Ainsworth Is Trending: EFL+ 23/24

Strolling down Charlton Lane right now, hope in my heart. Said hope being that the deluge promised by the rain radar in about ten minutes doesn't curtail proceedings.

Anyone else feeling ready?

we've made one new signing, a loanee from fellow strugglers Stoke. Being up at the top end of the FFP compliancy table doesn't win you shit. Pre-season wasn't that bad, but not much get's learned from putting 10+ goals past drunken Cornish pub sides. Still got that fragile hope that they at least aren't going to be shite season, we'll soon see though.

Getting your biggest away trip out of the way early I see

it's probably less of an arduous trip going to France

Watford
1
Queens Park Rangers
0
Dele-Bashiru (1'minutes)
1 min

that were quick

I fear this thread title has peaked early

heh! gone by teatime

ffs! make 'em walk home.

Cambridge beat Oxford 2-0, take that Sunak/Johnson/May/Cameron/Blair/etc.!

This popped up as a result of a the involvement of a couple of ECFC loanees but I was taken aback by the very specific googleproofing, is it a family thing?

Your starting lineup away at Frome Town in our final friendly today 💪#WsMAFC ⚪⚫ pic.twitter.com/aIdoAxvCLW

— Weston-super-Mare AFC (@WSM_AFCOfficial) July 29, 2023

Our policy of rarely giving out contracts longer than two years means every summer is a transitional summer. This year we lost some important players to us (youth team grads, like Josh Key to Swansea and Archie Collins to Posh, plus Jevani Brown after a saga which was foul, he was brilliant for us but overall I'm glad he's gone).

I was vaguely hoping for a noticeable strengthening of the squad after then Ethan Ampadu transfer to Leeds netted us £1.4m, but it looks like it's been put aside to fund future years of us paying more in wages than our 6.5K crowd average can sustain - the economics of football are properly insane. We seem to have picked up some promising loans, and signed a few previously unheard-of-by-me players, plus Tom Carroll who seems to be fit, for now. We are playing a very high-tempo game that I don't think our thin squad will be able to maintain for a full season. Nevertheless, a win away at Wycombe on the opening day and progress against Crawley in the LC last night, mustn't grumble.

Brought a debutant on late doors last night, it was the lad's 16th birthday - he got booked, lots of amusing jokes about unwanted birthday cards obv

looool you'll be delighted to know he has a brother called Louis who's also a footballer xxp

there's been a drawn out transfer non-saga between our lot and exeter over sam nombe, culminating (for now) in exeter's social media team absolutely dunking on both us and an exeter fan account who'd been claiming for sure he was off before the last psf. OUR NEW OWNERS AND THEIR MILLIONS WILL PREVAIL or something. actually we've now been linked with a jamaican league top-scorer, which would be a fun signing

that's if we can recover from the mortal blow of going out of the efl cup to newport. believe it or not some of our fans are already in a stage of malcontentment

James 0000
James D00D

My understanding is that we have. very clear sum in mind for Nombe and will sell the minute that sum is bid he'll be off (I'd guess that is somewhere between £800K - £1M but I've no inside info). I believe the thinking is: if we're a selling club it's better for us to miss out on a fee or two than to get the rep of a club that will sell cheap if you negotiate hard enough. The policy of stashing windfalls like the Amps money means we are rarely in a position where we *have* to sell. I think this is the right answer but do sometimes dream of an extra half mil in the playing budget.

Duke Roll - the fan account you mention - is interesting in ways I don't think I can satisfactorily explain.

rumour is we missed out on a "free" transfer because the club wasn't willing to pay the £1.5m and another 400k on agents fees that West Brom did. I thought they were supposed to be on the verge of administration ffs. I hope they boing boing their way to a points deduction.

£1.5m signing on fee I should add

Missed the emergence of the thread because I was away at the weekend.

We had Jacob Jagg3r at our place and he was ok - 20 appearances, no goals or assists, a bit lightweight - but the real name on that team sheet is Kieran Thomas who imo is a league quality right back although his game went back a bit after the end of competitive drop balls which he loved and I once saw him sprint 60 yards for.

So we started the season with 1 (one) player from last season. Saw pre-season and we looked good against West Brom although it's hard to tell as their best player went off after 10 minutes. Overall we apparently only looked less than good at one PSF, although we lost a few players to injury and have actually had to get a couple of loanees in for the first month just to create a bit of depth.

First match was a 2-2 draw at Kings Lynn which, if you'd offered me it last season I would have snapped your hand off but apparently was a bit unlucky not to take all the points. Darlo at home this weekend who got battered last week.

Hoping for the playoffs I think.

ainsworth: not dead yet

it must have been the white haku man doing the team talk yesterday

That was much more like it, I had forgotten what it was like to be entertained at a football match. (Downside, the pub was weird with nothing to complain about)

Created lots, would have been nice to have scored more and I didn't even mind the (poorly taken) penalty being saved because it was very soft. We've definitely got a few dark arts players this season, Cowley leaving one in after 4 minutes that made Darlo rearrange their whole midfield because they saw cards coming as a result, and Cranston getting away with a kick out then stamp that everyone in the stadium saw except all the officials. Pond doing the Jordan Pickford fall on the ball is going to get old pretty quickly but if he keeps on performing then I'm not sure I care.

Special shout out to the referees who, to a man, were the most inept I've seen in years. Missed fouls, deciding after the event to play advantage, dead balls given the wrong way and a whopping 12 minutes of additional time played of the 8 indicated.

I very nearly felt sorry for their physio, one of the fattest blokes I've ever seen involved with a football club (easily 26 stone) but every time he got called onto the pitch it was on the other side.

I was tickled when we had Stanley and Livingstone on the pitch together, but I suspect that was just me.

