barrycowdrill

Yep. Quick start, good tempo, early goal. Does sound easy but it’s exactly what we need and that should make the remaining tie and whatever else easier. Just hope we don’t adopt a slow ponderous patience approach with the 2nd leg at home in the back of our minds. Only takes “one of those nights” and we’re sat at home on 18th May

All the noise from their end about Richie Wellens being close.. well he’s just signed an extension at Orient theyve not hit 10k for Friday yet. Apathy everywhere

The tv money will offset any empty seats so the incentive to fill the ground and incur extra policing / stewarding / catering etc is reduced. Maybe the clubs would’ve taken a different view on the allocations if the games weren’t on sky.. chuck in the fact that Barnsley will then only see a small percentage of the “profit” as its shared between all the play off clubs

Away scheme is £20 isn’t it? Then the price of the tickets go to the home side anyway? So the club made 7 grand out of it this year? take that 350 out of the equation and there then should still be a process whereby you rack up points. They categorise home games easy enough for pricing so why not away games? Tues night at Wycombe = 3 loyalty points v’s a sat game at Wigan = 1 etc etc

Amazes me how the Ticketmaster system crashes with the volume trying to get our tickets but it’s perfectly fine when hundreds of thousands are trying to get gig tickets? Are we on the iPhone 3 version while they’re on the 14 or something?

Yeh but don’t think we’ll be averaging 2.5-3k every week in the champ which is the average allocation. There’d be 2 or 3 games a season and if we’re lucky play off / attractive cup ties where a points system would come in to its own but it’s night and day compared to this seasons allocations

Peterborough have an away points system in place and they average about 500. Don’t understand why the club have gone against it for so long…. Must just be short term thinking as it won’t often be required in the league above

Weirdly just managed to get 1 more for someone. Just appeared as available out of nowhere after constantly refreshing

They actually went on at 9:59. I refreshed and it just came up straight away. Done by 10:01. It is an absolute lottery. If we stay at this level it defo needs a review

And done

Haha SSL 🤦🏻‍♂️ long day

They did which was driven mainly by them. I think we would’ve been open to more each way. Not saying that isn’t also the case this season but can see how we’d be more accepting of it this time with the scope to open the WSL to home supporters.

It’s an allocation that suits both clubs and 1 fanbase really. the apathy around their place at the minute when they probably feel they’re already up against it means they want to reduce our following and potential influence on the game. Whereas the game at our place allows us to put them in the top tier only and potentially open up the bottom for home fans. As they would be unlikely to bring much more than that. Can’t imagine many within the club being too frustrated with it overall.

Realistically it was never going to be more than that. I think they’d struggle to sell more than that for our place and allows us to put them in the top tier and utilise the bottom for home fans if required

Is that not pretty much the maximum too though? Also aligns to what posh can give in the old Stand down the side? Seems by default that they’ve agreed the best number they can for both clubs

I think the influence GMP have over football here is only topped by SYP. Difference being GMP seem to be able to control big followings here (to a degree) the incident you refer to last year was all on the shoulders of SYP. We’d been there since about 3? And they just sat back and watched more and more of your lot arriving at the same boozer and what happened was inevitable then they then came in to act and decided the best course of action was to escort all of our lot to the ground with continuous ticket checks during the escort. Anyone would think it was a Belgrade derby or something. the thing that pisses the majority off is their mismanagement is then used as validation for cutting allocations in future. Modern football in a nutshell. reciprocal ticket arrangements are absolutely fine but there needs to be a middle ground between the 2k from last year and giving the full ends at each ground. We’d sell what we’re given and if you lot don’t that’s not really on us. However Fridays outcome would probably dictate what you bring on tues

To be honest I’m not really bothered whether we finish 3rd or 4th. Second leg is at home regardless and looking at how close the table is below Peterborough they’re all pretty equal. Much of a muchness. Each one has different threats and weaknesses. Could argue 3 of the 4 have a degree of momentum, however we have beaten those 3 but not beaten Barnsley in any of the last 4 who are bang out of form

I think Todays game was always going to be how it played out. Timing of the first goal would Dictate how many. They were trying to stay in the game for as long as possible before trying to be a bit braver which we saw flashes off in the 2nd half. Us, wouldn’t say we were on the beach but the tempo had the feel of a typical end of season / pre season game and when your coming up against a back 6 or 7 at times it’s going to take a while. we upped it In periods and that’s when we had our success. the play offs are about momentum and confidence and to be honest the only team I want to play at the minute are Barnsley cos they are absolutely honking. Any of the other 3 will be full of it. I back us against any of them but I’d much rather face a team who have clung on over one who’ve snatched a spot after a good run

Yes but we regularly miss easy chances. Point the finger at the strikers of course but over a period of time when you realise those missed chances by the same players weren’t an isolated incident then you start to look at why they are in the building and who brought them in? The buck stops across more than just the player

I don’t think the club sack him. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to step away for a break if we don’t go up. The comments he’s made since the turn of the year we dont know yet whether he was sewing the seeds there or as he acknowledges himself, his emotions got the better of him and it just came out in a way that wasn’t intended. however, from the top down the expectation this season was to go up and if that isn’t achieved then he may feel he’s taken it as far as he can. I do applaud him for what he has delivered over the past few years and overall he has achieved what he said he would when he came in. Got us playing lovely football. But there’s more to Just that in the modern game and for a former (quite recent) quite rugged and tough centre half not to have that built in to his teams simply baffles me. He obviously knows the game and he talks about patterns and rotations and presses and all of that stuff but outside of that very rigid philosophy he has he has yet to demonstrate he has any other tactical nouse to change the flow of a game or nullify the threat of the opposition or make a change that makes us more dangerous. He talks about getting to the highest level possible but currently this, league 1, is him. now there’s an argument that his approach would be more successful with better players and clubs in the champ might think that’s the case too and take him but in my opinion, if we were to go up his lack of flexibility would only be exposed further and more brutally with the squad he’s assembled here. Yes it would be improved but his nice airy fairy, don’t get your hands dirty, fall foul of the dark arts of the game approach would only be inherited by the new players too.

Valid point. Which shows if it was picked up and discussed then they felt it was worth ignoring. Even after we had got stung by it

At any level we know a basic rule is pick up any spare men. However there’s also people floating around where you think “he’s not too much of a risk there” and without Rico being in the middle there may have been a view of an extra body for extra security in the box. if the coaches felt that him being on the edge of the box was a massive risk they would’ve stood someone on him without question. No debate. the fact no one is anywhere near him can quite easily lead to the view no one was tasked with doing that as the risk was pretty low. even on the pitch someone would’ve / should’ve been screaming for him to be picked up if it was highlighted in advance

Well Evatt said they picked up on it yet no one was stood on him so yes either he instructed to ignore it or the players took it upon themselves to… and the rationale may be as I outlined..

Whilst they may have picked up on it it doesn’t mean they had a specific plan for it. At this level they’re probably thinking - we can leave him there on his own because the chances of them finding him and him finishing is a 1/10 chance. It’s more likely to hit the top tier. likely they thought an extra body in the box without the presence of Rico in there was more helpful

I don’t trust any of them to string 3 performances together that warrant getting promotion. when the pressure is on they melt simple as that. We ran out of ideas when Barnsley delivered a perfect away play off performance last year then we looked clueless with everyone looking around at each other at their place when we went 1 down. yes we put teams under pressure but even when on top we waste so many chances, decision making is dreadful and they all look absolutely stunned when the opposition has the audacity to have a go back at us.