Chester40

1 hour ago, oodledoodle said:

Two things I noted from all this. ...

Not 3?

1. "Background noise". Untrue, the atmosphere at pride park has been quiet for a while.

He just repeated the phrase that he was asked about, possibly a nod to the Hourihane incident, which he just batted it off as something the players need to deal with.

2. "Elite sport". I agree that there are always opinions around elite sport, but I don't see what that has to do with a mid-table third division side.

They aren't playing on a Sunday morning. They are professionals. If he had said 'obviously they aren't elite players' you would have been totally on board with that?

1 hour ago, oodledoodle said:

3. I understand an "us Vs them" mentality can be good at times. But going against your own fans will never work out in your favour. Why not just say "we, like the fans are demanding improvement"?

The fans were involved in barricking the manager and by extension him. They argued with the captain. I really think its rich to complain about him 'going against the fans '. 

Think it'll be a while before they wheel him out for the media again.

I hope not. He spoke honestly and well.

Pathetic to expect him not to give a bit back...and to my mind he didn't anyway.  NML possibly showed a bit of irritation, Hourihane came over to argue with the nature of the fans attitude. But obviously Barker politely answering a question asked of him is the issue.

I really struggle to see how unless you are around the club you can be certain he has to go now.

If the players are grumbling, training looks an effort to some, the geberal vibe is low, in conversation he seems to have no explanation etc..then I'd be starting to consider it.

Two or three more poor results and I'd be pushing the door open and inviting him to consider stepping through it himself if he can't seem to show any idea about how to improve.

Less than 6 points from the next 3 games and I'd be setting clear targets and saying we can't keep trotting out the same arguments.

We are in the 'not good enough' category at the moment,  not in the last chance saloon. 

11 hours ago, oodledoodle said:

Whilst I'm really happy Clowes stepped in, saying he saved it is simply untrue. We had at least one other interested party involved in Mike Ashley. I know it makes the story a little less "romantic" and I'm really happy we got Clowes and not Ashley, but let's not try to rewrite history.

That is such a bizarre take, and trying to play it off as 'I'm grateful...but' is the first step in rewriting history. 

We have NO idea what would have happened but we do know nobody was biting our hands off to take on this particular thankless task.

He then appointed a manager with 3 promotions and has backed him. 

You are anti-Warne, I get it...but there is only a small step or two before Clowes starts getting huge criticism if he doesn't sack him and that would sit massively uncomfortably with me.

4 minutes ago, Papahet said:

 Eustace or Carsley

Who have how many promotions between them from League 1?

They 'may' do great, but it's still a massive gamble.

Really lacklustre first half.

Better start to the 2nd half and then we massively faded. Quite a few players were poor, which is also worrying. Fornah was off the pace. I also thought Sibley was particularly disappointing at times. Just looked so slow and didn't cover back well either.

For me, all the moaning about the style of hoof football is fairly irrelevant (and inaccurate at times) but a couple more of those limp performances and we will slip away from the play off picture and I'd start to agree it's worth taking the gamble. 

At the moment in Clowes' shoes I wouldn't be considering it. But I dont know the details of what's happening in the club so I trust him to make the right decision.

The narrative is he doesn't know what to do with 'ball players' and yesterday I agree it looked that way. Home performances now need to turn asap or he will be really up against it.

I think it just may be...

Fornah and Smith just letting the game pass them by. Barks and Sibley really providing very little, Collins not looked dangerous at all.

No hoof ball...just pedestrian and lacking in intensity. 

We better come out 2nd half looking more interested.

What was Sibley doing for their penalty ? He made no effort to tackle in their half. As it was ...absolute disgrace of a dive.

Game still there to won.

Making A Murderer : 4th time through! Life is definitely stranger then fiction. The missus isn't interested in it - she says it looks too slow and depressing but she just won't give it a chance. Anyone who does will get hooked.

Alternatively though if she did and encouraged it, I think I'd disappear down the rabbit hole and never re-emerge.

Just the most fascinating, complicated,  weird, frustrating case. The documentary just allows the story to slowly uncurl (covering such a long period of time) and its tentacles to just stretch in so many different directions. So many anomalies, so many unpleasant characters... just so many questions that I need an answer too. The access to everyone involved is mind boggling too.

Ken Kratz the prosecution lead is the most annoying person I think I have ever seen. 

Boiling Point:

Watched one episode- hated it. ( @Comrade 86😉)

Just noisy, shouty, self satisfied and pointless.

Know I'm massively swimming against the tide with this take, but I really couldn't see any point in carrying on.

