Let the inquest begin.

[League one forever]

Glad it’s over to be honest and we’ve been put out of our misery. 
 

The only people to come out of this season without any blame is the Rothwell’s, and especially Frank. 
 

DR- 

- Overseen a big budget that has returned very little value for money for two season running. 

- Hired two guys for recruitment who were unable to identify a right back, that either wasn’t a known sick note or someone the manager seemingly doesn’t want. 
- Sanctioned a convoluted recruitment system where the head of recruitment and manager are at odds over who to sign. 
 - Brought in stats bomb that has contributed to a hugely imbalanced squad where no player has developed, no player has a re- sale value, and every player that has joined has stagnated or gone backwards. 
- Sanctioned multiple signings of the same position, and literally no one in other positions. 
 

Mellon. 
- Says he knew after Flyde in his second game it was a big job, but he also knew what was needed and knows what a good player looks like. . is then allowed 6 signings and none of them have really improved us at all. 

 

- Says he doesn’t have a right back, but was allowed to sign one- then doesn’t play him, and again says he doesn’t have a right back. 

-Makes multiple changes every game, even if players have played well.

 

- Says he’s not beyond criticism- then indirectly blames the board for the contracts given and the recruitment and then says the players aren’t good enough. Then finishes with the classic,  I know what a good player looks like. 
 

The players. 
 

Too many in the comfort zone happy to pick up good money, and play at being a footballer. 
 

A few knowing they’re undropable and slipping into going through the motions. 
 

To many not playing and being unmotivated. 
 

The Christmas incident, arguing with fans, a them and us attitude. 
 

What I want more than anything this summer is some really honest conversations, and if the Rothwells have to get involved then so be it, it’s their money and they and us deserve better. 

[DarkStar]

I'd keep the Rothwells. That's it.

[Littlemoor Lad]

10 minutes ago, League one forever said:

Glad it’s over to be honest and we’ve been put out of our misery. 
 

The only people to come out of this season without any blame is the Rothwell’s, and especially Frank. 
 

DR- 

- Overseen a big budget that has returned very little value for money for two season running. 

- Hired two guys for recruitment who were unable to identify a right back, that either wasn’t a known sick note or someone the manager seemingly doesn’t want. 
- Sanctioned a convoluted recruitment system where the head of recruitment and manager are at odds over who to sign. 
 - Brought in stats bomb that has contributed to a hugely imbalanced squad where no player has developed, no player has a re- sale value, and every player that has joined has stagnated or gone backwards. 
- Sanctioned multiple signings of the same position, and literally no one in other positions. 
 

Mellon. 
- Says he knew after Flyde in his second game it was a big job, but he also knew what was needed and knows what a good player looks like. . is then allowed 6 signings and none of them have really improved us at all. 

 

- Says he doesn’t have a right back, but was allowed to sign one- then doesn’t play him, and again says he doesn’t have a right back. 

-Makes multiple changes every game, even if players have played well.

 

- Says he’s not beyond criticism- then indirectly blames the board for the contracts given and the recruitment and then says the players aren’t good enough. Then finishes with the classic,  I know what a good player looks like. 
 

The players. 
 

Too many in the comfort zone happy to pick up good money, and play at being a footballer. 
 

A few knowing they’re undropable and slipping into going through the motions. 
 

To many not playing and being unmotivated. 
 

The Christmas incident, arguing with fans, a them and us attitude. 
 

What I want more than anything this summer is some really honest conversations, and if the Rothwells have to get involved then so be it, it’s their money and they and us deserve better. 

Great post

This could end up being long and protracted, such is the level of dissatisfaction 

[GMichael]

Chesterfield fan in peace

Having done a 6 year stretch at this level it took us so long to get the formula right.

 

You remind me a lot of us in those first couple of seasons down here, we had Martin Allen in the first year and we just kept drawing games (I think 8 or 9 in a row at one point)

 

It's so difficult for a relegated side to get the  momentum back and one thing you definitely need is a positive manager. All of our players say how enthusiastic and positive Cook is and he's really lifted the fans since he came back.

 

Cook said when he came back constantly referred to our squad being too big, having 35 players at that point this season we've pretty much got through with a 23 man squad. I think I recognise that a little bit with you guys having a big squad this season. Trimming off the fat and getting quality in each area was key. We had a competitive budget this season but it was only the 3rd biggest in the league. (We only had two forwards all season don't forget )

 

The other thing I've noticed is there doesn't seem to be any big egos anymore in the side. Cook has said this is the best set of personalities he's ever managed. When we first dropped to this level I can remember us signing players who were looking for one last pay day and thats never good. You need a mix of experience but still with the desire to do well (Grigg/Naylor/Jones) and the young upcoming (Dobra/Berry/Hobson)

 

The other thing you've got to do is get yourself out of the mindset that we should be beating (Altrincham/Bromley/Solihull) because of your clubs former football league history. We had a period of time where we showed a lack of respect for these sort of sides as players as well as fans. We regularly got frustrated to the point, that the players froze in home games and we relied on our away form to not drop out the league into the Conference North. Cook and Danny Webb prepare for every game as a tough one and that no one will be a push over.