I have a Player To Watch candidate for you all this season btw, Harry Smith of Sutton United, a Giant Bastard of the finest quality. Here we see him last week at 0:45 with some Completely Unnecessary (and Obscenely Protracted) Shithousing, immediately marking him as a man of profoundly low character. Later in the game of course (at 2:15) he scores a Giant Bastard Header, leaning on his poor defender as one might upon a gatepost to survey the scenery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIVMKbU4pc

Followed up this week by some heroic Ultraviolence in the first fifteen minutes. The camera unfortunately misses everything except the prelude and the aftermath, beginning at 0:06, but I almost find the jump-cut between initial grappling and opponent writhing in agony to be more evocative than had we witnessed what transpired. It's a crying shame we will now be deprived of him for three games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GBQ39F7IpE

Harry Smith was at ours for five minutes last season but we changed managers, he apparently couldn’t settle in the west country (can’t hold that against him) and back to Orient he went. Shame, I had high (>6ft) hopes for him.

Last season we quite often had a Harper Collins central midfield.

we've got 6'9" of player (the tallest in the UK) in striker Kyle Hudlin, he's only made one appearance from the bench from which he scored against Boro in the cup no-one cares about. Most of the comments on him so far are of the cliched "tidy feet for such a big lad" variety and it seems he doesn't have much at all in the way of effective aerial presence. Might be a good 'un though, he seems have kicked on a level since last season after an unremarkable loan spell at Wimbledon.

I'm getting reports that Ross McCormack is not making the anticipated impact some thought he might have in the 8th tier of the efl at Liversedge fc.

an avid 'Sedge fan says that McCormack was absolutely appalling at the weekend - bloated, unfit and fell over the ball a few times much to the amusement of the crowd

Tuesday march was not all that to be honest, the lack of an out and out striker through injuries just left to a total loss of shape and press, and it was an absolute mugging for us to take the points.

Fair play to Caddis though, not many managers would take a player off after 40 minutes. Blyth on Saturday will be interesting.

In other league news:

Alun Armstrong says Scunthorpe are unstoppable winners after they took Darlo apart.

Southport have sacked their manager after losing the first three.

Southport docked 10 points for not paying the taxman.

Not Southport, Southend.

EFL sack race WINNERS, such a cool functional club I AM DYING OUT HERE

(he sort of deserved it tbh)

so every day your caretaker manager wakes up, he takes his medication

spends the rest of the day waiting for a new striker

we've got a manager who was already a bit too unfiltered even before the cognitive decline. Like when a player he has targeted all summer turns us down for a fat signing on fee/better wages and a better chance of being in the top half of the table, he says quite cheerfully "I always just think ‘well, something will happen, they’ll get injured or something’".

lmao, a true poster

The late goal Charlton conceded deprived us of reaching our highest-ever position in the league.

As it stands, the last time we were second in the 3rd tier, The Winner Takes It All by Abba was number 1.

right now we're just fucked up inside!!!!!

god fuckin defend me I'm at such a loose end I've gone to the fuckin Dulwich Hamlet game

the irony being that despite my somewhat aloof attitude to it all I currently look like the most Dulwich fan who ever walked this earth

luckily decided to support Chatham and was duly rewarded with a whole bunch of goals down the end I was standing, a couple of them really pretty good

York sack Mikey Morton.

Wouldn't be surprised if Caddis doesn't see out September, the past few games have been dreadful.

just had a worse transfer window than several of our relegation rivals. So I guess the next best thing we could do is appoint a Director of Global Brand. We had our global moment 20 odd years ago when one of Htoo twins (those guerilla kids that led the Christian armed revolutionary group in Burma) was filmed wearing a HTAFC Panasonic home kit. The "global brand" has been all downhill since that moment, because funnily enough the rest of the world don't give much of a fuck about shitty little division 2/3 clubs.

Tough times at Enfield: https://fanbanter.co.uk/worrying-developments-as-8th-tier-club-issue-statement-with-fans-hoping-they-survive/

Bad business at Scunthorpe: https://unexpecteddelirium.substack.com/p/will-the-real-david-hilton-please

Puts our current injury crisis into a bit of perspective I guess. Wish we didn't have an injury crisis though. We had a player injured while on international duty this weekend. That's a first! Frankly the international duty os almost a first.

Reading have a points deduction already and apparently if their dysfunctional owners don't comply with the EFL order to deposit 125% of wages into an account they'll just keep on deducting every month. They might be working towards the earliest relegation in league history.

Warnock is going to manage what will likely his last game at Town on Wednesday against Stoke. He wouldn't comment on why he's leaving and said it would all be announced at a presser on Monday and he wasn't going to comment any further. This is the really chilling part. Nathan Jones was pictured at the game today 🥶

he's been gone too long

I've just seen the Nathan Jones pic debunked, it's an old pic of him at St Mary's. But then some spoilsport has said - old pic aside - he was actually at the game today.

phew! it's been confirmed by an itk source that it definitely isn't going to be Nathan Jones

General consensus yesterday was this Cheltenham side were as bad as any we’ve seen in League 1, probably the worst. We’ve hated playing them because for a while now they have seemed keen to make the game as sterile as possible, scuff a goal and then waste as much time as they can. Without Alfie May the scuffing a goal element seems to be out of reach.

For all that, I find myself feeling sorry for this dude. I thought about putting this on The Wisdom of Gaffers but it’s too tough a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2t0GhQmVCQ

(The only goal in their “for” column this season’s n was an og)

Guaranteed points at The Valley. May will probably get sent off too

"I haven't a clue who the new manager is. They haven't told me. Presumably it's somebody I don't like."

<3

that narrows it down a bit! Neil pissed off the yank by saying our lack of action in the transfer window was an effing joke. Apparently it is Darren Moore.

the Yank started it by tweeting "unacceptable" after a 4-0 arseholing by Norwich.

