Relegation Thread 23/24 Sponsored by Sadford City

[Indian Dan]

Horseman of the Apocalypse.

 

[Chris FGR]

Horseman of the Apocalypse.

I did worry that his name was just too well suited to dismal failure tbh.

 

[The Jovial Forester]

Horseman is pony.

 

[JaredSUFC]

Our first 10 games yielded 4 points. Our second 10 games yielded 10 points.

I’m upgrading myself to borderline optimistic.

 

[saddler78]

Remember when Walsall signed Danny Johnson and people thought they were going to be playoff contenders...

The squad is probably better than last seasons the manager is not why we sacked Flynn to give it to Sadler is just bonkers and asking for trouble he wont last much longer though.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

The squad is probably better than last seasons the manager is not why we sacked Flynn to give it to Sadler is just bonkers and asking for trouble he wont last much longer though.

I said it in the Summer that, had Donervon Daniels not been your captain, you'd have almost certainly appointed Artell. No love lost between them at all.

 

[saddler78]

I said it in the Summer that, had Donervon Daniels not been your captain, you'd have almost certainly appointed Artell. No love lost between them at all.

A fair few of our fans wanted him mate i wouldnt have minded either.

 

[Boz]

Apart from Forest Green, the sides near the bottom including ourselves are starting to pick up points. There is a long way to go still, but with no obvious basket cases, it still looks like the fight for FL survival will go to the wire. At the moment. I'm cautiously optimistic for our survival hopes, but keeping Rob Apter on loan and getting a decent target-man type striker in during the window, given that Luke Norris is having an operation keeping him out until February are key.

 

[Gi Dalor]

Our first 10 games yielded 4 points. Our second 10 games yielded 10 points.

I’m upgrading myself to borderline optimistic.

Have you seen this interview with Matt Gray? (I'm sure you read lots of them), where he does give an explanation for the slow start. I'm not saying I'm convinced, but I acknowledge the fact that he's keeping a calm head and not panicking.

Matt Gray exclusive: I wasn’t happy with how things were playing out, I needed time • London Football Scene

The Sutton United boss opens up on his side’s underwhelming start, recruitment and relationship with the board

londonfootballscene.co.uk

 

[Gunit]

Have you seen this interview with Matt Gray? (I'm sure you read lots of them), where he does give an explanation for the slow start. I'm not saying I'm convinced, but I acknowledge the fact that he's keeping a calm head and not panicking.

Matt Gray exclusive: I wasn’t happy with how things were playing out, I needed time • London Football Scene

The Sutton United boss opens up on his side’s underwhelming start, recruitment and relationship with the board

londonfootballscene.co.uk

Yep whilst we got the odd decent beating (Swindon, Doncaster) we were mostly not far off in a lot of those early games. Newport, Barrow away even with 10, even games like Crawley and Accrington away where we ended up losing by 3 there were periods where we looked like we’d get something. Undeniably we’d be liable to conceding too many once we went behind (particularly away) and started chasing games. We’ve come back from 1-0 to draw 1-1 in all our last 4 which suggests we’ve a bit more about us now. Lots still to do and we need to start winning 1 in 3 probably to stand a chance, Harrogate Saturday week is important. We’re going to be under big pressure the whole of the season as we’ll never be truly out of it as not good enough to win 4/5/6 on the spin. In terms of Matt he always keeps pretty level and think he retains the belief. The board will totally back him (understandably), which gives us a platform. This year survival is absolutely huge for the club financially with tv money increasing next season and one side of the ground awaiting development if we stay up.

 

[Conker]

Have you seen this interview with Matt Gray? (I'm sure you read lots of them), where he does give an explanation for the slow start. I'm not saying I'm convinced, but I acknowledge the fact that he's keeping a calm head and not panicking.

Matt Gray exclusive: I wasn’t happy with how things were playing out, I needed time • London Football Scene

The Sutton United boss opens up on his side’s underwhelming start, recruitment and relationship with the board

londonfootballscene.co.uk

Really surprised because Sutton signed some players I did not expect them to be able to afford and I thought they be decent this season. Maybe upping the budget and bringing in those sort of players disrupted them.

 

[Gunit]

A lot of it was losing Bugiel in my view. He was like having 12 players as work rate off the scale. Allowed us to press high. We’ve had to adapt now and generally have to sit off more and pick our moment. Earlier in the season we’d press but be way too easy to play through and round which made us very vulnerable to conceding. Am sure more to it than 1 player and it was a big turn over of players, we’ve also been without our captain and best player for basically the whole season.

 

[JaredSUFC]

Really surprised because Sutton signed some players I did not expect them to be able to afford and I thought they be decent this season. Maybe upping the budget and bringing in those sort of players disrupted them.

