Twisbrogan

Doesn't this happen around every other season? (although we tend not to find out about it until after it's been lifted)

The only thing that would make Burgess a better (more sensible) pick is that he seems to prefer playing on the left side of a central pair. Beyond that, I don't see an awful lot in him so why we're playing a part in his development at the expensive of one of our own is infuriating. If this policy was offset with a decent set of results then I'd be happy, but it's not. Watching a player, who is only around short term, block the path of one we should be trying to develop of money and be less than accomplished himself is, as ever, fairly :censored:.

FWIW, I heard a similar kind of figure about a year or so ago from someone who reckoned they'd seen some sort of sales pack/ prospectus.

For even the hope that we might get some excitement & success, they could change what they want for the duration of the deal. Put wings on the kit if they want.

If it pisses down on Saturday afternoon and we fill the back three rows of the North Stand, I'll be looking at the big roof over the RRE (what happened to calling it the Jimmy Frizzell stand?) and thinking, why am I not in there?

The problems I have with Erwin are that, when he does receive the ball in a promising position, he seems to want about half a dozen extra touches before he'll get a shot off & he's just not powerful enough in the air. The service to him may not have been great but I don't see how he'd offer more if he had Mesut Özil playing behind him. Going back to the title of this thread, I find it depressing how few of the team I have any belief in. Ripley is clearly a good shot-stopper & is generally decent on crosses. I'd say he's an excellent League One keeper (although I don't think his distribution is anywhere good enough yet to get into a a top half Championship side) & Peter Clark is clearly a very good leader & defender at this level. Beyond that, they are what they are. The outcasts that no-one else really fancied and a couple with potential to develop. If ever we were to give some of our own a chance then I thought this season would be it - maybe (hopefully) that will happen in the second half of the season - but I feel so let down from the garbage that has been served up in all bar one of our recent home games & two away games where we had a great backing, that I don't even like them anymore. I'll be there again against Doncaster but if they're similarly inept against them, then I hope the :censored:s get pelted with abuse.

That was :censored:e and the players got off very lightly from a tremendous turn out. The team have had one and a half decent performances in months & haven't earned the right to try as little as they did in the first half. Ripley & Clarke aside, I'd be fine with not seeing any of them in a Latics shirt again. Fingers crossed there isn't enough money to pay the wages this month because that collection of dickheads don't deserve any.

I'll be there Saturday when going to watch with my lad will be more of a focal point of how we spend our day but just couldn't motivate myself to rush around to get there tonight. First home league match we've missed in a long while.

I don't get this. In his two spells playing for the club, when has there been a problem with his ego?

The new evidence just seems to be someone else who says that she wasn't a virgin. Hopefully Evans will get sent down again for submitting a frivolous appeal.

Why is it the assistant's fault rather than the manager?

For all the mocking of that presentation that goes on, when is it OK to admit that there may have been something in it. I miss how we played when we had him. Contrasting today with that 3-0 win at Dale is so depressing. Seems like it was a different club.

I'm sure there are people that would like to scale it down to a handful of individuals but as it goes on everywhere & in many different countries, I don't see much of a story. There are many football league clubs who sign a lot of players that belong to their favoured agent or agency. Ask yourself how that relationship works.

The Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers so won't be doing any stories on how the ultra-rich protect their money from the tax system or the banks that look after it. Much easier to go after football managers & coaches - it's a wonderful distraction.

It's widespread, has been for years & it's naïve to even consider otherwise. Football is a global business and backhanders will always be a part of that and I've no doubt that third party ownership of players will be the norm in the future. I'm genuinely shocked that people are surprised to hear these 'revelations' but I'm not having anyone that thinks the Telegraph have done a good job in all this. Their sole interest is circulation and page impressions - nothing at all to do with wanting any integrity in the game. If they ever get to investigate illegal approaches/ payments made to parents by big clubs to try and get young kids to academies, then I'm sure a few grand here and there in the senior game won't matter.

Easy pickings on their part. The only way to root it out is to ban football at every level.

Shooting fish in a barrel with the kind of investigative reporting that I'd expect a GCSE student to be able to pull off. You don't have to look hard at all to find clubs bending & breaking rules over payments especially the bigger clubs & younger players. That this nation of curtain twitchers chooses to be alarmed at this end of it shows how out of touch people are with how football works.

We had the GPS monitoring devices last season. Not sure why they're being presented as something that we've only just invested in.

Can't think of many occasions when I've left early but the breakway attack when all three of our strikers contrived, one after the other, to pass up an attempt at goal before feeding it back to Green was the signal for me to leave. Despite trying to remain optimistic, the wholesale changes to staff & players was never going to lead to success. You end up collecting too many that just wouldn't get a look in elsewhere.

Outside of covering any costs, the money will go to the FA & Rochdale will also host a game.

It might be you.

Maybe they genuinely feel that those who still go after year upon year of lower table finishes do support the team fantastically well. Maybe the announcement of attendance figures isn't the time to say, "Thanks for your support which has been largely disappointing for the last decade and why don't you lot sing 'Walking down Sheepfoot Lane' anymore?". Nothing wrong in thanking people for coming or how they do it. What does rile me is people tag go on about things being 'cringeworthy', events that they're not directly associated with making them 'cringe' as they sit there in a state of perpetually feeling awkward as life passes them by. Those people can :censored: the :censored: off.

I know he got lots of the 'sex case' stuff the other week.

Surely people are just after getting a bite with that, there's no way it would happen. He'll get the kind of abuse he's been getting elsewhere & will have been expecting to hear.

No but maybe Robinson does because that's what he says.