 

The leagues also improved massively in terms of the brand of football whilst we've been down here and nowadays teams are more likely to get out of here playing good football. The other thing is that you'll get out this league by attacking we have conceded more than Kidderminster but have already scored 100 goals.

 

Prior to Cook coming in we were top of the league under James Rowe but the entire team was built around the goals of one player Kabongo Tshimanga who scored over 50 percent of the teams goals but, he then broke his leg and we had a terrible second half of the season. Cooks re-dressed that balance and most of the midfield have got 15-20 goal contributions (goals and assists) each this season. You've signed Norwood but, the balance seems to be wrong elsewhere.

 

You need pace as well, as some teams will be difficult to break down. Last season we kept the ball well but struggled to break teams down. We signed Colclough last season and Berry this season who are quick and we've used this to our advantage by rotating the front four to bring on quick players to run at tired legs late on.

The good news is that once you get it right, getting out of this league is completely rejuvenating for your club. It's an amazing feeling to finally get out of the most difficult league in the country!
 

[the_mighty_bosh]

Going into the final game of the season, only one team has won fewer home games in the league than us this season.

 

What the fuck is that all about?!

 

Beyond the Rothwells, while I wouldn't be against anyone who stays I also wouldn't be disappointed if anyone from our staff left.  What a disappointing underachievement this season has been.

[League one forever]

1 minute ago, Littlemoor Lad said:

Great post

This could end up being long and protracted, such is the level of dissatisfaction 

Yeah, agreed. 
 

Mellon isn’t happy with the squad, and looks like he’s had enough. 
 

The board must be worried about the cost of backing Micky if his complete overhaul is to be backed. (On the back of what has already been spent) 
 

Fan apathy is back - because we haven’t capatlised on relegation by bouncing back quickly or even built anything for two years for fans to think - success is coming. 
 

I’m not one for saying the world is ending, but It’s really difficult to see how it can be turnaround next season with the internal wrangling at the club and the expectation of the fanbase. 

[Fervid]

Darren Royle has a lot to answer for. 

[nzlatic]

It’s all on the recruitment. It’s not been good enough so far. If we can get that right over the summer we’ll be in the top few next season. If we can’t then we’ll be floating around the same sort of level. 

[LightDN123]

Recruitment is the most important part of football. We failed at it. 

[True Tic]

Everything is a gamble to some degree and nothing is ever guaranteed, particularly in this game, but bloody hell we’ve had some shite luck as a club. Unsworth was a gamble which didn’t pay off along with his signings. Lesson learned eventually and the board went for tried and tested , much lesser gamble this time but still hasn’t worked, brought some of his own players in who haven’t done much to change things. 
The mentality of the squad as a whole is the main problem for me closely followed by their ability. I thought Mellon would sort that, but he hasn’t . 
 

I don’t know what the answer is but I suppose we’ve finished our 2nd season in NL and other decent size clubs have languished here much longer than that. It’s not really a positive but we have to go again and hope that things fall into place and finally Lady Luck may pay us a long overdue visit . 

[Sloshed Joe]

Add to the Mellon list 

‘Moaned we didn’t have a winger. Signed a winger. Then never played the winger or had him on the bench’

 

Nothing to lose by playing Walker. Also, where has another of his signings Hammond been for the last 2 games?

[deyres42]

Telling players they are shit had a negative effect, who could have imagined that.

 

Allowing Reid to continue training with the first team after exiling him needs further explanation because it seems utterly bizarre on the surface.

 

We really do need someone who can breathe some positivity and tactical innovation into the place, get rid of the energy vacuum and things will start moving in the right direction.

[JoeP]

Could get quite cathartic this thread..

 

As LOF said in the OP and I've said elsewhere, we've used stats too heavily.  We've brought in a (over-inflated) squad of individuals based on stats, rather than built a team based on a mix of ability and personality.  Darren Royle takes a heavy share of that responsibility, I guess.  

 

Football's a simple game, especially at this level.  We seemed to decide on an over-complex recruitment strategy and just thrown more and more (of Frank's!) money at it in the hope that it works, rather than taking a cautious approach and seeing how it works out.