Forgotten classic 80s feel-good anthem. This live version is amazing - much better than the original I recalled.

8 hours ago, oomarkwright said:

Anyone watching this on ppv? I'm listening on Talksport. Not really bothered who wins but it's interesting entertainment. 

I watched it with the kids. As I said Deen The Great fight was all out attack on both sides, great watch. 

After that it went horribly downhill and will cement people's position. Logan Paul just bullied his opponent who acted like a baby and barely threw a punch before trying a wrestling move and swinging a punch at someone who jumped in the ring to pull them apart. Then Jake Paul and about 40 other people jumped in too and there was handbags all-round.

KSI caught Fury straight off, and Fury had a point deducted for rabbit punching the back of his head. From then on KSI took up a weird preying matis type stanch and backed off and clenched when on the back foot and dived in and ducked really low to throw punches when he attacked. 

Scrappy AF. 

Think Fury was slightly better but was a hug fest and with the point deduction Fury can count himself lucky.

Boxing can learn a lot.. but the headline fighting was pretty terrible.

Deen The Great and Walid Sharks - proper tear up tbf.

42 minutes ago, A Ram for All Seasons said:

Lee Morris was very quick, when his foot wasn't broken. 

So for about 2 weeks?

Ebosele over 5 yards was unbelievable.  Tommy Johnson over longer.

On 08/10/2023 at 16:55, Alpha said:

Watching Josh Warrington get knocked out is so enjoyable. Dirty, horrible Leeds gobshite getting leveled is lolz

Yeh he really lacks class and  has no humility.  Was on the radio yesterday whining it shouldn't have been stopped.

The kids want to watch KSI tonight. 10 fights on the undercard (I use that term loosely).

Have gone from the Jake Paul fight where I was hoping Fury would win and uphold the reputation of professional boxing, to hoping his annoying face gets filled in. KSI seems a nicer bloke and my missus doesn't constantly say how good looking he is.

On 12/10/2023 at 18:35, Bob The Badger said:

I thought Slow Horse was no more than pretty good, but Gary Oldman was phenomenal and it's worth watching just for him. If he doesn't win a BAFTA for that I'll be astounded.
 

Three episodes in. 

I'm not all-over the Gary Oldman angle but agree he does add a touch of class.

Suppose it's like 'Spooks' but much better or '24' but not American. 

Some of the witty, snipey comments are very funny but not sure if they will start to grate.

Good watch so far.

Dark Harvest

Teen horror is what I'm classing it as.

Jumped around and made no sense,  but fairly enjoyable. 

7/10

7 minutes ago, Kokosnuss said:

Warne does plenty right, it's just followed by an equal number if not higher number of wrongs. IMO.

I'm not egotistic enough to think that what I believe is the correct thing to do is the correct thing to do or that I know better than a professional manager.

I,  and everyone else here, spout plenty of b******* about football (I'd say on occasion but it's probably most of the time) that doesn't really stack up when faced with the realities of managing a squad of 20/30 footballers (as people and as players), and wouldn't be able to handle all of the little things he has to which mount up to form the main basis of Warne's day to day job.

Even that said, it's weird how it seems more often to be the case that he'll do something which his critics have stated he should do, and positive results follow, than it is he'll make a decision which didn't seem popular at the time it was made but he ends up being proven correct in his convictions. In fact I'd struggle to name any examples of that, but others may be able.

I'm not sure how that balance plays out with other managers as there's only so much one can remember.

I still have no true desire to see him sacked, I still just want him to improve, and prove I'm wrong, and I still think it's really only some very minor tweaks which would see us right up there at the top of the table this season.

He sometimes makes those tweaks but within a week it's like they never happened and it's utterly maddening!

Long term I think it will take more than tweaks, but I can't ask for everything all at once.

Great post. Not my perspective but I can see your angle completely.

What's losing me is the totally one dimensional rhetoric that starts pre-match, carries on through the game thread and continues post match (unless we win) and just endlessly repeats the same points.

Anyway. I'm out for a week or two now before I morph into @Tyler Durdenand am eternally damned to answering multiple threads at once.

On 02/10/2023 at 23:39, Comrade 86 said:

Stumbled across Patrick Melrose and it's really very good. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a man struggling with addiction and the memories that caused it.

It's not an easy watch, by any stretch, but Cumberbatch is quite brilliant in a role that could quite easily have been written for him.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6586318/

My missus mithered and mithered me to watch this... and I really hated it!!

Its really weird, in so many ways it's right in my arc - but it really bugged me.

Some things are just bland and banal.... this was almost to my taste but missed in a way that really irked me.

