barrycowdrill

Thomasson letting him go

Can see why he’s a Southgate mk II really isn’t he but I can see Howe in the mix personally. can see Newcastle thinking they’re at that level now they need a bigger name to kick on again so through no fault of his own he’ll be a goner potter would excite me if I was a Stoke fan non of the others would really

Graham potter been approached about the Stoke gig.. they need to rip it all up and start again there. It’s rotten from the inside. He’d be a very good appointment. Just depends on whether he now thinks he’s too big for something like that I guess but Coates will probably pay him whatever he wants

It’s all bunching up. 6 points cover the top 6. Granted we have games in hand over the majority and in some cases 2 or even 3. Derby 3 points off us whilst being generally shite. if we don’t get out of this league even as far to say automatically as a minimum we never will.

We did 7.5k for a nothing game at rovers on a Sunday. Granted it was a tenner but it’s funny how ticket sales snowball for some games. Sat in mid - late April and we are where we are there would probably be the demand but they would never approve that. Half of their fuckers are red anyway so far more palatable

Can’t remember back to 2016 to be honest and whilst these prices are more driven by UEFA than the German FA I would think the football pricing model they have in Germany has influenced UEFA some what to adopt a similar pricing structure there are approx 5k fans first tickets at every group game at a €30 cost which they haven’t ever done before

Highest price was £975 from memory? I paid £160 for the semi v Denmark and that was from the FA allocation so wasn’t hiked or a particularly high category A fans first ticket for each game all the way through to the final is about £380 in total this time

Along with bishop being out they had their main midfield man sent off in that game too

With their infrastructure and focus on fans in relation to prices it must be the best place to watch football in Europe in my opinion the free train travel as long as you show your ticket is utterly brilliant. They’re also applying a 25% discount on trains in to Germany from pretty much all of the other countries too. €30 tickets for the group games and the highest being €90 for the final if you’re a member of any football association

Application in and routes booked. There’s some train action fook me

Players that came in are really staking a claim. Healthy position to be in

On the whole it is difficult to say Vic doesn’t deserve his place. He’s part of a unit that’s on a fantastic run, he’s playing his part with a number of goals and as a front 2 even though they don’t play or link together it’s a partnership that is delivering what Evatt wants as part of his wider expectations. I think everyone agrees JDB is the more clinical, the better at holding the ball and linking play but he isn’t as durable and without seeing the stats does less of the “work you don’t see” as Evatt refers too quite a bit and in an ideal world you’d want a mix of the 2. I think there’s a horses for courses approach that could be used more than it currently is. But again, because of the run we’ve been on there’s no real need too right at this moment as we’re not trying to find a solution to a problem

Absolutely get that point. He scored them cos he was there and credit for getting in to those positions. The point is more around the other types of goals he also scores if he gets us 15 or so from that position then there can’t be many arguments from anyone. He’s done his job. But if those dry up where else is the threat from him?

Vic doesn’t score dions at reading for a start. Or JDB’s at Stockport but do the others score his.. course they do Any striker worth his salt gets half a dozen at least from poaching. It’s the others that make them a more all round threat

And cumulatively from about 5 yards. Can’t knock the poaching instinct but he feels a little impotent from anything greater than 6 yards

Wigan more than likely off as it’s FA cup 4th round if we’re still in and around it with 3 games in hand it would look very healthy

The freedom maghoma and Thomasson got was due to how Exeter approached it. They had a bank of 6 defenders at one point in the first half hour then a further 3 strung across the middle. Not hard to have the freedom of midfield when they don’t want to go near you. After the 3rd they just fell apart and one of those days that we’ve been meaning to have for a long while

But don’t forget Demps was our best midfielder by a million miles for a 6 month period before his back issue… as said above lovely position to be in. Fixtures thick and fast now with a deep squad

Maghoma does the one thing non of our other players do. Takes the ball on the half turn. When a team is expecting us to just play across them so they sit in he’s the one who breaks in between their banks hard to do with Thomasson’s form at the min but his is the only spot Dempsey is looking at

Rodrigues one of their main men going forward sent off today so suspended Tues

The first 10 mins of the game will tell us all the type of afternoon we’re in for

He’s not a proper frontline striker. Simple as that. But it does beg the question of well what is he? his return at Cheltenham in 18 months was shite but everyone put it down to the fact they didn’t create much. Whilst their other fella got nearly 30 in that time. 1 goal for us in the 5 months we had him last year (granted he was injured for a period) but there were never instances where you thought he should score or was in a position to do so. this season, exactly the same. He’s not even in the position to miss guilt edged chances. He doesn’t run in behind, doesn’t play on the defenders shoulder, isn’t a target man. He “presses” and runs the channels from time to time but that’s about it. when the defensive side of your striker is more obvious than the attacking side there’s serious questions to be asked

Vic being better doesn’t necessarily mean he’s had a good game. He’s just been better than his previous very Low bar. for a player with his attributes he should be doing better. The ball doesn’t stick, he’s touch is erratic and overall he causes very little threat to the opposition. he’s had one chance of any note since his goal v Peterborough (10 games ago) and that was on Tuesday. A striker at any level with that influence on the game is right to be questioned Bod showed in 10 minutes coming on what hold up and link up play as a front man is all about granted he is also inconsistent but the last 2 games have shown glimpses of what he can bring so he’s moe surely deserving of a chance to start and the only way he’ll get “match fit” is by playing minutes starting him and taking him off after an hour will improve our overall chances v’s him coming on for the last half an hour or so

They really challenged us today and asked the question of whether we were good enough to break them down. Dropped in to a back 5 when we had the ball and nullified our wingbacks completely. For the most part we struggled and it was always going a 1 goal game via a thunder bastard or off someone’s arse. on the whole they’re a tidy unit without much threat. Rico was a colossus. His best game for us for a while. Sheehan again critical to everything we do. Difficult to say when he is playing so well but I still do think we missed a trick with Norburn. Not saying he would replace Sheehan, maybe free him up a little but he’s a good player JDB changed the whole situation up front. There weren’t many occasions but when there were he made it stick. Completely different level to Victor. Serious questions will need to be asked soon because if we hadn’t paid money for him he wouldn’t be getting a sniff. Surely that’s the only reason at this point? on the whole a great 3 points, fantastic to get the big attendance monkey off our back, you could see at the end the players almost felt that too and always nice to fuck them right off

Train station will be lively. Train in for their mob apparently so it’ll be OB overkill beforehand then bedlam after