 

I'm still reluctant to put Mellon near the top of the blame pile.   These players haven't played for two managers now and he still hasn't really put his own mark on the team with the aim of getting to "what good looks like".  He seems fed-up.  Maybe he's been mis-sold the club, in the same way that Norwood seems to have been.  Maybe in spite of some good people in charge of the club, there's not a lot of shrewd football knowledge about and we're actually not being run as well as we or he were expecting.  We've got a lot of these players next year thanks to the big contracts handed out and Mellon, understandably, is struggling to come up with an idea to move forward with them.  That said, his reluctance to stick with a settled first eleven, his reluctance to try any of the youth players and his weird subs does have a few alarm bells ringing. 

 

As we're stuck with a lot of the players for next year, we've got to find a way of improving the squad with what resources we've got.  There are some players there that would fit into a good team, if they had the right characters around them.  Lundstram for example, has been disappointing this season but I think if he had more positive players around him, he'd be a real asset.  Having positive players around the place is important, to perhaps bring the likes of Lundstram through who is a talented player but maybe has fragile confidence.  I'd keep the Big Mike and Gardner mainly for that reason and with the possibility of the odd cameo.  (Puts hard-hat on)  With that in mind, the first person I'd move on is James Norwood.  Yes, he's out top scorer, but I can't see him being so next season here (unless we get quite a few penalties again..). For £5k a week, I didn't think we were getting just a goal-scorer, but a senior player who would help develop the younger players in a positive way, but he seems to have the air of someone who thinks "this is shit and everyone around me is shit", which is not helpful.  It's no coincidence that we were playing well without him and then went back to being awful once he returned - even last night we concede as soon as he walks on the pitch!  It's nothing to do with him not smiling or celebrating - anyone who thinks that's an issue is an idiot.  Similarly - anyone who keeps referring to that being the only reason people don't like him are also idiots.

 

There's obviously something not right in the dressing room - check out the lack of congratulations and joy in the team when Gardner scored the penalty last night.  With a modicum of extra effort over a couple of these final games, we could have achieved something - had the chance to play at Wembley.  Something a lot of these players will never get the chance to do in their careers again.  That seems to me like there's either an attitude problem or the club is so rotten, the players are devoid of any motivation for the club, the fans or themselves, which is the biggest worry of them all.

 

 

We might need better players - but we definitely need better personalities.

 

 

Edited April 19 by JoeP

[deyres42]

Could it be that the manager has also been recruited on stats basis?

[JoeP]

5 minutes ago, deyres42 said:

Could it be that the manager has also been recruited on stats basis?

 

Given the approach was in place before and after his arrival, he's probably had no choice!

[nzlatic]

24 minutes ago, JoeP said:

Could get quite cathartic this thread..

 

As LOF said in the OP and I've said elsewhere, we've used stats too heavily.  We've brought in a (over-inflated) squad of individuals based on stats, rather than built a team based on a mix of ability and personality. 

 

 

We might need better players - but we definitely need better personalities.

 

 

On stats, you both and others keep saying this. But you have absolutely no evidence that we have “used stats too heavily”. It might be the case, but it might not also be the case. You are confusing causation and correlation. 
 

On the last point - 100% agree. I think this is what Mellon is referring to when he talks about knowing what a good player is. Most of our signings have looked good on paper and there have been few complaints when signings are made. But the characters and personalities are just wrong in too many cases. This summer may be about moving out players and bringing in players who are on paper of less quality, but who’s character is what the team needs to be successful. Whether stats are to blame for this is up for debate of course, but this isn’t just an issue of the last 12 months. We’ve had very few players of that sort of mental quality for years now.

[JoeP]

7 minutes ago, nzlatic said:

On stats, you both and others keep saying this. But you have absolutely no evidence that we have “used stats too heavily”. It might be the case, but it might not also be the case. You are confusing causation and correlation. 

 

Similarly there's no evidence we don't use them too heavily. Why would we have a stats department if it wasn't fairly central to our recruitment? 

[Guy Branston Pickle]

Just yet another forgettable season supporting Oldham Athletic. We'll sack the manager, sign 20 new players, they won't gel, we'll sack the next manager after 6 months, finish 11th, and the cycle will continue again. Yippee

[GlossopLatic]

Another thread where everyone says the stats bomb is wrong without understanding how it works or how we've used them.

[yarddog73]

If Darren Royle wasn't related to a club legend he'd have been out on his ear months ago, he's clearly out of his depth and that's before you take in to account him undermining Shez to get his pal in the building at the start of the Rothwells tenure which to me will set us back 3 years, he's fucking useless and we are still no clearer what the 'plan' is. 