Neil is very much the online pensioner, he quotes and calls out posters by their posting name at press conferences. Have never seen that before!

someone posted that Danny Ward is his son, because no player could be so abject and be an automatic starter every week. So then at a presser he said: my son, Danny is ill at the moment.

lol, he will be missed

until someone needs saving from relegation

Darren Moore the obvious choice though yes

That melancholy dude from Cheltenham freshly available I see

oooof, watching it

"are you confident you can turn this around"

*long pause*

"i'm not stupid"

The massive gaps between our stands are helpful in giving him a middle distance to thousand-yard stare into

atm feeling sorry for scunthorpe fans

feeling slightly less sorry, but maybe still a tiny bit sorry, for wednesday fans

I couldn't care less about Wednesday. Chansiri was throwing silly money about for years there and they were either unlucky or never good enough for promotion or also, perhaps, he was just a clueless cunt and then went the other way out, and my club did their bit. I've never met a Wednesday fan who doesn't have a massive club entitled attitude - so fuck 'em. If Chansiri doesn't blink and starves them of funding until they go into admin and get a points deduction. Then I'd propose awarding him the most amusing oligarch of the year award.

ENORMOUS ILX Derby tonight *applies woad*

We’ve had some mixed results lately and could do with a result tonight to keep up a good start. Lack of a fit adult striker is beginning to tell on us I think.

I have genuinely no idea about us tonight, there is a very broad spread of potential performance/result

I see we're taunting Exeter by starting three fit adult strikers and two attacking midfielders as well, with more to come off the bench. Gonna be fun

Well, we've not had a ref like that in a while! He'll be taking his place in the Covered End next week

The weird thing is how no-one in the place, players, fans, anyone, seemed to enjoy it.

^lol I hadn't seen this. Posted presumably about one minute before our impromptu FAB (Fancy A Bus), best bit of the evening tbf

calz head has probably exploded by now

just relieved it wasn't 7 or 8 nil. had no intention of watching the game without covering my eyes and ears and necking a load of temazepam to protect me from the trauma. The bench today shows that Warnock's criticism of the Yank owner's disaster of a transfer window was spot on. The wafer thin squad was just 3 or 4 injuries away from not having an xi with a half decent chance of being competitive at this level, 4 injuries later here we are and with a hopeless, inept, dull as fuck, yesman manager in place of Warnock to boot.

thread title took a bit too long to deliver, but where will he resurface???

looks like Neil could be returning to QPR. Worst decision by my club since they sold Marcus Stewart to Ipswich. Just as we were getting some momentum going they sack him and bring in a clueless dullard who bores the players to sleep with cliched gaffer jargon. Then Uncle Neil goes to a relegation rival - I can already see what is going to happen here. The Yanks have been a pox on my club.

lol i thought youse had dragged him kicking and screaming out of retirement in the first place?

oh he has to be handled, like really he was loving that he was asked to stay on as manager and I think he expected to even carry on until the end of the season, despite all his protestations about his infirmity and talk of going back to quiet life in Cornwall. You could see he was mortally butthurt and also somewhat surprised when he announced the Yanks had sacked him.

one thing he can do that not many others can is shape defectives and duds into a decent side, he's a master at boosting the confidence of young lads who flounder under normal gaffers

he does strike me as a lad who wouldn't know what to do with himself with time on his hands, i'm sure the hospitality workers in his local community are hoping he keeps himself busy

he's a natural busy cunt, he still goes cycling and does his book tours and goes on Vegas trips with his Sharon. He'll probably end up dying in some relegation club's dugout, his last words some expletives about the ref.

Lol I meant his wife, Sharon

"The Yanks have been a pox on my club"

^^^

potential future thread title there

We started the season incredibly well then crashed and burned, partly through injury crisis in a too-thin squad, partly because we blatantly didn’t recruit enough strikers even though we sold our best forward to Rotherham for a million quid, partly because (as at Charlton) we have been robbed by refs / cheats. Mostly our own stupid fault, but we’d need to get a lot more things badly wrong to get relegated.

I did hear some idle terrace speculation yesterday about whether Colin might like a south western project… but we haven’t sacked a manager in 20 years and I don’t think we will start now, especially since we scored a point against the mighty Lincoln City yesterday.

Anyway I’m only really posting to mark the departure of Barton, J. from Bristol Rovers, there’s a man you wouldn’t want at your club.

Pearson sacked from City today too, the thinking man's Joey Barton

I hate transfer deadline day and know all about too-thin squads with injury issues, it's one thing being a selling club but 20 odd players out and 3 in at a club that just about stayed up last season is not really pushing on. It's probably our fault Rotherham had the cash to nick your striker after we paid something around 3/4 of a mill to them for our big flagship signing, Wiles - who has been unfit looking and consistently underwhelming.

Two bookable offences at L1 level in this clip. One you may notice, the other is the level of remonstration from our keeper.

🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/BgkGMvYYWD

— Exeter City FC (@OfficialECFC) October 29, 2023

(Nombe’s barely played for Rotherham
Since he went there, so everyone’s a loser I guess (except Sammy’s bank balance, good luck to the lad, he did very well for us)

gotta say the lad's gone down very easy there

the squad is so threadbare and injury depleted for 2 consecutive games they couldn't put out a full bench. Although I don't see the harm in putting some development players on there to fill the gaps ffs. But still Moore's tactics have been despicable. Deploying anti-football 7-2-1 garbage with 5 CBs against moderate championship sides like they are playing Man City in the cup every week, then subbing an injured striker with a DM. The way it is going there is going to be single digit possession and zero shots in a home game against some garbage relegation rival and this clown will still be talking about a different game after a late concession. Ben Jackson pulled Moore out of the shit yesterday, but the Saints could have won it in the first half without breaking sweat. Although I think Moore was slightly confused about Southampton after describing them as "languishing in the top 6" or maybe that is actually how their fans see it and he was actually perceptive + otm about something for once!

