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Reply | Away Kit - WISHLIST 2024/25 Season
at 22:07 1 May 2024
Always quite hoped we'd go black and pink - reminds me of my favourite tag-team of the 90s.
pink and black attack.
Hart Foundation
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Reply | Ipswich
at 13:14 1 May 2024
There *can* be benefits, as I just explained. I didn't say it was preferable, but if it happens, some clubs have turned it to their advantage. Others haven't! |
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Reply | Ipswich
at 10:14 1 May 2024
It's better not to go down, but it's much easier to rebuild and come back stronger in that league. It's been proven many times recently by the likes of Sheff U, Ipswich, Luton, Southampton, Sunderland (although they've gone backwards again now) etc. You can do less fire-fighting and more forward, long-term planning. Buy cheaper, with potential, and blood them in a more forgiving league. In this league, once you're in trouble, you're fire-fighting and you can get into a situation of constant short-term fixes which will, in many cases, merely prolong the inevitable. We're all happy now, but if Marti were to get a big offer and move this summer, not much will have changed and we'll be fighting relegation again next season, because that's the spiral we've been in.
We're a fanbase that constantly says this player and that player are not good enough, but we can't afford players who are 'good enough' (for the most part). What we have to do is get players before they become good enough and make them good enough. That's possible, others have done it, but it's easier to do that in League One in the manner Brentford and Luton did.
Still, much better to stay up! |
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Reply | Better than Crystal Palace 6-0
at 10:09 1 May 2024
I heard from a source (DM me and I'll tell you where, but not the name), that it was a fix, but was supposed to only be 2 or 3-0. It was better for Palace to have us in the league than some team from up north. Keeper never moved for Kulscar's one, and I suspect no one expected Scully to score the goal of his life.
As others have said, Palace then did the double over us the year after. |
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Reply | Are we capable of going up next season.
at 10:04 1 May 2024
I wouldn't get too carried away. Marti has made us into a competitive side, but top 6 teams tend to fall into these categories:
1. Teams with parachute money, who have either just come out the Prem and therefore still have quality players, plus flush from money from inevitable sales, able to buy the better players in the champ. Leeds, Leicester, Southampton this year.
2. Teams with parachute money not just out the Prem, but still in a better financial situation that most of the league. Norwich.
3. Teams able to spend a fair bit of money. Hull.
4. Teams with a genuinely transformative manager. Ipswich this year, Huddersfield and Sheff U in recent history.
5. Teams with a player so good they can't really fail. Us with Adel.
WBA are sort of a mix of 1, 2 and 4, but don't have all the elements of all of those things.
We possibly have number 4. The rest we do not. Marti is in a hurry though. I'm sure play-offs will be the aim, but upper mid table will be an achievement. |
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Reply | Dev Squad v Sheff U
at 14:50 30 Apr 2024
eh? The bloke reached up and punched it out the air! Like Millwall '95 at the Loft End! |
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Reply | I know, I Know
at 11:14 30 Apr 2024
It was important for sure, but if it was just about picking players anyone could do it. In Clive's piece about Marti when he joined us, there was this comment from Neil Banks in Sweden who'd watched MC's team, and I think sums it up perfectly:
'“He is very methodical. Gets his players so well drilled, they know exactly where they are expected to be on the pitch, know where each player will be when a pass is made. This may sound like common sense, but only when seeing it in action you sometimes see players playing a pass like they were blindfolded knowing that the pass will reach its intended target. '
That is absolutely exactly what happened to our team under MC. You compare that to when Gaz was in charge: players looking up for a pass and not knowing where to go, who to pass to, and no one being there for them to pass to. Players told to press but not when or how, so we had occasional single players haring out of midfield to hassle a right back, who passes it past them, and we had this giant space in the middle of the park that teams simply strode through again and again and again. It was horrific. Now, even if we play poorly, you never see such fundamental nonsense as that happening.
You're right: those two were key, but not *the* key. |
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Reply | Andre Dozzell
at 09:47 30 Apr 2024
There are many reasons whhy Dozzell did not make aa significant contribution for us, but this is very unfair. You don't get to be a footballer at any professional level without having to work hard. It's not like Jason Dozzell, who while I'm sure enjoyed a good salary compared to most of us, was getting paid millions a year.
There's a lot of assumptions in your post there based on basically nothing, unless you watched him grow up or have an intimate knowledge of Jason's parenting?
