, deyres42 said:

We sadly won't be appearing in the end of season extravaganza that is the promotion playoffs.

You'll probably be proven to be correct. Nowhere near though would be mid-table or lower in my book.

17 hours ago, oafc1955 said:

I have to question whether we even needed Garner, the money should have been saved or spent on a RB or another midfielder.

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

1 hour ago, BP1960 said:

 

Came highly recommended from David Eyres and he should know all about left wingers.

I feel Walker has been used badly by MM and needs a run in the team in his best position, which is not where he was played at Dagenham.

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?

8 minutes ago, deyres42 said:

Looking increasingly obvious that not much thought went into the appointment beyond looking at his previous record.

 

He was clearly brought in to either win or go very close to winning promotion this season and got nowhere near it.

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.

On 12/18/2023 at 4:32 PM, Frankly Mr Shankly said:

 

Quite right and, I think we're showing a small germination of signs in how to handle ourselves in this division. We're suffering a lot of Jekyll and Hyde performances and we're in a bit of flux regarding having the right personalities and attitudes to become a leading team in this division. It's no surprise to me that the current top seven (aside from Gateshead at three seasons) are all teams that have had between 6 and 10 years at this level. They're shrewd, battle-hardened outfits and know precisely what's required. We've still some way to go to match that mental toughness and, if I'm honest, don't expect us to achieve promotion this season unless we pull off some remarkable signings that bed-in almost instantly.

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

Just now, Lee Sinnott said:

There is also the possibility that I just didn't see them and they were there. But we did have a good look around...

They might have gone in with the 'Fax lunatic fringe

.

6 hours ago, BP1960 said:

 

Jack Grealish certainly can't.  

He's so telegraphed now he's not a threat he should be anymore.

We use Facetime and Zoom these days, Alf. 

1 hour ago, jsslatic said:

 

I'd suggest that a barnstorming finish to the season winning our last four games would be the opposite of Typical Latics!

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

2 minutes ago, BradKnowles1 said:

Did Mellon not say at the fans forum wingers don’t feature much in the modern game so basically won’t be used? 

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.

13 hours ago, diggleblue said:

Just listened to Halifax v York. York totally out played  Halifax and were on course to win but Halifax equaliser came after the ball stuck in the mud!! In injury time.

If we start trying to play some football ha.ha. we could beat them Playoff place still possible,perhaps??But probably not after Rochdale beat us?C.O.Y.B.

.

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