Barnsley winner last night one of the funnier goals in recent memory. Well done to the ref tbh

The goal STANDS.

Thoughts?#BARvWYC #WWFC pic.twitter.com/Ow9MvhuuYw

— Wycombe Wanderers Gibraltar (@WWFCGibraltar) November 28, 2023

Caddis might well be the most insane manager in the league. Not prepared to settle for a point, we played the last 15 yesterday in a 3-2-5 formation. (3 centre forwards and two wide players to feed them)

Gowling's days look numbered at Darlington.

I've been keeping my misery from you all

We have a manager who uses malapropisms but with made up words by saying things like "the projectorary of the ball was unlucky for us". He is the worst manager I can think of in my lifetime in the sense that he is so consistently dull and useless, but ultimately successful in deploying his fuckwitted tactics, he'd have 11 behind the ball if we were playing Carlisle Utd. He's fucking abysmal.

Gowling's days were indeed numbered.

Winner 9 (NINE) minutes into time added on but about 5 minutes of that was holdups after we had a goal knocked off 3 minutes into time added on and their manager got into a a bit of trouble.

Kings Lynn could be hit with a big fine after today, and it's not their first iirc. For a side that the owner has already said might not make it through the season because of money, not the brightest of moves.

Blyth get rid of Graham Fenton today, South Shields Julio Arca yesterday.

Not a happy Christmas for many clubs in NLN.

Kings Lynn ground staff all let go "because there's no money" (according to the snack hut lady. Looks terminal.

And Lewis Dickman goes from Spennymoor, who didn't even finish their game today!

The league's been a total car crash since Christmas.

this is not even particularly a schadenfreude thing at this point: how on earth do Birmingham City keep doing stuff like this to themselves?

pick your favourite "curse on the ground" story

there are cursed efl teams and then there are cursed efl teams. some of us have season tickets to them even

i feel like my club's suffering is at this point far too intense for a mere ilf thread

I think it's more a case of cursed owners in our respective basket cases. The current custodians of my club are massively wealthy but are engaging in a vanity hobby and find the idea of strengthening what is already a paper thin squad ravaged by injuries, well that is asking for a lot. Clueless American cunts should be banned from owning EFL clubs forevermore I say.

The chairman of my club has no sense of urgency about the cost of relegation, because the fucking prick comes from a country where there is no relegation.

it's always American speculative investment

one of the interesting things that came out about Uncle Neil before he got sacked was his unusual, nay outright ridiculous decision to give Danny Ward a 2 year contract extension. Previously this was thought to be because he had some misplaced confidence in the useless ageing crock and trusted him to come good after getting some service from him at Cardiff, but since we found out Warnock jr is Ward's agent.

Kings Lynn now in 'partnership' with a sports investment firm from Singapore.

Think I just witnessed the new Most Obvious Manager Going To Be Fired After The Game game ever

Within half an hour of the final whistle. You have to say that's class

xp

been thinking the same every game since mid November. But surprisingly our yank owner has shocked and awed us by sanctioning some decent signings and hinting he's going to dump the useless manager via his regular youtube chats with "Sacramento radio personality" Carmichael Dave. He says there have been too many ties and the formations have been too conservative. obv in no doubt that he is saddling the club with debt here, but also overwhelmed by us actually signing a couple of players who aren't shit in a transfer window.

enabling us in turn to sign REG, who tbf looked decent tonight

I liked REG he did some decent man marking jobs for us during our last great escape. He was a star player for Rotherham in their promotion season. There is a player there.

Managers with lowest win percentage at current club

1️⃣D.Moore (Huddersfield) - 14.3%
2️⃣M.Bloomfield (Wycombe) - 26,2%
3️⃣G.Caldwell (Exeter) - 28.8%
4️⃣J.Jackson (Wimbledon) - 28,8%

every league manager that has been sacked so far had a much better record than Moore, apart from Rooney who was sacked weeks ago. We've literally got the shittest manager in the EFL!

Only because our basket case managed to squeak a win midweek I think.

It’s been so unbelievably bad at City, apparently we had the worst form of any professional football team in Europe over something like a two month period but we haven’t saved a manager, but we haven’t sacked a manager since February 2003 and it seems like the club is more interested in maintaining that record than anything else.

That might be a good thing, I dunno. I am normally against sacking people.

he's driving me insane is Moore by the way he talks, it's a repetitive word salad of generic gaffer jargon with some bizarre malapropisms, yesterday it was "parts and partial of the game". It would be an amusing sideshow if he wasn't such a terrible manager. And apparently the players are perplexed by his lack of a tactical brain and he's driving them insane as well.

If something similar to the Just A Minute rules were employed at the interview stage, with any repetition or deviations from meaningful communication and it's over, then he'd have been eliminated at that stage in two minutes.

yesterday he accused one of our CBs who was part of a playoff final squad of not being up to championship standard. This is a player coming back from a long term injury for 90% of Moore's disastrous tenure. I think he'll be gone by Sunday, he's a district league standard manager and once a flailing manager starts scapegoating individuals then that is when the game is up.

There ... is .. light

😬 Rovers are in the process of selling Adam Wharton to Crystal Palace for £22.5million.

However, according to club sources, Blackburn’s board of directors have cancelled all transfers with fees in this window for ‘financial reasons’.@ChrisWheatley #CPFC pic.twitter.com/pC9NbHO2eO

— Drizzy 🦅 (@DrizzyCPFC) January 31, 2024

the entire Charlton squad bracing for impact!

when in peril, appoint the maddest manager possible

I can confirm that going for the most boring manager in EFL history doesn't work - so why not go for the maddest.

never seen a player showing such public glee over a recently sacked manager as Matty Pearson at yesterday's presser. He even did a smirking pisstake of Moore's "part and partial of the game" howler. Also the caretaker manager, Worthy, was getting in some sly digs about his excessive waffling and incoherent and too conservative gameplan.

