paulhanley
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Posts posted by paulhanley
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That's the type of win promotion winners achieve. A goal down at HT against a scrapping side with a frustrating home draw in the previous game. A side with less character would have lost 1-0 or snatched an equaliser and settled for the draw.
I hope we can carry that same spirit (with folk like Santos and Forrester back on board) in to Saturday and next Tuesday, we will need to do so.
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I'd not get over confident about beating these at Bloomfield. We've missed so many chances over the years, things always, always conspire against us there.
In many other fixtures I'd be going in with loads of confidence in the side after last night. I hope Saturday is finally the one there after 47 years but I'm not raising my hopes.
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On 17/02/2024 at 12:22, nantwichwhite said:
Met Chris Thompson when he presented our trophies for winning the Chorley Sunday League. He was a really nice bloke .
Chris Thompson presented our trophies at end of season do for the Bolton Federation team I played for. By then he was a Blackburn player though. I don't remember the circumstances of him leaving or whether we got a fee. He was certainly a good un for us in a pretty bare era.
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These three upcoming away games are an acid test. Two derbies against clubs who deeply hate us and a fixture against a rugged mid-table side. I'd love us to be up level or a point beyond Derby by the time that phase of fixtures is done.
Appreciate everything folk are saying about Derby's weaknesses but I'd rather seeing it showing up in their results before I belive it. Hopefully soon. I think Pompey signed wisely in January and will go up. Posh look like they've blown up now, but Barnsley remain dark horse material. Don't see top two threats outside of those.
Bottom line: It's in our hands.
Oh - and surely now we are due that elusive run of games without lots of injuries knocking about in the squad.
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42 minutes ago, Casino said:
I need to see another angle before i judge
And thats if we ignore the bollocks leading up to the shot
I can't be 100 per cent sure that didn't get a bit of a deflection on the way through. If it did then that's his excuse.
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Been an awful lot of change in that squad lately and it showed today, especially in the first half. We weren't cohesive.
Dempsey and Maghoma were the bright spot today. Both very energetic and dynamic. All three of our goals very well worked.
I thought Charlton's goal owed as much to luck as poor defending, their second was pure poor defending and the third could easily never have happened had the ref stopped the game for the injury.
Bit unlucky overall but we're certainly not looking as good as a few weeks OK.
My eye is creeping towards Blackpool and Wigan away and I hope we buck up for then.
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That goal against Spurs was something else. If you look at the clever two footed jinking moves he did in the lead up to the Whatmore goal v City you get the gist. He beat about four defenders in a very tight space and slotted home. It was in the Embankment penalty box on the Manny Road side.
I also remember a very late goal he got in a 1-0 home win v Orient and a wet Autumn day. It was in one of those early 1980s second division years of struggle.
I believe he played for Wrexham in the famous promotion winning game of ours in 87/8.
One of a number of footballers who were seen as bright prospects in very late 70s/early 80s who came through when the likes of Roy Greaves, Tony Dunne, Big Sam, Peter Reid, Neil Whatmore were moving on (Phil Wilson, David Hoggan, Mick Bennett, Mike Graham, Chris Thompson, David Burke)
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We needed the win however it came. We got it.
Same again on Saturday please.
Derby will have enjoyed that convincing away win just a bit less having seen our result.
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In the cold light of day we've had shit luck with injuries and the defensive signings are all young and would take time to bed in irrespective of the circumstances. As others have intimated I think neutrals would look at that table and say we're currently likely to finish 2nd in this league.
Alongside the injuries, what we have to overcome is a tough set of away fixtures against sides in and around us and two awkward derby games.
I'm slightly encouraged by Derby's little slip-up at home to Shrewsbury yesterday. Slightly discouraged by Barnsley's form, all along I've seen them as the dark horses. I've given over trying to predict Peterborough they are as eccentric as hell as exemplified by what they did in last year's play offs.
All is certainly not lost with two straight draws. We've two home games now. Aesthetics go out of the window. We need wins. Check back to our promotions seasons - 77/8, 92/3, 94/5, 96/7 00/01, 16/17 and 20/21. Lots of examples of hard fought narrow wins chiseled out of an otherwise pretty forgettable 90 mins. A collection of them will do nicely.
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4 minutes ago, Johnnyrotten said:
Presume its 3 games? At least when he comes back they will be nice quiet low-key games where he isn't likely to be fired up....😐
Blackpool and Wigan...
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Pompey were always going to win so that equalizer in the context of the Derby and Posh results is brilliant. Got an eye on Barnsley, that type of late win they got today will give them momentum.
Time of year to be looking who promotion rivals have next up, before we know it the weather will be warmer and we'll be into the febrile latter stages of a battle for the automatics. I hope we look back on this point as a key moment.
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8 hours ago, Johnnyrotten said:
Swansea and Cardiff spring to mind too, and Bristol City although their Div 1 days were pre-Prem so don't count. But a lot later than Huddersfield and Northampton. Hull have been in all 4 divisions at least twice each in the last 20 or so years.
Burnley and Swansea took "Div 4" to a different level by needing to win last game of season just to avoid relegation to non league. I'm grateful we've never had to experience that, I know we've got away lightly with our Div 4 seasons, both were promotion seasons so in some ways its hard to count them as being the lowest of the low, we've seen a lot worse in Div 3.
You'd have to lob Brighton in to that conversation too.
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4 minutes ago, captainmed said:
Maybe 20th Feb now?