 

He's making the football decisions so the buck stops with him, even in the last transfer window we saw the same mistakes being made and personally I'm reluctant to pump money into something I just don't feel engaged in anymore, sad that really with the opportunity we've been given but the silence out of he club and the lack of communication on so many levels is piss poor.

 

For me there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the business is being run day to day and until the culture changes around the place and plans are put in place for us to actually improve and progress then we will continue to struggle.

 

No stats system in the world would allow us to play the best part of two seasons with no recognisable rightback whilst continuing to harvest the same footed centrehalf (we had four right footed centrehalves playing across the back four last night - quite astonishing really) or a plethora of strikers who get no service, recruitment is being overseen by fucking idiots and whoever is in charge of it should be first out of the door.

 

At the moment we are indebted to the Rothwells money but that isn't infinite, we can't continue to run the business so poorly, it's actually amateur on so many levels and needs addressing, structurally we need an overhaul because nobody will buy in to this as it stands and trust me if this isn't resolved now it will roll in to next season.

 

Unbelievably we still had something to play for last night but only 380 of 1900 fans who'd bought tickets initially could be arsed and that's with only two games to play and a play off place quite incredibly still up for grabs, if that didn't make the Rothwells sit up and think then I don't know what will.

 

If I were them I'd rip it up and start again but unfortunately they are all in bed together when really they should be putting business before pleasure. It's a big mess and with every passing year a missed opportunity yet nothing is likely to change, apart from the crowds slowly declining - again.

 

 

[BP1960]

9 minutes ago, GlossopLatic said:

Another thread where everyone says the stats bomb is wrong without understanding how it works or how we've used them.

 

Please can you explain how we have used it well and how clubs managed to find decent players without it in the past?

[deyres42]

Things aren't completely broken, we wouldn't have been in and around the top seven if they were.

 

Unfortunately they've just picked the wrong guy with the wrong personality and mindset to manage the football team. That is easily fixed if you are prepared to admit you made the mistake in the first place.

 

Bite the bullet, move him on and get someone in who is interested in improving and developing players and an attractive attacking style of play and it will come good in time.

[BP1960]

11 minutes ago, yarddog73 said:

If Darren Royle wasn't related to a club legend he'd have been out on his ear months ago, he's clearly out of his depth and that's before you take in to account him undermining Shez to get his pal in the building at the start of the Rothwells tenure which to me will set us back 3 years, he's fucking useless and we are still no clearer what the 'plan' is. 

 

He's making the football decisions so the buck stops with him, even in the last transfer window we saw the same mistakes being made and personally I'm reluctant to pump money into something I just don't feel engaged in anymore, sad that really with the opportunity we've been given but the silence out of he club and the lack of communication on so many levels is piss poor.

 

For me there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the business is being run day to day and until the culture changes around the place and plans are put in place for us to actually improve and progress then we will continue to struggle.

 

No stats system in the world would allow us to play the best part of two seasons with no recognisable rightback whilst continuing to harvest the same footed centrehalf (we had four right footed centrehalves playing across the back four last night - quite astonishing really) or a plethora of strikers who get no service, recruitment is being overseen by fucking idiots and whoever is in charge of it should be first out of the door.

 

At the moment we are indebted to the Rothwells money but that isn't infinite, we can't continue to run the business so poorly, it's actually amateur on so many levels and needs addressing, structurally we need an overhaul because nobody will buy in to this as it stands and trust me if this isn't resolved now it will roll in to next season.

 

Unbelievably we still had something to play for last night but only 380 of 1900 fans who'd bought tickets initially could be arsed and that's with only two games to play and a play off place quite incredibly still up for grabs, if that didn't make the Rothwells sit up and think then I don't know what will.

 

If I were them I'd rip it up and start again but unfortunately they are all in bed together when really they should be putting business before pleasure. It's a big mess and with every passing year a missed opportunity yet nothing is likely to change, apart from the crowds slowly declining - again.

 

 

 

How long is Darren Royle's contract for?

 

Edited April 19 by BP1960

[BP1960]

24 minutes ago, Guy Branston Pickle said:

Just yet another forgettable season supporting Oldham Athletic. We'll sack the manager, sign 20 new players, they won't gel, we'll sack the next manager after 6 months, finish 11th, and the cycle will continue again. Yippee

 

Oldham Rugby managed to gel 20 new players this season, if they have quality it's easy, if not it's hopeless.

Edited April 19 by BP1960

[GlossopLatic]

9 minutes ago, BP1960 said:

 

Please can you explain how we have used it well and how clubs managed to find decent players without it in the past?

 

How can you conclude something is wrong without understanding how it works?