Tombwfc

I reckon 94 points probably would be enough. But it shows the scale of the task that we could literally win every remaining game and Lincoln could cruise along at 2ppg and better it. We're nowhere near good enough to win all or nearly all of our remaining games. But if you're tracking it, our record for most consecutive wins is 11, set seven years before the Titanic sank.

Yes. At least based off the figures on Soccerbase, in the year after Allardyce left we sold Anelka, Faye, Nolan and Meite for £25m and spent almost exactly that. I think there was too much ego on both sides for Big Sam to have stayed here much longer regardless, even if I believe he's telling the truth about Gartside. PG believed we were what Brentford are now and could basically plug any manager in there and carry on. Although looking at the managerial records of Lee, Megson and Coyle after they left us it's a miracle we stayed up for as long as we did.

And (I think you've made this point before) often the 'winning team' isn't the one which started the game. Simons had as much involvement in the winning goal against Wigan as I did. I don't know if this is overly controversial, but regardless of personnel & formation I think we've basically been the same team now for months. The only thing that was wildly inconsistent was scoring three first half goals against Barnsley. I don't see the secret formula others do and I've less of an idea what our best team than Schumacher does.

I'm not sure that's totally how it works. A striker isn't just a bystander who chances happen to. The good ones make things happen and turn half decent opportunities into attempts on goal. We've seen that when we've had good strikers and strikers in good form. If you put Haaland in any team in L1 he'd score 30+ goals regardless of who was passing him the ball. If you put all of our strikers in the position Marriott was against us, how many tries would it take them to score?

Think the West Brom debacle was Coyle, unless there have been multiple.

Has anyone ever stated that anywhere close to publicly? It took off as a narrative on here on deadline day, when Hardie went from signing of the season to a crock with a season threatening injury the minute it became clear he wasn't coming here. RH was injured all January so I doubt we pulled out at the last minute because of that. Doesn't really matter now and I wouldn't judge anything after a handful of minutes.

There has been a tendency all season to lump together a bunch of half chances and make out that every game we play is a recreation of that Gary Speed vs Man City game. Blackpool created more clear cut chances than us on Saturday. Lincoln definitely did the week before and we barely created much of anything at Reading.

Parky's achievement in getting us out of this division in his first season (under an embargo too) looks better and better every year. No expectations of him needing years to build a side. Signed Alnwick, Morais and Le Fondre for nowt and got the job done with relatively little fuss. Three straight promotions at Wrexham too. 42% win rate over 1,000 games. Had a great managerial career.

I don't think we've seen enough to judge, but seems to me he'lll play as either of the two up top. The central striker or the McAtee not-really-a number 10 role. It's also fair to say that we probably did prefer Hardie, but with Burstow's form in terminal decline (at the time) we needed something.

I can't imagine (m)any of the players we've signed have come with the idea of playing from the bench. But they can't all play. Dalby and Burstow have had streaks of scoring goals, but neither should be automatic starters (let alone 90min every week men) for the rest of the season. Kenny will get his chances.

Shooting is as much of a skill as passing, heading etc. At some point it stops being about luck and is down to quality. None of these guys have been prolific at this level or above (Forss was the only one close to that) so it's not massively surprising. If you averaged out their goals in L1/above across their careers people like Burstow and Dalby are probably overachieving.

The post I quoted suggested we're better playing better teams. It's two wins in 11 vs the top 10 for 13 points (1.1ppg). 45 from 23 against everyone else (1.9ppg). I don't think we are better at playing better teams, because we're just not that good. Draws are massively overrated if you're a side chasing promotion. They'll get you nowhere in the long run.

We've won 2 of 11 against the current top 10 and have got 7 more to play against them. Not that we should be worried about 7th. 2pts a game from here from Reading would be remarkable, but it'd leave them on 74. Even with the most pessimistic outlook in the world we're not going to take fewer than 16 points from the final 12.

On the plus side, that was a well taken goal by Burstow. Neither him nor Dalby are overly convincing and Kenny is 0/2 on absolute sitters. So it's going to take a mix of people chipping in.