I used to hold Mick Wadsworth as the benchmark of the shittest Town manager ever and believed nobody could be as useless as he was. Older heads say Supermac was worse than Wadsworth, but he was living with serious pain issues at the time and heavily self-medicating, so had a reasonable excuse. But now in the last couple of years after the appointments of Darren Moore and Mark Fotheringham, memories of Wadsworth are fading away. Wadsworth got a reference from Sir Bobby Robson who said he was the best coach in England. Fuck knows how Foths and Moore even got past the first interview stage.

Are Blackburn complete fucking morons

https://theathletic.com/5249169/2024/02/03/duncan-mcguire-transfer-blackburn-orlando/

they could go down this season on their current wretched run of form, so should treasure these heady moments where they are still getting linked with abroad players who don't play in the Cymru Premier. But I do think the club is in a bit of trouble despite just flogging Wharton for 18.5m. Tomasson was blocked from doing any media yesterday, it's not a happy camp.

Here goes then. Actually pretty happy with this. Welcome to the weirdness

he's a really sour loser and his behaviour is fucking embarrassing at times. But did he made Luton one of toughest teams to play tbf

we could do with being bit more sour about losing, been doing enough of it lately

you lot gonna stick with the caretaker or

No Worthy has no interest in the top job, he likes his stable academy job. Duff is the current bookies fav, Eustace next in the betting. Apparently Heckingbottom is too big a name for a tinpot club like Town -didn't want him anyway. The main problem is that the same clueless DoF who considered Moore to be an accomplished head coach is picking the next manager, so basically were fucked!

xp
also Jonesy signed Elijah Adebayo for slightly more tuppence ha'pennies than we offered for him, the bastard!

our technical director andy scott (the one forest sacked) is the current focus of fan disgruntlement too. rumours he was against jones' appointment too. let's see. a lot of the players he's signed really should be doing better

would be surprised if rowett wasn't in the running too for you, eustace wd def be my choice tho

I prefer him to Duff who apparently wont uproot from Cheltenham and insists on commuting to work, which would be ridic if true. And Swansea were the dullest ever side under him.

got to admit I thought ffs is Moore still picking the team or summat, when Worthy had our impressive young RB Spencer starting at LB. But he's managed him since he joined the club as a kid so knows what he can do and I guess the final result showed sometimes us fans don't really know enough to make snap judgements!

https://www.beat-magazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Andy-Scott-credit-Quiz-Britain-50-years-of-the-Sweet.jpg

Wrong guy?

just trying to work out which stage of the human lineage he has time-travelled from

BLOT: Blackburn deal for McGuire fell apart because Team Exec hit "Save" instead of "Submit" on website

https://theathletic.com/5252239/2024/02/06/blackburn-rovers-duncan-mcguire-transfer/

In a sentence I can scarcely believe, Boyzone (with added Brian McFadden) are buying a large minority share and becoming the public face of Chorley. They're going to be unveiled at the Trophy match with Solihull Moors on Saturday.

real england thread delivers

oh shit, I forgot they are Irish!

sat in a row in the dugout, all have to stand up if Chorley score

Southampton Huddersfield game today sounds nuts, had 5 live on in the car and they kept going back there

it was a tremendous performance and no shame in going for it and losing, we lost our shape with Spencer going off injured and have a very weak bench whereas Southampton have depth. After the tedious dross of Moore since October it's a very positive happy loss for me.

oh for a positive happy loss

If we carry on in the same fashion we should be safe. Unfortunately we have this clueless fraud called Mark Cartwright who is likely to choose a bad manager again, some reckon he only wants Duff because he is represented by Beswick Sports, a company he has a very personal interest in.

there is an obscure Italian coach called Paolo Bianco who is 2ndfav @ 2/1 in the next manager betting. A Town fan has admitted he was only in the betting because he asked skybet for a quote and then he started posting rumours about him for a joke and gullibles started staking money on him, and these are such small betting markets that £10 bets can drive the price in. One of the gullibles was that arsewipe Alan Nixon from The S*n who has made a fool out of himself posting about Bianco in that cryptic fashion, as if he had some nudge nudge wink wink inside information.

That could easily end up with Bianco being appointed, in the absence of any other ideas

the interviews have been going on so long now that I think whoever their target was doesn't want the job and the rest are no good, which isn't usually a bar to getting the Town job. There are rumours that Duff won't move into the area. I mean if he's only going to work from Cheltenham perhaps he should start working on his racehorse training license, the p/t dickhead.

Our season's been ridiculously streaky - top (or near enough) for the first few games, then we played Charlton and got stiffed with an absurd sending off bought by that cheating sod May, followed by a ridiculous nosedive of 3 points out of a possible 39, including a 5-0 and a 70 stuffing, which left us in the relegation places. In the most recent 8 games since then our form has been in the top 4 (a run which has which has included 3 of the top 8, rather than just a bunch of duffers). And after all that we have exactly the same number of points as we did after 32 games last season.

We haven't sacked a manager in the 20+ years we've been fan-owned. I thought that run was going to end this season, and maybe it should have. But if the club continues towards safety in the division, then it'll be due to our trust-directed board having a steadier nerve than you'd expect from any club owner, and certainly a steadier nerve than our fan base had, me included. As a result the club has avoided the expense and disruption of paying off long-term contracts, while the end result of improved results has happened anyway.

