Oh Heck C-Beck

I can understand where your coming from, I often think the club has an us vs them attitude in relation to the fans which is bizarre. Corney, The Trust and the rest of the business side of the club seems completely out of touch. For what its worth I dont think Corney is necessarily in it solely for making money on the land, I think he enjoys running a football club and the power, status, ego etc that goes with it. The problem is he doesnt have the money to do so at this level and he seems incapable of bringing in investment, maybe because he wants to remain in sole control, hence surrounding himself with yes men. I dont think TTA came into shaft us, they did fund a competitive side for a number of seasons, especially under Ronnie and Shez. I do think having failed to realise their vision though they didnt have an exit strategy in place for when they got bored which has led to the treading of water and decline. I really think TTA and Corney's project has run its course and therein lies the problem, its all gone stale and everyone is bored, especially the fans. We need some real investment or a serious shock (like administration) to wake everyone up or we will continue to slowly decline.

We can all talk about the trust until we are blue in the face but at the end of the day it can only be seen as a failure because it drives too many divisions between supporters. Can anyone really see us uniting together in its current guise? Lack of a united front amongst the fans is a big problem at Oldham in general IMO, you can see it across a whole host of issues, but can this ever be changed? I think the only way forward is for a new supporter body independent of the trust and club that shy's away from the current politics and situation, concentrating instead on listening to the everyday fans, giving them a voice, as well as exploring avenues to secure the long term future of the club. The problem is I can't see a way for this to be implemented at our club.

I think Mellor and Winchester have all the technical attributes to be a good player its the physical and mental side of the game that seems to let them down. Mellor helped keep us up last season but just hasn't kicked on, while Winchester shows occasional brilliance so I can understand why people rate him, yet he has zero consistency and too many games pass him by completely.

If OWTB represents a good proportion of our fans feelings (which I think it does) it is clear that The Trust is more disengaged than ever in regards to what the everyday fan wants and feels. Sadly these conversations have been taking place for years so I very much doubt that anything will change from a Trust viewpoint. It seems that there is serious call for change but the problem is there is no united front to stand up to the Trust or to change it from within, its just a lot of individual thoughts and opinions. I am thinking out loud now but, if I am right in thinking that the Trust meeting is coming up could OWTB threads/polls not be used to canvas some real opinions from our fan base in regards to the current situation and how it could be improved. It is easy for people like Barry to take people on 1 on 1 like in this thread and rubbish what people say but if we have polls/votes and strength in numbers they cannot be so dismissive and if they are then it shows it is time for real action.

I think someone called it perfectly above the club really is stuck in a rut. We will drop eventually without investment I am sure of it. What is the alternative? Possibly playing at a level our crowds can support for now so we can get everything in order and become more competitive on the pitch, with the hope it would bring some lapsed fans back, realign expectations and maybe even make us a more attractive proposition to investors, especially with the new stand on the way. I dont see why (if fans keep going) we can't be competitive in L2. Surely we have budget that fits that league now anyway? I feel as the more hardcore fans we have 2 options to make things better, pull together and start demanding more investment and backing this up with action (which I don't think there is any support for at the moment), or face up to the reality of the situation the club finds itself in rather than moaning about it and pull together to support the club no matter where we find ourselves, regardless of what we think of the :censored:e owners/managers/players/stadium. Sadly I think this wont happen either because the fan base is too splintered and not united behind a cause. Having typed all this it has got me thinking maybe the :censored: hitting the fan is what is needed to inject some life into our fans and bringing us together again, I can only see people slowly drifting away while we continue to tread water.

That's because Barry only ever replies to certain fans. Usually those he has personal issues with.

It is crazy isn't it, which makes me think there are more problems behind the scenes than the fans know about, whether it is players not listening, fall out from the Montano incident, issues with the chairman etc. Not saying LJ doesnt have to shoulder a lot of the blame for the poor results but I do think the problems run much deeper. What is most worrying is that as fans we seem to have given up hope that we can change stuff. Probably because of the dead weight that is The Trust.

I really thought last season was it but looking at out squad now it looks much worse which is a big worry.

Why can other teams cope though and we can't? To me that is admitting we are punching above our weight now if relegation is the final nail in the coffin as some people suggest. The current situation is not good at all and eventually we will go through that trap door. Like it or not we need more investment to be competitive at this level which is not forthcoming at this moment in time. Personally I think it whether or not it is catastrophic completely depends on how big our hardcore support really is.

he will be even better playing alongside better players too.