We're 34 games into the season. We are who we are. We'll play close games against everyone and hopefully nick the odd decisive late goal. Anyone waiting for us to 'click' and turn into a free scoring machine is going to be waiting a long time I think.

There are plenty of players who've gone through the leagues at later ages. Leon Britton springs to mind as a smaller player who ended up having a decent Premier League career in his 30s. Not saying Sheehan will go that far, but that can wait for a) us getting promoted and b) us having better options. For me he's comfortably shown that he's still our most influential player this season (outside of the six weeks where ACD looked like a world beater). I also think it's good for the club to have players who stick around long term, when most of our players are loans and short term deals.

This is all true, but I also think it's not that deep. Nobody should be giving out abuse to anyone, but it's a local rivalry and he's a confrontational character. I'm sure he'll get a bit of stick if we're winning, and I'd expect him to be fucking loving it if they win. All good entertainment on a Saturday afternoon and nobody should take it too seriously.

Maybe. I think I need to see a bit more from this team, particularly when it comes to scoring goals. As far as matches against the better teams go, we're P11 W2 against teams currently in the top 10. Hard to imagine us going away to anyone in the playoffs and putting three past them, as the 23/24 team did.

I don't think any away game is a gimme.

Did we? Kenny should've scored. Apter's was a good chance, Dalby is capable of scoring those headers but it would've taken a good effort. So maybe 3 games where we kept clean sheets and took every chance. I'm loathe to bring up XG but ours yesterday was 1.9, which feels about right to me. We didn't create enough after they scored.

At 21 Dan Nlundulu had double digit Premier League appearances and played at a higher level than all of them. He also played in (and won) the final Kenny played in, as did Declan John. Dion Charles might go to the World Cup. He too scored a League One hat-trick last season. Rodrigues played in a side that got twatted 5-0 by bunch of journeymen. The journeyman midfielders he was up against are both currently starting for Championship sides. None of this proves a single thing about how well anyone will do here, or what they'll go on to do in their careers. And certainly not the most important thing, which is whether they'll get us promoted this season.

I'm not going to go back over anyone's posts, but it would be disingenuous to say that people weren't very high on Simons, Burstow, Forss and ACD etc. and thought they would be top quality players in this league (ACD obviously was). Forss has the best record of any attacking player we've signed this season by miles and never got going. I'm hopeful for everyone, but there are no guarantees with any of them. That's the nature of loan players, if they were a sure thing they'd be playing for their parent clubs. Kenny has five career goals above (barely) non-league level and one sub appearance for Ireland. Collins & Charles have 110+ L1 goals, 34 international caps and a L1 player of the season award. Kenny may or may not turn out to be a better player in time, but a better CV already?

What you're saying now (this team is miles better than the one two years ago) is exactly what people (quite possibly you) were saying about the team we had at the start of the season with ACD, Burstow firing etc. We haven't seen anything like enough of Apter, Kenny, CBT to make a judgement and opinions will evolve as time goes on as they have done with Forss/Gale/Burstow/Duberry/Dalby. The jury has to be out on the season and where we're heading when there is still a lot of games to play, we've been patchy throughout and had two fairly distinct 'era's' of loan players pre and post-January. But regardless, all I said was that the idea this team has improved away from home in any sense vs the 23/24 team isn't true. That's not a comment on Evatt vs SS, it's just a fact.

Not to make it about Evatt, this week of all weeks. But in 23/24 we averaged 1.61 ppg away from home and 1.4 goals per game. GD of +10. This season we're at 1.18 ppg scoring 0.8 goals per game. GD of -6. We are a soft touch away, teams take points off us in just about every game. We're not as good as the last team we had which finished 3rd. Maybe we won't need to be.

Season in a nutshell really. Miss a golden early chance, concede the first shot on target, bundle in a late goal. Having said that, it shouldn't be painted as though it was the alamo. We created very little after they scored. Overall, just not good enough. Oh well. Will all be worth it when that last minute goal at Wembley goes in.