lookersstandandy

....his distribution - bar Saturday's assist for JCH - is generally terrible....!

Glasgow is hardly the Caribbean in comparison. If true, no-one is asking him to relocate his life to the North West. Merely be employed there for a finite period. He's 29, has maybe 3-4 years left before he's forced to think about a career change. To be fair, he could probably get a better paid contract in our division [assuming we stay up] than we could offer, although I can't see a Championship club coming in for him. His choice will be, sit on an SPL bench every week, drop into the Scottish 1st division to have 3 or 4 games against Rangers [maybe Rangers might want him?], or play in the 3rd tier of English football?

Why not?

Shows how ill informed you are then doesn't it. A franchise is a business operating under a licence granted by another. FC Utd of Manc who play in Red, White & Black are a spin off of Manchester United who play in Red, White & Black. While technically not a franchise - as I outlined above - because the former were not granted permission by the latter, they are in effect acting as such. Otherwise, they'd be called Moston Albion and play in Pink and Turquoise.

...technically not, but they're using the name and kit colours.... like a Franchise.

....and the FC Utd frachise with a further 1.6k....!

....sure, but apart from Leeds 25k & Huddersfield 14k, they've only got Halifax 2k.... ....we've got the Red sh1te 75k, the Blue sh1te 47k, W@nky Wanderers 16k, Plastic Latics 15k, Bury 3k, Dale 2.7k and Stockport 2.5k!

Bradford is also a City and has approximately 3 times the number of people to Oldham, a Town. Bradford only has Leeds and Huddersfield [Championship clubs] as close competition, whereas we are on the door step of 2 x [Champions League, let alone Premier League] Manchester clubs who have so much money they could wipe out 3rd world poverty should they wish. It's incomparable.

Dave has kindly picked up a ticket for me..... so I'll see you all in the juicer round the corner from the station..... The Bricklayers?

See you in the C&H for dodgy pint and stale butty.....!

LJ has stated many times that fans making noise and supporting the players helps them. We can't fill our ground with 3,000+ home regulars so the club wanted to close the RRE. Now they're politely asking us to sit together in the Chaddy End this weekend in order to help the team we support. They've stuck beer on in the Chaddy End this weekend cos they recognise this is normally an influencing factor when choosing Chaddy End or RRE. In the next game, they're politely asking us all to sit in RRE, afterwhich I assume LJ and the boys will tell us which seating arrangement created the best atmosphere and helped them the most. In summary, I don't see any reason not to do as we've been politely asked. COME ON OLDHAM!!!!

Without Simon Corney, Oldham Athletic would have been liquidated.

Neither were Mike Milligan or Nick Henry. They snapped at heals, won the ball back and played it simple to the wings. The next bit is where I agree with you, we don't have Rick Holden & Neil Adams, with Andy Barlow, Neil Pointon, Gunnar Halle or Denis Irwin overlapping, to beat a man and find, Ritchie, Marshall, Palmer, Sharp or Olney in the middle! Losing Baxter, Montano, Tarky, Lanzoni & Mills has certainly weakened us, but how much of this is because of decisions made by LJ? Arguably his hands were tied on all of them. The reality of life with under 4,000 home fans per game sadly.

Olney scored 13 goals for us in 92/93. Some beauts as well..... check Leeds at Home out! He was unlucky his career was ended the year after by Julian Dicks. He was a decent striker, vastly under rated.

JCH needs to learn how to head the ball first. His hold up play is almost non existent. This appears to be what is getting on LJ's nerves. I get the impression JCH wants to run at or get behind defenders only. He's gonna need to work out that a little more is required of him if he wants to be guaranteed a place amongst the starting 11 every week.

I stand corrected, you're spot on..... we only required 3. I shouldn't have done this really, as it's only dragging up painful memories..... however, I've just opened up the history books; Joe Royle had been named as February manager of the month following 4 wins [2 in the FA Cup] and 1 draw in Feb. March wasn't too shabby either, with 3 wins [1 in the FA Cup], 1 draw, 1 defeat. We were on a roll. Confidence building on the back of the FA Cup run. On Saturday the 2nd of April 1994 - remarkably, soon to be 20 years ago - the bottom of the Premier League looked like this, 2 games in hand on a lot of teams around us; Ps / Team / Pld / W / D / L / For / Aga / GD / Pts 12 / Chelsea / 34 / 11 / 8 / 15 / 39 / 44 / -4 / 41 13 / Coventry / 35 / 10 / 11 / 14 / 35 / 42 / -7 / 41 14 / West Ham / 34 / 10 / 11 / 13 / 34 / 48 / -14 / 41 15 / Ipswich / 36 / 9 / 14 / 13 / 33 / 47 / -14 / 41 16 / Tottenham / 35 / 9 / 12 / 14 / 46 / 48 / -2 / 39 17 / Everton / 36 / 10 / 7 / 19 / 37 / 53 / -16 / 37 18 / LATICS / 34 / 9 / 10 / 15 / 35 / 53 / -18 / 37 19 / Man City / 36 / 7 / 5 / 14 / 31 / 42 / -11 / 36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20 / Sheff Utd / 36 / 6 / 16 / 14 / 34 / 53 / -19 / 34 21 / Southampton / 36 / 9 / 6 / 20 / 34 / 51 / -17 / 33 22 / Swindon / 36 / 4 / 14 / 18 / 41 / 86 / -45 / 26 We then travelled to Old Trafford on Easter Monday [4th April] and were unluckly to lose 3-2, with a wonder goal from Sean McCarthy too. 5 days later we faced them at Wembley..... had we won that game, got to the FA Cup final, where we would've faced Chelsea - a team we'd beaten home and away that season - we simply wouldn't have gone down from the position above. In the end we didn't win another game, picked up only 3 draws and whimpered out of the league on 40 points.