The bad news is that the relationship between manager and fans has been badly damaged, it'd gone from him going on about how incredible it is that we stay positive even when we lose, to him regularly dropping little barbs about sticking together into his interviews; I don't know any fans who are wholeheartedly back on board with the guy yet.

xp I'd have snapped anyone's hand off for Duff a month or two back, nice easy commute down the M5. I'm not sure who's had I'd have needed to snap off though.

if we hadn't sacked Moore we'd be certainly getting relegated. It's not like he lost the plot - there wasn't a plot to start with. He was just an impediment to the team trying to win a game and some of his selections and substitutions were absolutely baffling, never seen a more clueless manager. It was like he believed in simulation theory and thought fuck it none of this is real anyway. Oh dear he is being linked with Port Vale now, poor bastards!

at least none of you are depending on Port Vale picking the wrong manager to stay in League One

followed by a ridiculous nosedive of 3 points out of a possible 39

well whaddaya know

Sucks, innit?

alfie may swandiving into the very bowels of karma

well that is one L1 relegation spot confirmed.. a five-and-a-half-year contract .. lol .wtf!!

Boyzone money apparently went directly to HMRC to avoid court action.

Moore's first game in charge of the Valiants is postponed, that's about as good as it gets.

looks like we are going German again, André Breitenreiter is going to be announced today.

A little late night (early evening) Diary for you all.

Apologies for the break since our last visit, obviously we had to buckle down until all tasks were completed.

Enjoy, and UTT!! 🤍💙 pic.twitter.com/hHJ6CH3y3D

— Kevin Nagle (@KevinNagleMLS) February 17, 2024

the charm offensive from our Californian billionaire owner and his buddy "Carmichael Dave" has finally won me over, lol

Didn't know there was a new series of Ted Lasso on the way

I thought I was impervious to US corporate spin and bullshit, but I have become a regular watcher of the Carmichael Dave video dairies (known as poster Just A Smithers on our forum)

I can imagine- pair of charmers

done by a 95th minute goal yesterday and a 92nd minute one at their place, we've kindly donated 2 pts to Hull again - right at the death

shame, it would have been nice for Worthy to get a win yesterday. Just so he could match Darren Moore's win ratio since October in 4 games.

obv the donation was 3 pts again, but both fixtures should have ended in draws, if not for tired concentration lapses and a dubious free kick awarded at the death.

Torquay go into administration today, Rochdale have 4 weeks to find a buyer or they will too.

Torquay are in quite a lot of bother I think. If they or the local authority can find a way to retain Plainmoor they're tolerably well-placed to form a phoenix club I reckon, but if the club goes under and the ground goes for redevelopment they'll struggle to rebuild. An alternative to the current ground doesn't seem to be offering itself up, even if the money was there. I hope they're alright.

The way English football runs itself is madness.

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/s/hklgBHaIkh

lol, his sock account was posting Michael Beale apologia/praise when he was at Rangers as well, what a prize turnip.

The first clue would be anybody having something good to say about him

his rise and fall has been rapid, from the hubris of turning down the Wolves job, after achieving next to nothing, to being an unemployable figure of fun in no time at all. Impressive.

Our new manager, in the tradition of our Wagner and Corberan appointments is not delighted to be here, and that makes he happy.

I think I'm finally finished with our football forum after too many years. Banned again, this time for mild insolence towards a habitually awful mod in response to them c+ping the text from some braindead right-wing FB meme about how this country isn't GREAT anymore because of high taxes and a sprawling out of control welfare state. At least I managed to embarrass them into deleting their execrable post before they banned me!

is it too much to ask to read about football or look at beautiful old photos without being bombarded with the twisted dreams of nazi fantasists?

didn't use any expletives or ad hom, just calmly attacked the post, so was quite surprised by the ban this time! But fuck it anyway, no big loss really (which is what they'll be saying about me as well).

we won

a fucking game

mad nathan jones has saved us i think

meanwhile, lololol at darren moore's port vale

a five and a half year contract ... what goes on. You need some level of due diligence before dishing out a contract that long to a dishonest knave who ain't got a fucking clue!

he managed to con our guileless DOF and chairman into employing him, there should have been warning lights flashing all across the EFL after this. But at least a lesson was learned.

not by Port Vale's Gary Flitcroft though, but believe me - he will learn a lesson here!

sorry I meant David Flitcroft .. all ppl with English names look the same to me

I have never been so annoyed and full of despair with how much a bad manager has destroyed all hope in a 23 game spell as Moore did. Not only just how bad his approach and tactics were, but also his bullshitting and outright gaslighting at every presser. Such a grim troglodyte. Port Vale are completely fucked.

Wimbledon win at Franchise, riot happens, sounds fun

Leeds fail to get a club record 10th consecutive win against 10 for more than half the game. That will do for me after the Elland Rd travesty under Moore. Hoggy was a daft twat to get sent off for such a needless foul, but it was a very entertaining 1-1.

why connor wickham will never not be a wasteman

― halber mensch halber keks (imago), Monday, 31 March 2014 19:07 (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i suppose we have our answer

still seems to be a lot of copium from Port Vale fans re: DM. Yeah he got Wednesday promoted with players on high end championship contracts - he will come good etc. The guy only knows how to set teams up to scrap for a point and he's even pretty shit at doing that. Really should have maxed out my overdraft with a *huge* bet on Vale to go down as soon as he signed the FIVE AND A HALF YEAR CONTRACT with them.

Meanwhile people will wail about the financial uncertainty of non-Prem clubs when half of them - like the Prem tbf - are owned and run by reckless cunts

That’s true and it’s why the level of freebie that the football league gets from the prem is totally unimportant, the clubs will just piss away the cash inflating players’ wages (well done to the players in this scenario btw). The whole structure is insane.

If half the clubs are run by reckless cunts the other half have to follow suit or they won’t be able to compete.

apparently Gary Bannon was on £27k a week at Wednesday during their promotion season from L1 🤨

That's exactly it Tim, it's structural and I don't have a magic answer but until the will is there to deal with the structural, which lets be real it never will be, then we live in this anxious fucked up mess

When Hull were suffering under the increasingly arbitrary reign of Allan junior I used to argue with a deeply Tory mate of mine that no club was safe without a degree of oversight but the politics outweigh the fandom, god bless us all

Torquay update: Colin rides to the rescue, possibly: https://www.devonlive.com/sport/football/football-news/neil-warnock-talking-potential-investors-9182966

Colin barely lasting a month at Aberdeen was a highlight of the season.