A high turnover of players didn’t really help our preparations for the season, as Matt alludes to in his interview. Our style of play relies on a group mentality which takes time to develop with a whole new group.

 

[JaredSUFC]

Have you seen this interview with Matt Gray? (I'm sure you read lots of them), where he does give an explanation for the slow start. I'm not saying I'm convinced, but I acknowledge the fact that he's keeping a calm head and not panicking.

Matt Gray exclusive: I wasn’t happy with how things were playing out, I needed time • London Football Scene

The Sutton United boss opens up on his side’s underwhelming start, recruitment and relationship with the board

londonfootballscene.co.uk

One of Matt Grays strengths is that he (on the outside at least) maintains a cool head under pressure, whether we’re at the top of the league or bottom.

The start to this season reminds me of the start to Matts first season 19/20, a little bit. After necessity saw that we had to change a large part of our squad, we struggled in our first 19 or 20 games (we were 2nd bottom after 20 games). But then the team and the system started to click, by the time the season was curtailed due to Covid we were as close points wise to the playoffs as we were to relegation.

Am I saying history will repeat? Probably not, but I am moving from panic mode to optimism. However as my fellow Suttonite says, Harrogate on the 9th is a big, big game.

 

[Chris FGR]

Bit of a gap forming between the bottom 2 and the pack. Which isn't ideal.

Vince is backing Horseman and reckons we'll be making a number of signings in January. Which is deranged as the bloke is clearly out of his depth and repeating last January's mad panic signing circus isn't going to help.

 

[Greenacres]

Bit of a gap forming between the bottom 2 and the pack. Which isn't ideal.

Vince is backing Horseman and reckons we'll be making a number of signings in January. Which is deranged as the bloke is clearly out of his depth and repeating last January's mad panic signing circus isn't going to help.

Starting to get a bit worried, we really do look like a boat without a rudder heading for the rocks. Dale goes on about doing things another way but clearly that isn't working. It just looks like we have found a way to do something that is destined to fail, but keep repeating it. Part of me wonders if Dale would be secretly happy to see us return to the National League as there would be very little need for us to have a new stadium and he can avoid wasting his money or burdening the club with a debt that would more than likely kill it.

 

[chipmunx]

Starting to get a bit worried, we really do look like a boat without a rudder heading for the rocks. Dale goes on about doing things another way but clearly that isn't working. It just looks like we have found a way to do something that is destined to fail, but keep repeating it. Part of me wonders if Dale would be secretly happy to see us return to the National League as there would be very little need for us to have a new stadium and he can avoid wasting his money or burdening the club with a debt that would more than likely kill it.

he has you unbeaten in the league in December....

 

[JaredSUFC]

Could have done with playing today, no offence to Harrogate, but with Stockport, Mansfield and Wimbledon being our next 3 games today was perhaps our best chance to potentially get 3 points this month.

 

[Greenacres]

Could have done with playing today, no offence to Harrogate, but with Stockport, Mansfield and Wimbledon being our next 3 games today was perhaps our best chance to potentially get 3 points this month.

Our month looks equally challenging, with MK Dons (a), Gillingham (h), Newport (a) and Swindon (a)...on top of the postponed game against Wrexham today...reckon our best chance of three points is the Exiles on Boxing Day, other than that I can't see us getting too much.

 

[Chris FGR]

he has you unbeaten in the league in December....

We usually do better when we don't play.

 

[Alfie]

For us older fans of the sport we’ll recognise what a disaster Saturday’s postponed fixtures are for both Sutton & FGR.
Although they have games-in-hand the points gap towards safety has increased by at least two wins more than clubs above them. But history has shown that such a gap demotivates players and clubs from believing in themselves.
I suspect the relegation odds have tightened for both these two clubs.

 

[JJ1990]

Colchester look a total mess at the moment, wouldn't rule them out at this point.

The Etherington appointment seems to be a disaster, got the worst defence in the division, their attack is basically just Joe Taylor, and they've got Wrexham, MK Dons and Wimbledon to finish December. They are in deep trouble from an outsiders perspective.

 

[Casey]

I wonder if Wagmi putting their oar in persuaded Colchester to appoint Etherington?

In all honesty, would you appoint a man who walked out on his only previous job in management after 3 games?

Casey

 

[Gi Dalor]

If Etherin

I wonder if Wagmi putting their oar in persuaded Colchester to appoint Etherington?

In all honesty, would you appoint a man who walked out on his only previous job in management after 3 games?