As someone not on the uk to witness what's going on I can only piece together what is going on from Latics player, TV games and comments from on here and my dad. It seems to me that we have gone from a team with a game plan that wasn't quite working and turned into something completely unrecognisable in terms of tactics and personnel. Would this be correct. I also don't understand how a team with so little budget can get through so many players. Could we not have spent it on less higher quality signings? My personal feeling on LJ is that he has dug his own hole with his talk. He promised too much which he hasn't delivered. Especially in terms of the style of football and research that goes into the signings. I was optimistic that the squad from the start of the season could stay up. Now I am not so confident at all. A final none LJ related point. I wish corney would dig a little deeper in the summer. We always seem to add people like harkins in January as we panic about going down.

Personally I think many of the people who sing it at black players would sing much worse if they could get away with it. I think that's what has caused the discussion rather than being needlessly pc.

36 players is alarming. i think this rapid turnover of players and manager is certainly not positive in keeping the fans returning, you want to go and watch players you know well. I don't know how we will change this though. Aside from having no investment, everyone from fans to chairman to manager seems to panic at the R word so whenever it comes around which is quite often the club goes into short-term mode as we strive to keep our status in L1. This sees underperforming players shipped out and a plethora of stop gaps come in. Maybe the fans, chairman and manager all need to get behind a clear long-term plan, that will be adhered whatever happens on the pitch and to be fair putting that in place should be Corney's job.

new to league 1 ;) To be fair I remember some :censored: of a Man United fan from Leicester at uni slagging off the football league once when we were watching some games in a pub and then sky showed the goals from the bottom 2 divisions and it was a week of absolute stunners which completely silenced him.

IMO has been less prevalent in recent years but you are right it is camouflaged racism and has been used for as long as I can remember. It is sad but then it's only and idiotic minority that sing it.

Don't think it was the dog doing the :censored:ting ;)

The biggest parallel with Dickov is a lack of goals from the defense and especially the midfield. Are we just unlucky, are these players too expensive, or are the managers not putting enough emphasis on this or is it tactics?

I am not in the uk to watch all this but what concerns me is the apparent change in approach. I thought LJ had a philosophy of pace and attacking down the wings and quick passing. Do we do any of this anymore? I am also concerned that players like Mellor haven't kicked on considering the important role they played under LJ to keep us up last season. Finally the amount of players we have used is alarming if true isn't it over 30? Surely we could have put some more wages into less but better players.

Hmm would you want loads of man united fans taking over your club, I doubt it ;) better they go alone rather than take over someone else a la MK Dons I reckon.

Don't think you really understood my point or did I miss FC United being a league club in massive of debt that slashed wages and sponsorship followed by relegation to the football league :S All I said was they are an example of a club that seems to be run quite well off the pitch regardless of the background and put forward the notion that in an ideal or hypothetical world a few football league clubs could probably do with a fresh start.

Whatever you think about Man United and FC United it definitely is a good example of how to try and run a football club. even if it doesnt work out eventually. I think a lot of league clubs could do a lot worse than tearing it all up and starting again minus all this debt that keeps accumulating from treading water in the football league.

I think my last Premier League match was Man City vs Arsenal or Tottenham around 2011. Very enjoyable and nice to watch some quality players but still prefer going down BP to see Latics.

It was a bit tongue in cheek hence the ;) in response to the only OAFC or no one for me, but apologies it does read back a bit strong. I wasn't really looking to pick a fight, but thought the comment about Salford was a bit needlessly condescending and over the top reaction to the OP's thread. Just because you could only enjoy OAFC doesnt mean other fans of the club cant enjoy the rest of what football has to offer too. Rummy got the final point of my post spot on that you seemed to miss, plenty more people in Oldham who go to no games at all. If we were all tied to one club I wouldn't be an Oldham fan because my dad is not originally, he just happened to settle in the northwest eventually and he ended up taking me to Oldham for my first match and I caught the bug and eventually he did too.

Aren't you a super fan;) I think if you actually read what tangerine and rummy wrote properly you would realise these guys are still fans of Oldham. Even taking in one game a year tangerine is watching more than most people from Oldham anyway so don't really see why this annoys you?

Thanks Rummy. It was actually a Welsh guys non-league ground hopping blog that first got me more interested in the idea of going to some non-league games. I do enjoy taking in new grounds as well. It also seems like quite good value for money. When I was still in the UK I had a client in Hyde and saw them advertising games at around £5 if memory serves correct. I went to watch the local non-league side where I am based in Japan and it was a good afternoons entertainment, the only thing that put me off becoming a regular was the quality of football (although it was a meaningless end of season game so I could have just been unlucky). I am sure the back home the standard would be much anyway at a similar level.