We've signed Dom McHale for the rest of the season so presumably Ceesay is done. He's been a lazy useless sod at >50% of his clubs, Caddis needs to get his end of season form for Gloucester out of him or it'll be a total waste of time.

Talking of Gloucester, AIUI Truro City are playing their home matches there for a bit, meaning the National League's most southerly club is playing home games at a National League North stadium.

To rub salt in, prior to Saturday's match they had to play 13 games in 28 days and 9 of those were in Gloucester.

They are 5th from bottom but could go top if they won all their games in hand.

I don't know the story really - I seem to recall registering what seemed like unusual spending for their level some years back but I haven't kept an eye on them.

I'm surprised they weren't able to share at Torquay, seems like a nearer place that could use a few quid over the bar.

It's supposedly all due to waterlogged pitches and they were supposed to share at Taunton but they had their own pitch issues.

No idea what's gone particularly wrong this year though, I didn't think it had been all that much wetter than other years.

Reading between some lines, they've been groundsharing with Plymouth Parkway who have also a lot of games to play and told them that they're second choice for pitch time.

Gloucester is a 4g pitch so doesn't have weather issues. It's a dump of a stadium made from shipping containers though.

Truro's problems all seem to go back to previous owners throwing in with Stadium For Cornwall and seeming to think they'll be the home side there, but as that drifts further and further on they have £2M in escrow for a stadium they now can't get their hands on.

That’s rough.

They're owned by the same guy who owns Cornish Pirates and apparently he's given up on the stadium deal but it's not clear whether the council have spent all the money anyway.

I can't imagine he'll stick with Truro for much longer as they are bringing less than 100 to their home matches.

Parkway still have 11 to play and have had their home matches at Yate Town for the past few weeks. (Which isn't all-weather but is a nice little ground.)

battle for 15th place hotting up. bring it

in a way, a proxy for the real tussle between torquay/truro/taunton and welling united

sorry, welling united AND dartford even

It’s a sold-out blockbuster at St James Park! God knows why. Im quite looking forward to it.

morning work has curtailed any plans to attend this year but will be WATCHING ATTENTIVELY on the computer. who will evil alfie may get sent off this time? himself perhaps! we can dream

Alfie May karma I guess. Nobody happy though

Torquay go into administration

2 minutes from almost certain relegation to back in the survival game again courtesy of Healey nodding in a goalkeeper deflected winning goal 4 minutes into injury time. Fuck yes, moments like that is why I still bother with football.

That relegation spot would look a whole lot better with an Argyle in it.

they are only above the trapdoor because they played Rovrum on friday, they've got QPR and Leicester next so it could happen. It's unfortunate when we played the millers, and they were shit and there for the taking, that Sorbz got str8 red for a stupid moment that ended up costing us 2 priceless points.

Can mathematically still hit the playoffs but it's over. Good to still be in it with only a couple to play but I'm really not sure how I feel about this batch of players. Only three actually signed on for next season at this stage and maybe only one or two I'd say are must to be retained.

Hats off to this shithousery though

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/dQ7F3aTFgpj6wAtr/

That relegation spot would look a whole lot better with an Argyle in it.

― Tim, Monday, 8 April 2024 12:19 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a feeling we're both going to be more invested in Millwall-Plymouth than either Exeter-Charlton game this season

With any luck results between now and then will mean that Huddersfield and Birmingham can see out an unholy recreation of West Germany vs Austria in Gijon, sending them both down (TBF I wouldn't mind Millwall staying up but another nice local game next year would be cool).

really nice fixture, really good chummy atmosphere

Oh, away at the New Den is fun times IME.

why connor wickham will never not be a wasteman

― halber mensch halber keks (imago), Monday, 31 March 2014 19:07 (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

rong

Somehow the playoff dream is not over. 99.9 recurring % it is, and can be if/when Boston beat Banbury midweek, but nonetheless.

So Boston beat Banbury but - and this is the jock who watched however many 70s and 80s World Cups so understands mathematical possibilities - if both South Shields and Spenny lose (not out of the question, neither are playing sides that are pushovers but have nothing to play for), and we beat Boston by ELEVEN (11) goals then we beat them to the final place.

I wouldn't put any money on it.

I haven't even got the slimmest hope of Town staying up even though we are on the same points as we were game 43 last season. We are aren't going to win the last 3 games this time, would be surprised if we even got a win at all. probably 50 needed to stay up this time, nay chance.

Just want somebody to climb above Birmingham tbh

Coventry let us all down, they should be fined for not turning up against the bluenose bastards

This will cheer you up Calz - from the 2 minute mark, the very picture of a man racked with anger. Only five years to go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemC6ZOwLiM

beautiful! "the simple basics" is a classic Mooreism. I can find his pressers amusing now there is some distance from having experienced his dreadful football for far too long!

I actually thought you'd lost that game and was thinking maybe there is hope for Darren yet. need to start getting into the habit of following the L1 action a bit more closely.

With that in mind, I do give Darren Moore a little bit of slack. But in all my time he's the most uninspiring manager I think we've ever had and we've had some shockers. I can't even bring myself to watch his interviews so God knows what the so called football players think.

His game plan and tactics are nonsense, subs are strange, line ups often strange, game management is non existent. I have no real faith he's the man we need to make a serious go of it next year and to be honest after around 20 years of a ST I'm not that interested in purchasing one next year to see how he gets on.

had a look at the Vale forum, consensus on the 5 yr plan seems to be they have an awful squad, but also Moore is awful!

re:coventry
apologies calzino, we've been turning up only against big teams in recent weeks frustratingly
play off hopes all but over now, hoping for a performance Sunday at least

Simms definitely turned at our place!