Casey

I think lots of people have walked out of jobs quickly for one reason or another, and I certainly should have walked out of one when it turned out that everything I'd been told at the interview was untrue, which seems to be Etherington's story.
But he just doesn't seem to have the people skills for the job.
I can only imagine what his job interview with Eben must have been. Perhaps they just sat there for an hour not saying anything, and at the end thought they'd found the one person in the world who gets them. Then Etherington found that other people betrayed his trust and kept asking him questions like, 'What do you want us to do?' and 'Who's playing?' and decided that he'd been deceived by the job interview.

 

[GTFCfish]

Colchester look a total mess at the moment, wouldn't rule them out at this point.

The Etherington appointment seems to be a disaster, got the worst defence in the division, their attack is basically just Joe Taylor, and they've got Wrexham, MK Dons and Wimbledon to finish December. They are in deep trouble from an outsiders perspective.

Colchester will drop and drop until they are about a point outside the relegation zone and then go and win 3 or 4 games in a row to pull clear again, it’s all they ever do.
Every season.

 

[Chris FGR]

Last January Vince publicly backed the hapless Ian Birchnall, and gave our fraud of a DoF free rein to rebuild the squad in January to keep us up. We made ten signings, a mix of random journeymen, youngsters and loanees, got rid of some of our more reliable performers and then having 'successfully' rebuilt sacked Birchnall and brought in Big Dunc. Not long after we sacked the DoF when we realised what a mess he'd made. We picked up a grand total of 6 points over the rest of the season. All those panic signings for 6 fucking points.

Have we learnt from that clusterfuck? Well so far we've struggled horribly with an out of his depth head coach and a DoF who has put together a squad most of who are either injured most of the time or look less then half arsed. 18 new signings for 15 points in nearly half a season. The answer to that, according to Vince, is to publicly back the hapless Dave Horseman and promise to allow the DoF who built this squad last summer to have free rein to have another rebuild in January. So it seems we haven't learnt anything.

 

[Essex2Wessex]

Dale Vince doesn't have a fucking clue about how to run a football club, is my conclusion based on the evidence of the last 18 months or so. (To be fair one could have come to this conclusion earlier - "spunk loads of money and consistently fail to make it over the final line of getting promoted" covering some his National League/Conference years - but boy with Mark Cooper, Scott Lindsay and Rob Edwards we did finally come good. But now those days are gone)

I pretty much agree that Sutton *should* be able to pull themselves out of the mess they are in, as the reasons for it are clear, and the management are both level headed and realistic about what can be done, and how to do it, at this level. Unlike our owners, or those of Salford, they aren't pretending to be a championship team in a small ground...

I also expect Colchester to be in the shit come season-end. They've looked like going down for years (mind you, so had Stevenage before Steve Evans waddled along to Hertfordshire), and this season....they've been worse than usual, it seems.

What's happened at Crawley? Is it partly the case that Wagmi have kept out of the way a bit more than last year, and they have let people who know about football do the footballing stuff, and the bullshit has now been minimised?

If I could be bothered to read all of the 600+ pages in a thread on the Swindon fan board about the actual and alleged wrongdoings of their owners, I suspect I might end up more certain than I am that they might drop like a stone down the league table in the second half of the season (I live in a largely Swindon-supporting area, so hear much angst expressed around and about), but not so much so that they will be relegated.

So us and Col U to go down, I think, now....

 

[Cloudy]

Colchester is a really poor away day for visiting fans. I wouldn’t think many would shed a tear if they fell through the trap door?
FGR has never been my favourite ground but the band in the Fanzone plus Brew Dog beers have improved the experience ( for me at least).
Based on the experience as a visitor, I would love to see Colchester and Salford go down

 

[Greenacres]

Colchester is a really poor away day for visiting fans. I wouldn’t think many would shed a tear if they fell through the trap door?
FGR has never been my favourite ground but the band in the Fanzone plus Brew Dog beers have improved the experience ( for me at least).
Based on the experience as a visitor, I would love to see Colchester and Salford go down

Vince goes on about being ethical...yet from those who know far more about the brewing industry than me I gather that Brew Dog are about as unethical as you can get, which makes them a bit of an odd choice to be flogging beer at our ground.

 

[Essex2Wessex]

We gained Brewdog beers in our bars at the expense of those of local breweries, the Stroud Brewery (very good) and the Cotswold Brewery (less good), so, even putting aside the ethics of Brewdog, ending support for small local businesses doesn't strike me as admirable.... (I do agree the fanzone is a vast and long overdue improvement on catering for away fans - though frankly it's not been the same since Girish's Samosas have been restricted to Stroud town centre - they were absolutely top tier footy scran)

(And, yes, Col U is such a shit awayday it makes Northampton look good in comparison)