I would avoid that date like the plague. We play Blackpool that weekend and Wigan the following Tuesday. Give them a rest and get the game rearranged for April when we don't have a single midweek game.
Annoying stuff when a game is abandoned but that rain and the state of the pitch would have been a leveller, more so as the night went one. We've a good few injuries.
Play it in April when Cambridge will be drifting listlessly in mid table with nowt to play for.
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4 hours ago, Zico said:
Is it Field Mill, Mansfield?
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5 hours ago, Dr. Feelgood said:
Wages & player fees, both selling & buying, rise exponentially in the Championship.
General player standards are notably higher too. Look how excitable we get about signing a 20yr old from West Brom's bench.
Getting there is well within our grasp. Staying there too if only because every season brings fresh clubs in crisis ... largely due to overspending for the Premietship dream.
I want to get there. I want a fixture list of clubs I recognise. I want not to have to apologise to myself that we're playing clubs notably out of our 'proper' level.
Once there I want to be comfortably mid-table, then top 8 & yes, then, naturally I'll look higher. Strangely I'm not too keen on the Premiership but I guess that might change once close to it.
Yep. Getting there is one thing (let's hope it's this year). Getting a foothold in the league and consolidating is quite another. I think we are equipped as a club and fanbase and there's generally enough dross around to have a decent chance of staying out of the bottom three. It's not a totally impossible task but there's not much leeway for bad mistakes in recruitment etc.
If/when we go up we'll need as a group of fans to get in the mindset of being a medium sized fish in a big pond rather than the big fish in a small pond that we are in League 1. There'll be a few tough Saturday afternoons and Tuesday nights while we earn the right to stay in the Championship. Once we've done that we'll have to earn the right to get our heads up and wonder what might be beyond the horizon.
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20 minutes ago, captainmed said:
IE needs to keep his mouth shut.
He shouldn’t be talking about us in such a negative way.
We spend shit loads of money & we were nervous as hell watching us make the same mistakes time after time.
it wasn’t particularly negative it was nerves.
Surely he can understand the difference?It's just what happens at the football.
I suppose the trouble is it can transmit to the players and then it becomes a snowball effect.
Been going on since a ball's been kicked around in front of a crowd, mind. IE must know that. I've no doubt we've benefited from it when the opposition fans have got the jitters when we are winning away.
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These next four are very important. At the end of it we're in to two away derbies against teams who hate us with Derby/Peterborough/Stevenage/Barnsley away during Spring, not to mention Pompey and Oxford at home.
I'd say we need to be racking up 10 points from Cambridge/Northampton away and Wycombe/Charlton at home. If we do that we'd be on 68 points from 32 games. We'd be bang on target. I think we'd need a further 26 points from the last 14 games, slightly less if we're lucky. It's slightly less than the two points a game we've been averaging overall.
Cambridge away hasn't been the happiest of hunting grounds but that'll need to change. This feels like a similar fixture to Wycombe away back in the Autumn. Let's hope for a similar result.
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Awkward game
You can see why Barnsley do so well away from home.
Acceptable point. Win needed in midweek now.
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1 hour ago, Whitesince63 said:
Yes Paul it seems a long time since all our stars aligned and we were in the same league so let’s hope it happens next year.
I think it was 2000/01 in big Sam's promotion season. Four points off Burnley, six off PNE but only one off Blackburn.
You have to go back a long, long time before that for a further example of all four being in the same division.
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1 hour ago, Traf said:
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m at. As much as it sticks in the throat, you have to say that the pair of East Lancs Dingles and Nob End are the yardstick to aim at and eventually surpass.
The thing is it's very do-able. Being so obviously biased I'd say we are a slightly bigger club than all three of them. The years ahead hopefully involve us proving that, which is a decent prospect to have on the horizon.
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50 minutes ago, Biggish Dave said:
Proper derbies for me them 3
They're the top three Lancs derbies for me. The big city clubs who are nearby are bonuses and generally out of our orbit. Blackpool comes close to that bracket but not quite and I hate playing them. Wigan - others have articulated.
When we start recording wins against Burnley, PNE and Blackburn then we really can say Bolton are back. And hopefully we can push on further from there.
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4 minutes ago, Dr. Feelgood said:
... except himself.
He believed he was the replacement for Nat Lofthouse. Not sure he got that one right.
Very true! He was setting the bar rather high for himself there!
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1 hour ago, Johnnyrotten said:
Incredible how many they have unearthed in last 10 or 15 years. They seem to sell one every year then just replace them with another goalscorer nobody's heard of. Mackail-Smith was the first I was aware of, what a player he was; Assombalonga, Dwight Gayle, Aaron McLean, Marriot, Ivan Toney, Clarke-Harris, Mason-Clark to name a few.
Barry Fry might come across as a bit of a clown but he's clearly got a great eye for spotting a centre forward.
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2 minutes ago, Tonge moor green jacket said:
Credit was given for actually achieving what he should have done with that squad.
Any analogies to our current situation end with that.
Chalk and cheese achievements.
Both successful, but by the fuck you would want Evatt every day of the week at the helm.
Age profiles of the two squads are entirely different. This is a long term "project" to use the modern parlance. There was none of that under PP and given the ownership at the time such an approach was not in the mindset at all. PP gets credit for short term success, Evatt and FV for (hopefully) longer term and sustainable success.
Blackpool (A)
in Terrace Talk
Posted
Let's hope Saturday is finally the day. It would be a sweet day for old school Wanderers fans.