Put me in mind of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in my youth - which I absolutely loved.  All a bit too smug....like watching Oscar Wilde constantly making clever-dick comments or going for dinner with Tom Cruise and your missus spending all night telling you how great he is.... nah he's full of it ha!

2 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Oh I see when you've had enough it's appropriate? What a laugh. 😄

I didn't say that.

But twisting words to create an endless circular argument is your forte, so I will leave you to it 😉

1 minute ago, Jimbo Ram said:

Do you enjoy watching the 🐏 currently 🤔

Genuinely,  yes.

I think other than Mac, and before then the Bald Eagle,  its no worse than what's been served up for 40years. 

5 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

I would have laughed heartily at the juxtaposition of strong in the air centre backs not being able to deal with Collins, and that them getting set would mean our midfield was nullified - except as soon a Bird came on we saw different. So what did Warne do? He changed it and made Bird mostly ineffectual. Well, you have to laugh. 😄

Why wouldn't I not rate Warne. What do you rate about him then?

So you admit, Warne changed things and you saw a huge difference. Yet you are using that as a criticism of him because he should have done that before!!  ( if he had, then obviously it would have been used to explain why we have so many injured players because he doesn't let then recover properly).

For starters, he's been promoted out of this League 3 times with a team (as you keep pointing out) that is nowhere as big as our's.

Why do I need to rate him...he's around the play offs and I hope he's going to push on towards top 2. If he doesn't then we will need to look at it when it's appropriate and you can hitch your cart to the next bandwagon until they don't win every game and you can rise n repeat. 

1 hour ago, RoyMac5 said:

I find this amazing, especially after seeing how Bird grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck, only for Warne to change it. Why?

I might understand a tactic if we were playing Liverpool or Leicester, but Cheltenham?! This going into games looking to keep the other team at bay by changing our tactics is just not something that can give the players a positive mindset. I cannot appreciate the underdog mentality that is being promoted by Warne.

So if he'd said  eg 'Cheltenham are powerful team, who will be happy to pack their midfield, sit in and try make us play our way through them. We know we have to shift the ball quickly, get behind them, attack the flanks and get the ball in quickly because their center backs are strong in the air and they will fancy themselves if they get set...' 

Would that be the most unbelievable thing any manager ever said? 

Maybe at half time he reflected that it wasn't happening and it was all too slow (he said that at the end). He brought Bird on, changed the tactics (which apparently he never does and he leaves every substitution til the 85th minute).  And you know what ....we would have won had Collins got a decent pair of shooting boots (apparently that's Warne's fault too for not recruiting someone better too and getting a Premier League striker who is injury prone).

As it is.. I don't actually know which version is true but any incident, issue, decision is just twisted to make the same point.  Yeh we get it...you dont rate him but its sooo boring on here at the moment.

The whole debate is being skewed by the constant harping of a minority. 

To such an extent that I'm being positioned as a happy clapper, Warne-loving fanboy .... when actually I consider myself pretty neutral.

I don't subscribe to the narrative of the hoofball that is being pedalled. I've been to a few games and watched all but 1 or 2 of the other games and we can be fairly direct but it's nothing like what is being repeatedly claimed.

The derision about him being a PE teacher is ludicrous,  do fans think all the other managers are Professors of Football? I have 2 friends who were managed by Warnock back in the day and they both said he was a decent bloke who had a good way about him but tended to favour certain players. No eulogies, no mention of him being a master technician or a chin-stroking football philosopher.

We are right in the play off picture, win our game in hand and we are 7 points from automatic promotion with 3/4s of a season left.

Players to come back...let's just see how we are doing at Christmas before we press panic and start the whole process again.

I'm taking a break from posting now about the football as it's become pointless just answering the same 'facts' over and over.

1 hour ago, Leeds Ram said:

Didn't he say on radio derby on Tuesday post blackpool that if we'd played like that at home at half-time we'd have been boo'd off the pitch?

He did.

I didn't think it wasn't necessarily a dig though. He was saying that sitting in, trying to be counter attacking isn't going to go down well at home.

What's wrong with that? It's his opinion and probably correct...at home you're expected to be on the front foot.

3 hours ago, oodledoodle said:

You know a manager is doing well when the only argument people have for not getting rid is "we can't afford to".

Why don't you start a thread asking that very question?

Ohhhh. Hang on somebody already did.  And a few hardy fans bothered to explain why they felt that wasn't true, knowing it was pointless because a few posters are just repeating themselves endlessly. 

3 hours ago, Blondest Goat said:

Tedious and patronising.  Cheers.

You've announced your new user name - but what was your response to the opening post?