Respect your posts a lot Gloucs, but this one is a bit uncomfortable. |
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Reply | Ilias Chair
at 20:05 29 Apr 2024
Agree, there’s plenty of valid constructive criticism to be levelled at him but on the face of it, he should be revered: came at least latterly through the youths, must have now been at the club 8 years, never angled for a move, outstanding attitude, picked by every single manager he’s played under, scorer of truly beautiful goals, at the darkest times been our only creative outlet and asked by certain coaches to just produce some magic as we ain’t scoring any other way, rubs his ass off EVERY SINGLE GAME… and on and on. Beautiful player. If he does go only then will some fans know what we had. |
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Reply | Cifuentes on Leeds
at 20:00 29 Apr 2024
Agree, fascinating to re-read that.
This line:
‘ Basically, take our game at West Brom last Tuesday and ask everybody involved in it to do the exact opposite of everything they just did.’
I mean, that is EXACTLY what we did do when we next played WBA. Leeds players who remember playing against us just before he came can be forgiven for having their minds blown at what faced them a few months later, with only one new signing in the first XI.
My only fear is him leaving. As others have said, he’s the real thing. |
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Reply | Marti Camx4
at 11:38 29 Apr 2024
Two non-Marti bits in that. Larkeche and Albert hug after the third is beautiful. Sincs’s disbelief after the fourth is hilarious, then he dissolves into laughter when Marti hugs him 😀 |
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Reply | Watch me rise up and leave, all the ashes you made out of me – Report
at 13:45 28 Apr 2024
Thanks Clive.
Goosebumps and tear in the eye reading that!
I saw someone say on the match thread that we’ve ‘definitely played better this season’ and i couldn’t believe it. I don’t know when we’ve been that good in recent history, maybe the two Welsh hammerings; other than that, i doubt we’ve had a performance like that since the Adel days. |
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Reply | Begovic
at 20:54 27 Apr 2024
why bother signing anyone ever then? what a weird post. |
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Reply | favourite games this season.....
at 18:20 27 Apr 2024
Agree I think Magss. West Brom I thought we were utterly superb, and it was a magnificent game with a fantastic atmosphere. Stoke was catharsis. Leeds was perfection. |
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Thread | Most Important Goal of the Season
at 18:19 27 Apr 2024
Got to say I'm surprised Dozzell came second in GOTS - great goal, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for him. I think Dunne's must have got about 95% of the vote, surely.
BUT, different award. What was the most *important* goal of the season? I think there's a few candidates:
1. Dykes v Stoke. 2-1 down, Stoke with 10 men, atmosphere flat. Out of nowhere Dykes chests and volleys in and brings us back from the brink.
2. Goblin boy og v Stoke. It's now 2-2 and the crowd is remiscent of the famous 3-2 v Liverpool. Larkeche, in his biggest contribution of the season, chases a ball down like a man possessed and forces the winner. Willock the cherry on top soon after, which signalled the start of his own renaissance.
3. Paal v Huddersfield. 1-0 down. A deeply depressing game and a horrible performance. Paal, I think at the time our top scorer, knees one in and rescues a point. Felt like not much at the time but a few said how important it might be. Looking at the table today, it was absolutely crucial.
4. Field v WBA. 2-1 down despite absolutely destroying WBA for the entire match. Penalty missed, shots cleared off the line by bodies and fists. Had we lost that, what effect might it have had? Playing really as well as we can (at least until last night) and still losing. But Fieldy forced a vital and richly deserved equaliser.
5. Dunne v Birmingham. Probably it's a double for Dunney. Not quite a must win game, certainly a mustn't lose, but this goal of the season was huge for more than one reason. Scary to look at the table without this goal.
6. Dykes v Preston. Our forwards hadn't scored for weeks. We'd picked the wrong time to lose a bit of form. We'd just lost 3-0. Someone had to step up, and Dykes did it, with an assist from Woodman. A big, big goal in a game we had to win.
I guess Dunne will win this, but how about your top 3? |
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Reply | Begovic
at 14:46 27 Apr 2024
Very good performance from Begs last night, other than the bouncing ball into the box first half that he inexplicably refused to come for - that is probably his biggest failing. But that's a minor point in an otherwise very strong display. We defended superbly from front to back and sideways, but against a side like Leeds you will also need your keeper to be on it and make a save or two, and he was and did, with 2 good saves and some safe handling.
Best wishes to him whatever he does after this summer, whether it's retirement or another year or two elsewhere. I've been critical, but there's nothing wrong with his attitude on the pitch. |
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