Tombwfc

That's twice in two years that a regular and solid, if maligned by fans, wing-back has been bombed out with little prior warning. Randell Williams got the same treatment. I just looked it up and he's now at Reading, who seemingly are about to sign Santos.

I'm not advocating it now (although Nolan has definitely done a better job with Northampton than SS has here)... but you really can't think of a time when a club hiring a former player has worked? Really? Not even one?

To be fair before this season ACD and Burstow had scored 6 career goals in 89 games. That they're on 13 in 40 odd is actually a pretty decent result. Not sure we could've expected much more. It just never looked like a squad with enough goals in it, which is why I thought Forss could've been a massive signing. But he's been a massive letdown.

But have you researched which L1 goalkeepers we should sign instead?

That was also the case last season, but we managed it in the end. I wouldn't be complacent that all the other teams are going to sit and wait for us to sort our shit out.

I think it's the kind of thing that might be retrofitted at the end of the season - 'that's where it all changed'. But certainly if you try to pick out turning points week to week you'll be wrong a lot more often than you're right. The late goals against Huddersfield were another that was supposed to kickstart something and never really did. Fact is over a long season there will be plenty of false dawns for bad teams.

Today's reaction, whatever it was, isn't in isolation. It's being 6th in L1, 1-0 down to Peterborough having won two away games all season. A big chunk of those fans will have been at most of those, plus a 4-0 defeat to Swindon in the cup and yes they absolutely deserve better. And they've been told over and over again that they would be getting better. In the past six/seven years we've had periods where we've plummeted down the divisions, attendances and general interest went through the floor and we nearly went bust to boot. And then we had the initial years under Sharon & Evatt with a promotion, cup win and basically everything up to kick off against Oxford. The idea the majority (or even a significant amount) of our fans were happier during the former, because there was plenty to moan about, is obviously not true.

Anyone who's been even slightly paying attention to the past six or seven years would know that this is complete horseshit. 20k a week at home, however many they'll give us away, 30k sold for a tinpot final four hours away... just to hope we lose.

Yep. Beating Wigan away last season was talked up as a turning point and we won one from seven after that. At home twatting Wigan was supposed to prove that we were promotion material, and we lost two of the next three games to Burton and Northampton. People need to get it out of their heads the idea that one game here or there changes things. Maybe when you're scrapping for points at the bottom, but when you're at the top it's about relentlessly getting results week after week for months on end. We haven't looked like doing that for two calendar years.

Definitely feel puddled trying to make the slightest bit of sense of that.

Sorry, do you think we're actually making decisions here? Or just answering a question on an internet forum? If this thread was 'Should we sign a new striker or stick with Bustow/Dalby?' would everyone need to name a replacement before answering 'yes'? The question is whether SS is getting the best out of this group and giving us the best chance of promotion. If the answer to that is 'no', then we need to be looking elsewhere. Who that specific person is, it's unlikely anyone here has seen enough football to say anyway.

That isn't what that says. Have a night off for fucks sake.

Why? So people can say they're crap/won't come? When people say a player is shit and we need to do better, nobody asks for a scout report on who we're buying instead. SS plainly isn't getting the best out of this team.

We won't and I understand the arguments why, but I'd get rid. He hasn't for one second looked like a man capable of taking us up, so him being here is just killing time until we try something else. Our best chance of getting up this season is riding a new manager bounce and seeing where that momentum could take us.

The previous toughest run of the season (Huddersfield > Cardiff > Bradford > Luton) yielded eight points from four games. If that's too positive - it took three last minute goals and 2pts a game wouldn't help us anyway.

Iles was repeating it as an absolute fact in the paper even today. And whatever people think of Iles, there's no reason to believe it's made up. As I say, it's only about as batshit as paying a transfer fee for Dan Nlundulu so I can believe it. Or whatever insanity convinced Evatt that Joel Randall was going to save his job.

Turning down a million for Vic has to be up there with the most baffling transfer decisions we've ever made. It's one thing to sign a player who's looked promising elsewhere and it not work out. But Vic was our player and we knew he would never be worth that money. Big Dan was another bizarre one.

We've currently got the second best defence in the league, and we've not had a goalkeeper make a save in half a season. I've been as critical of us as anyone, but someone in that defence has to be good.

We've been abysmally overrated as an attacking force all season really, based almost entirely off things ACD has done at his best (and to a much, much lesser extent, Burstow and Gale). The strength of the current group is in defence, especially now TSL isn't there to throw one in. If there's any hope for this season it lies within that unit.

And dropped 7 points behind Bradford, 9 behind Lincoln and 12 behind Cardiff. But still, moved up from 6th to 5th...

That's 24 wins out of 24 in the could've, would've, should've league table. In reality we've scored three goals in a league game once since September and didn't have a shot on target today. So my guess is no, we wouldn't have 'probably' gone on to win 3 or 4-0.

Down to 6th in 15 minutes since you posted this. Wasn't two wins in 10 to start the season a dip? Or back to back away losses to Northampton & Burton? When does our dip for the season end?

Anyway, touching distance. Still only lost the same number of games as Lincoln.

Is it bollocks getting toxic. Other than towards the ref, there was barely a murmur of discontent until we started passing it round the back in the 95th minute. If he walks away (which he won't) he won't sniff another job near the top half of League 1.

In the past four seasons Birmingham, Wrexham, Derby, Portsmouth, Sheff Wed, Ipswich and Sunderland have gone up. Cardiff are obviously looking good too. All of those are similar to us in terms of what their expectations were (nothing less than promotion). Granted a notable couple had higher budgets, but not all. Rotherham and Wigan were recently relegated in 21/22 and so would've expected to go up. Charlton would've had high expectations last year with Nathan Jones. Then you've got Plymouth and Oxford as the other two. Of the above, only Sheff Wed's manager had multiple cracks at it. Point being, underdog promotion stories in this league are very rare (unless a big club absolutely bottles a playoff final). Bigger resources are a far greater positive than heightened expectations are a negative. Every promotion is hard fought and well earned, but as far as being a particularly tough job goes - nothing we're asking of Schumacher hasn't been done before year after year in this division by clubs with our resource advantage over the vast majority of the league.