Worcester Owl

I've got a lot of sympathy for your views here, I just worry whether RW is the right guy to take us forward. Totally agree that AL's influence in the dressing room - if that is established fact - must somehow be curbed. And I don't see the sense in changing manager yet again if the new guy is parachuted in from overseas with no knowledge of L2. But maybe an experienced and motivational manager - if there is one out there and we can afford him - would be a better shout than RW.

For a second there I thought you meant the draw against Northampton!! Sorry. But we've got to keep our spirits up. Somehow.

Well bully for you old chap. Get this man a Bonio. Woof woof!

It’s an awful day. But as others have said, it’s been coming. We didn’t deserve to stay up, truth be told. Currently, I have two thoughts. First, while this is terrible, we have to stay positive. Look at the roll call of clubs in years gone by who’ve fallen into the fourth tier but bounced back. Wolves, Bournemouth to name just a couple. We do not have to be Chesterfield or Tranmere. Second, keep a sense of perspective. On the day we finally fell out of L1 Alex Ferguson suffered a brain haemorrhage. The guy who scored for Rochdale has beaten cancer twice. At the end of the day there are more important things than football.

Benyu. Why? Presumably we owed Celtic if the lightweight didn’t play enough games?

I'm in that photo of the Doncaster game! Thanks!

The hysteria from some posters on this thread is poor. Take a leaf out of Kowenicki’s book and grow a pair, please. it is in our hands. And if you’re relying on other teams for safety, well, that doesn’t say a lot at the end of the day, does it?

Sorry if someone's already pointed it out, but given the thread title does this go in the envelope as well?

You'll be in trouble for that but it did make me laugh!!

George Hill? In honour of Topoff, of course.

Have to admit I find the flat cap and hipster beard combination particularly annoying.

1. Agree 2. Disagree 3. You can't possibly know.

I might be wrong on this but I think Kyeremeh, Omrani and Maouche have had 2 starts and 8 sub appearances between them in the league this season (and 7 of the sub appearances were by Omrani). It's incredible that a club with our finances has a squad the size that it is, a fair few of whom have been nowhere near the first team for most of the season. Whether we stay up or not, it would be good to know what AL's master plan is and why he thinks a squad of 30+ players is a good idea. I've some sympathy for RW here, given that he was on record when he got the job as saying that he wanted a much smaller, but better quality squad.

I'll confess yesterday was my first home game in a while, the endless roadworks on the M6 and our poor performances combined to make a trip from Worcestershire even more challenging than usual (ok, I know some on here travel further!). So after a 2 hour 40 min trip (I'm sure most of the M6/M60 is a 50mph limit at the moment - counted at least seven sets of roadworks before I gave up) I staggered round to the Jimmy Frizzell stand in dire need of a pint, especially in the decent warm weather. Lees extra smooth (it was never any good, and being from Middleton I should know) - no longer available on draught. Guinness - all gone. Carlsberg (I know, but I was desperate) - all gone. I picked myself off the floor and asked what was available by the pint. Answer - Strongbow. Praying that this wasn't some kind of omen for the match, I settled for that. £3.80 of flat, warm, apple juice with perhaps just a hint of alcohol. If you could bring yourself to down 20 pints of the stuff, you might start to feel a bit tipsy (or ill). I was highly amused when the nice lady in the seat next to me complained that she had to queue to get in the RRE and wanted to know where all these fans had been for most of the season! To the match then. First half we were unbelievably (to me) bad. Shockingly poor. Even the basics - trap/control a ball, pass to a team mate, preferably along the ground rather than via the stratosphere - were missing. I couldn't work out what Benyu was supposed to be doing and wondered if he was some kind of pitch invader, sent on to confuse Doncaster. If you're going to play in bright yellow boots with your socks down, you need to be good. He isn't (though a few nice touches in second half, to be fair). We improved second half and you couldn't fault the players' effort, but we never really looked like scoring. The substitutions were mystifying. Pringle worked his socks off, Bryan was our only creative player, so why they came off and Benyu stayed on I've no idea. I'm all for continuity but I now think after yesterday we need to replace RW with an experienced manager. The silver linings were Edmundson and Hamer. For such young and inexperienced defenders I thought they were outstanding. It's been a few years since Tarky played for us, but I can't remember him playing better in a Latics shirt than Edmundson did yesterday. Got everything crossed for next Saturday. Terrifying!

Noooo! Just forked out £20 online!!

Hard to disagree with most of that, but that back four looks horribly inexperienced for such a crucial game. Is Gerrard crocked then? There were rumours Bryan might be back, but presumably not the case? If that is the line up, reckon we'll need to score at least three to win.

If you look back long, long ago to RW's first 6 league games after Shez went (seems a lifetime ago) we won 4 and drew 2 (and should have beaten Franchise in that run rather than drawing 4-4). The largely settled team had 9 players starting every one of those games: Placide, Bryan, Clarke, Hunt, Fane, Byrne, Gardner, Davies and Doyle. The only changes were Dummigan for Wilson after the Peterborough game, and Menig for Nepo after the Bradford game. Of the 13 starters, Clarke isn't available (surely an error, with hindsight), Dummigan is injured, Menig has gone and Davies doesn't look fit. Bryan may or may not be back? I'm not sure why Nepo has hardly featured and those who've seen more of him will know better than me, but our better results seemed to happen when he was starting. We've surely got to revert as much as possible to the line up, formation and tactics of that six game run, and given that we're fairly likely to concede, we have to take our chances. Stating the obvious, I admit. But looking at the six teams we played in September/October, apart from Franchise and Bury, now relegated, the others are all top 10: Peterborough (9th, won 3-2), Portsmouth (8th, won 2-1), Blackburn (2nd, promoted, won 1-0) and Bradford (10th, drew 1-1). The difference between potential and reality in this group of players is startling.

Agreed. I predicted results to the end of the season for the bottom 8 before kick off on 14 April, and despite a less than impressive record of 9 out of 22 matches guessed correctly so far, I'm going to stick with my forecasts. So..... 17. Oxford (D, L) 54 pts 18. Wimbledon (D,W) 54 19. Walsall (D, L) 52 20. Latics (D,W) 52 21. Rochdale (D, D) 50 22. Northampton (L, L) 46 23. Franchise (D, L) 43 24. Bury (D, L) 33 I'm coming up from Worcester on Saturday so would prefer a win to my forecast draw, but I still think we can scrape clear. Gulp!

Interesting that - look where Plymouth are now!

What has the kit discussion got to do with the delayed opening of the fan bar? Do we have to wear a particular kit to get in, if it ever opens?

Revised forecasts! 17. Oxford 54 pts 18. Wimbledon 54 19.Latics 53 20. Walsall 52 21. Rochdale 50 22. Northampton 46 23. MK Dons 44 24. Bury 33 I had us down for a draw today so that's fine. I think we'll draw with Southend and Doncaster, then beat Northampton. Shame it won't be 17th, but you can't have everything.

Gerrard injured!!

Exactly right. How anyone can blame the police or stewards for a fan invading the pitch is completely beyond me. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Everyone knows that you're not supposed to go on to the pitch. Unfortunately if one halfwit is determined enough the police/stewards can't always stop him. The fact he took his class A drugs with him shows he wasn't the brightest, unfortunately we'll probably get fined as a result.

True, but the result was everything tonight. I had us down to draw, so my forecast for 53 points and safety by 1 point is ok for now.

Davies is injured isn't he? Our disciplinary record must be getting worrying. We seem to pick up quite a few yellow cards each game at the moment, plus the occasional red.