1st. Ooooh Roger Palmer. Scored in my first game stood on the Chaddy in Dec 1986 against Shrewsbury. All time. Still Palmer, although I acknowledge Andy Ritchie was a better player. Now. It would be Harkins if he were our player, however he's St Mirren's player that we've borrowed. I'd therefore say Danny Philliskirk. I think he's genuinely grateful for being given the chance again and he shows enough promise to potentially be our talisman in the near future.

I was at Norwich in 1994 too. On the coach on the way back, I remember looking at the teams we would play the following season and feeling a bit despondent at having to go to Grimsby. There was a brief moment during that day where we thought we might pull off another great escape.... We needed both Everton and Ipswich to lose, with a goal difference swing on Ipswich of 4 goals. At half time, we were 1-0 up, Everton were losing a home to Wimbledon 2-1 and B@stard Rovers were drawing 0-0 at home to Ipswich. A couple of goals from Blackburn and one more for us and we were there again. In the event, Neil Adams [typical Latics] crossed to the far post for Rob Ullathorne to equalise for Norwich and what happened elsewhere was immaterial, although the Everton v Wimbledon match which ended 3-2 to the scousers was later placed under question as a betting scam with Wimbledon players being accused of throwing the game for financial gain. I looked at Ian Marshall's Ipswich survive and our opening day loss to them [and his goal - typical Latics] as pivotal. Had we won that game, they'd have gone down, we'd have stayed up. However, our form since Mark Hughes' equaliser at Wembley was 8 games, 0 wins, 3 draws, 5 defeats, In the 8 games prior to the S/F, it was 4 wins, 2 draws, 2 losses. I still can't bring myself to look at Mark Hughes and not feel annoyed to this very day.

...which is why he fell out with Royle and left... and scored against us on the opening day of the 93/94 season as a centre forward for Ipswich - I've never completely forgiven him for celebrating so vociferously in front of the Chaddy End. His complete career will tell you he was a Striker, who also played centre half, not the other way around. He and Redfearn - who also fell out with Royle because Royle wanted him to play on the right hand side instead of Neil Adams, following Milligan's return from Everton - were two [of the few] examples of mistakes made by our greatest ever manager. They were not replaced with better players IMO. When back in the 2nd tier with Lee Richardson in midfield and Sean McCarthy up front, we rued the decisions to let Marshall and Redfearn leave. Still, it was a pleasure watching them while they were with us. How much I'd love to see two players like them don the blue shirt today. Lets hope LJ finds us a couple over the next few seasons.

....sorry, 18:27 back....!

Yep, 12:13 from Euston to Bletchley. 18:29 back building time in for a beer on the return leg.

I can't imagine Willie would take too kindly to the shenanigans of the modern day [youth] footballer....! I remember reading - possibly in Rick Holden's autobiography - that Rick Holden once persuaded Willie of the nutritional benefits of fish & chips following a training session. I think they got as far as sitting down to eat it before he realised Rick was having him on. Innocent fun in comparison to some of the stories you hear of today. I hope he doesn't lose his job over it but if he does, he'd be the perfect experienced man to help our LJ out that's for sure! Best of luck Willie.

Stead is gonna play.... we wouldn't have signed him for a month to sit on the bench.....!

Simpson gone for good, no fee according to Matt Chambers. Contract up in the summer. Possible fee - as he's 23 - assuming we would've offered him one? Not convinced it sounds like we would though. A little bit confused by it all given he was being talked up not so long ago....?!?!

Yeah, but we was bobbins for Palace. Never scored in the Prem and only got 1 goal in the Championship for them before finding himself back in the lower leagues..... he was no Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand, Stan Collymore et al, that's for sure....!