*turned up*

Highgate United won 12-0 at Bewdley tonight to take the final play-off place in their league on goals scored. Miracles obviously in the air.

Brought up twenty draws in a season today. What legends

Cambridge lost today, but still could easily be safe on Tuesday, which is a relief. Looking grim for Huddersfield, losing four nil at home to a team who should be checked out as their season is over already.

they were down last week, the penalty 11 minutes into 5 mins of e/t finished them off. Turton, who was unlucky to concede the pen was crying and bawling/having a nervous breakdown in the post-match dressing room. This was his first contribution to the team after a 14 month injury nightmare and it broke him!

Insane og for Blackburn to put Sheff Wed 3-1 up, weird bobble off a backpass and the keeper just slices it backwards into his own net

Clinging to the hope that Argyle go down; seems unlikely with the matches remaining but there’s still a chance of the dream coming true.

Clinging to the hope that Argyle go down; seems unlikely with the matches remaining but there’s still a chance of the dream coming true.

probably more likely that we will drag Brum down with us, that's about the best I can hope for as a positive end to this cursed season.

neither of us will win our last game so it's shit or bust for them on saturday

Gateshead have been kicked out of the conference playoffs because the council won't give them a long enough lease on the ground.

Yes, but when was the last time you were at a football match where a former Deputy Chief Medical Officer turned up dressed as a nun?

And yes, it WAS Jonathan Van Tam dressed as a nun.... https://t.co/8ebASLxcyE pic.twitter.com/oK2NxHYOAp

— Oliver Atkin (@oaphotography1) April 20, 2024

Haha wtf?

Legend Variant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUhnIY3oRM

will be happy to get gubbed by Ipswich last game of the season if it is necessary, but I think they've sufficiently fucked auto now!

Cambridge stay up easily, even getting ahead of Shrewsbury, despite playing out a boring 0-0 against already-relegated Port Vale.
Burton Albion lost 3-0 to also-relegated Fleetwood, very lucky that Cheltenham couldn't get a winner against Stevenage.
Bit of a let-down of a final day after the excitement last season.

Commiserations on the relegation Calz. My main take-away from today is: you can never rely on Hull bloody City. Need them to beat a moribund Swansea side to keep you in the league? Forget it. Need them to draw with an Argyle team in disarray in order to send them down and addd significantly to the gaiety of all sensible people watching - when Hull themselves need a win to have a chance of a play-off place? No chance.

Just one goal from Hull today and Plymouth would have been in the hilarious position of not having been in the relegation places all season until the very last game. That would have been so sweet.

I'm cool with it and was resigned to relegation weeks ago, after the 9th minute pen 5 minutes into e/t against Bristol City - that was final confirmation that all the classic relegation season boxes had been ticked multiple times: unusually shite luck with bad refs, unending injury problems, shite managers, too many shite players with terrible attitudes etc... Our current manager has said he has not seen such an unprofessional and rotten clique as the one in our club at the moment in his 30 year career in Germany. He even suggests there are multiple cliques and the players he left out today are obv the rotters. Any clubs wanting to take our best players off our hands, barring Helik and Nichols - you can fucking have 'em!

So Boston go up which is probably fair as they might have been the best footballing side I saw all season.

Scunthorpe are utterly fucked by their failure, lots of rumours of their imminent demise, they've already sacked the manager and the retained list is, I think, 2.

City had left themselves too much to do and it looks like a decent season for them from my Hull people vox pop but sad that West Brim get a bite, obv

Lovely to see the Brummie Bashers go down tho

our one accomplishment this season was doing our bit to drag brum down with us last week!

not that just not getting beat by a garbage team at home took a herculean effort by our bunch of wasters, but still we did enough to doom them to relegation.

If anything it seems to have strengthened their belief that the footballing world will be crushed under the jackboot of the Knighthead Birmingham Sports Quarter automaton

I don't really know what to make of it tbh

probably relishing the chance to bring the Bristol Street Motors Trophy home

They really, really are

there might have been a time when being MASSIVE + owned by billionaires would have some pundits suggesting Brum's stay in L1 will not be long. But now 2 of the shitest, worst run clubs in the Champo (now of L1) are both owned by US billionaires and I wouldn't tip either of them to be top 6 next season.

Apparently SE London needed another League club

(I guess SW London lost one. SE win! Nyerrr)

Leeds deserved to lose just for that embarrassingly awful Sunak chant

... which was?

leeds shat that game. their play in the final third was embarrassingly inept.

xp

they were singing

we are Leeds, we are vile
Rishi Sunak is a paedophile

I'm deeply embarrassed typing it out

lmao oh those silly lads

well we all got what we wanted out of the day

don't know what's wrong with me in my old age but i wanted Leeds to go up. the Leeds players obviously felt differently

I love that they finished a season on 90 pts and achieved sweet fuck all for it

gives me a warm, reassuring feeling of stability seeing Leeds bottle it in the championship playoff final again, nature has found its balance

606 is excellent value tonight, first caller a Southampton fan calling for Russell Martin to be sacked, now there's a Leeds fan booing about the injustice of the playoff system, real greatest hits stuff

How didthat sunak chant scan?

https://x.com/The_Forty_Four/status/1794677820305879059

ffs

“We are Leeds, we are vile”

“Rishi Sunak is a peadophile” 😂
pic.twitter.com/bq4eqkRfD2

— The 44 ⚽️ (@The_Forty_Four) May 26, 2024

Corbyn had football fans chanting his name, the Kieth supporters are calling ppl paedos!

I guess next time someone does a Jimmy Savile chant at an away game they will uh complain as usual.

one of them had a Rishi effigy with "tory scum" on it, could well have been someone who is going to vote for Rachel Reeves to represent them in Parliament