Guitar Ray

Non taken. 👍🏻

No, definitely Tourette’s. It’s a coping mechanism, saying Crosby instead of shitfannybollocks.

I’ve decided it must be a form of Tourette’s.

That’s more like it Nipper. 👍🏻

Highly unusual to see no mention of Crosby in one of your posts Nipster, have you suffered a momentary brain blockage?.

They have some great long term plans, as we know, but sometimes you need to get the sticking plasters out pronto.

Nobody in their right mind will disagree with anything you’ve said there. The fact that we have all those things, the fanzone etc. etc, is as a byproduct of the team on the pitch. The numerous projects are great but sometimes you’ve got to look at the short term and the circumstances you find yourself in, which may not be part of any grand plan, and react accordingly. Despite picking up a few points recently anyone can see we’re in a mess, with a squad very much threadbare. We need to win our games in hand and to do that we’ll have to score some goals. We’ve needed more goals in the team all season, we’ve recently lost our top scorer out injured. We almost lost Uche to Charlton so I really would hope we had someone else lined up who could still come in, especially given Uche is now also injured. It’s not about signing mega stars on huge wages just a couple of steady Eddies with a bit of nous at this level to bolster the ranks and make sure we don’t drop too many points this February.

Leaving personalities out of this, if the powers that be truly think that adding a couple of untried starlets to the ranks will guarantee our safety then it does smack massively of arrogance. We’ve got major injury issues, our top scorer now listed among them, loads of young players we’re trying to bed in and a strike force that doesn’t actually strike. Bare minimum we need a forward who’s got some experience and more importantly a record of scoring in and around this level. Beyond signings we need a huge turnaround of luck with injuries.

No, what’s boring is you whinging about lack of investment whilst making empty threats.

You have no idea how long I’ve been a fan for, not that it matters because this is an open forum, anyone can question you, me or anyone else.

It’s attention seeking.

Spend your money how you like but don’t bleat about the club not investing and then not invest your own money into the club. Anyway, if you really are a season ticket holder of 55 years you’ve seen it all before so why go soft now? Attention seeking?

Let me get this straight, your way of encouraging the club to invest money is to give them less money to invest? Interesting logic.

I think she said it was people, a small minority, criticising her rather than Flitcroft. She basically said it’s become toxic.

No maybe about it. David Flitcroft has laid out the blueprint for the football side of the club. He oversees recruitment. Crosby, or whoever we have as manager in the future, is tasked with implementing the philosophy at first team level and likely as not will not have full control over recruitment, playing style or even team selection.

When did he tell you this?

As stated elsewhere, one of the key takeaways from the fans forum was that between now and the end of the window we’re only aiming to potentially sign 2 more young loans. This would be all well and good if we had a fully fit squad with strength in depth in all positions to which we were looking to augment by adding a bit of quality competition in some positions. This is obviously not the case as we were already weak in certain areas prior to the latest crop of injuries, with Uche added to the list yesterday, in addition to losing the 2 quality loans, Arblaster and Devine. To make matters worse we’re sitting just above the relegation zone with “games in hand” rather than points on the board. Each window should allow teams to strengthen but in our case we’re simply replacing the loan players we’ve lost and we’re back to square one in terms of having to get those players up to speed, we’re definitely not stronger. Additionally, we have no idea as to how soon the longer term injured players will be out for but what is fact is that they too will take time to get up to full speed. The club seem to be taking a real gamble here, calculated or not. The only positive I see in this overall policy right now isn’t the tie ups with the top clubs but the fact that we’re in the fortunate position of having a crop of youngsters capable of playing at this level, but even this is somewhat offset by their inconsistency. Bit of a ramble.

Butter and Golden Syrup still a big favourite in our house. 👍🏻

I think the majority of fans will accept a more patient approach if there’s some end product, which in my view there was earlier in the season, we just couldn’t finish in front of goal. Towards the back end of our winless spell it had all become slow, crab like passing. In fairness it’s up to the more advanced players to give the defenders some decent options when we’re playing out from the back and often our movement was poor. In the ideal world we’d be “up an at ‘em” without the ball and play a high tempo passing style when we have possession……if we have the players to do this.

Just to be clear, I’m not having a pop at you personally, I’m having a pop at what you say in this instance because I disagree with a lot of it and you saying that people were coming on here saying pretty much the same as me suggests you’re possibly in the minority, who knows? There’s no doubting our form tailed off and we got stuck in a rut of passing for the sake of it and everything being too slow but prior to that we played some lovely football. You could say Crosby is a yes man but ultimately he’s employed to do a job and there will be certain criteria he has to adhere to, like anyone employed in any job. If his employer tells him they want the team to play a certain way because the club want a certain identity as it’s all part of a plan then he’s got 2 choices. As far as Uche goes we’ve already seen that the club won’t stand in the way of any player if said player wanted to leave for any reason, and Charlton would certainly be an attractive proposition for a player in our league. All this could, and likely will, be asked at the forum.

Your memory is shot. Earlier in the season we were playing some great possession based football. That is a fact. Ok, towards the end of our barren run things had got too slow and turgid but even during that run we’d played well in games, we played great in the cups away at Mansfield and Burton for example. As I said, your stats are just nonsense because there are also games where we had low possession numbers which we lost. Crosbys hand was as much forced by the injuries to the squad along with players he had available rather than any desire to change the philosophy. Our recruitment will tell us what that philosophy will be going forward. Joe summed it up in an earlier post, it’s the way the “club” want to play rather than just Croz, he’s simply tasked with delivering that at first team level.

Your stats prove little. Look at the numbers for the wins v Cobblers or Wigan for example, both of which we won with loads of possession from memory. Equally there are plenty of games where the opposition had more possession than us and won. Tippy tappy football is fine, possession is fine, the only bit you’ve got right is the tempo. There has to be some zip no matter what style of football we wish to play.

Not where the stats are from simply what your point is.

Care to explain what you’re illustrating with these seemingly random stats?

No idea if, or why, he’s failed a medical but to be fair he’s finished the last few games a lot stronger. You only need to look at the guy to realise he’s not built for endurance, he’s all power and strength. You’re not going to see any distance runners built like Uche that’s for sure. If he’s puffing and blowing towards the end of a game then at least it tells you he’s putting the effort in, which he is, and most fans can see and appreciate that.