StantonRam

A point is all we need.  Against an already relegated team who finished bottom.  At home.

How hard can it be?

50% of me is already celebrating, the other half is thinking the words "banana" and "skin"...

On 17/04/2024 at 12:21, Kernow said:

Some headline. Swap Portsmouth for Derby, and O’Neills for the Neptune, and you’ve got yourself a date in 10 days time.

Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose...

Sombreros...I turned up in mine last time to find that only about 6 people in the whole place had also bothered, so stuff that for a game of soldiers.

As someone said above, Posh can't finish with more than 89 points, same as Bolton, and we still have GD advantage over both.

So - if we reach 90 points it doesn't matter what either of them do.

Bolton's result last night puts them behind what I predicted, and makes it unlikely that they can now overtake us unless bizarre things happen on the final day.

Possible scenarios Rams v Trotters:

We win the last 2 games and we are 2nd no matter what.

We win and draw the last 2 games and we have 90 points and are still 2nd no matter what.

We draw both games, and if Bolton win both theirs then they are 2nd (89 points to our 88).  Same thing would also be true if Posh won their last 3.  However, since Posh play Bolton BOTH of those scenarios happening at once is impossible, it would be either one or the other above us but not both, and we would finish 3rd, with all the playoff advantages that brings.  Let's hope however that it doesn't come to that.

That seems to me to be a reason to really go for it on Saturday, as a win would really take the pressure off.  No point accepting a point on Saturday, as this would only increase the pressure to win on the last day. 

If we won on Saturday and got to 89 points then GD would kick in, and we would still finish 2nd no matter what happens on the last day.  Or at the very least we would go into the last day knowing that only the combination of both a heavy loss for us and a big win for Trotters or Posh (possible but unlikely) would change anything.

We are now 2 points ahead of my original prediction and require a win and a draw to reach 90 points.

Bolton are exactly as I predicted and need 2 wins and a draw to reach 89 points.

Added to which our GD margin has increased thanks to the 3 goals and clean sheet on Saturday.

Once Bolton have played tomorrow things will become much clearer.

A win for us on Saturday might just do it, depending on Bolton's results as well.

Even a draw for us on Saturday might not be the end of the world, but it probably would mean a very tense and nervous last day. 

Let's hope we can get it done on Saturday, get the win and pray that Bolton don't win twice.

Sorry, yes, in my original prediction I forgot that Wycombe came before Orient.

So my original prediction for us should have read 1, 1, 3, 1, 3, 3.

We are still on track with that actually, 5 points from 3 games.

However, the slip up v Wycombe leaves us needing 2 wins and a draw to be sure of the 90 points.  By no means guaranteed given our apparent lack of scoring prowess of late.

Personally I would settle for a point v Orient and then go all out v Cambs and Carlisle, maybe something like a 2 - 3 - 5 formation until we are 3-0 up or something LOL.

IMO anything less than 90 points gives Bolton a golden opportunity.

As for them, they are also on track with my prediction (7 points from 3 games).

However, they now need a point from both Pompey and Posh, plus wins against both Port Vale and Shrews, to get to 89 points.

Their run in is on paper trickier than ours IMO.

It could still all come down to a final day shoot out, with us and Bolton both needing a win to secure 2nd place.

The conclusion that can be drawn from watching overperforming teams end up in the PL (Burnley, Norwich etc, the so called "yo yo" teams, prime example probably being West Brom) is that the momentum to be gained from having players who all know each other's games very well can take a club a long way.  In the last decade we have had quite a few examples of teams that have been promoted from League 1 (or even League 2, Bournemouth as the classic example) and then from the Championship and into the PL within a few years afterwards with pretty much the same players (Ipswich this season for example).

That, however, is often when things come unstuck.  It's also a proven fact that newly promoted teams have had to dig deep financially to strengthen in the PL or go straight back down.  This season, for example, Luton and Forest have spent big (too big in Forest's case) and are in with a chance of staying up, whereas Sheff Utd and Burnley have not and look destined for the drop.  In 2007-8 we most definitely fell into this category, and we all saw the results of trying to stay in the PL on the cheap.  It simply can't be done.

Our more experienced players probably could cut it in the Championship, but by the time we went up again (if we did) they would have retired.

The younger bunch (Cashin etc) are a mixed bag, but again I would trust them to compete in the Championship, at least initially.

Ergo, the first season in the Championship would be a period of transition.

Apart from the administration and the embarrassment of being in League 1 for 2 seasons, perhaps the biggest setback has been having to sell so many good players (Bird and Knight to name but 2), whereas had we stayed in the Championship they might still be here.

Stanton in Peak, beautiful place, actually moved in 2019 but for some reason only just got around to the name change on here.

Am surprised that my attempt at humour, satirising the modern trend for people to make earth shattering announcements on social media about totally mundane and unimportant things, has attracted so much interest.  

In other news, and in keeping with the modern trend for everything to be preceded by a commercial, this message was brought to you by Lavazza espresso and the Roderigo Guitar Concerto (Concerto de Aranjuez).

I originally predicted that we would get 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, and 3 points from the last 6 games - 12 in all, bringing us up to 90 at the end.

We are currently ahead of that because we have 4 points from 2 games not 2.

I also predicted that Bolton would get 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 1 and 3 points from their last 7 games - 15 in all, bringing them up to 89 points at the end, plus we should still have a superior GD.

They are exactly as predicted so far.

It is possible that they might overtake us at some point briefly, but I still think that we will secure 2nd place in the end.

If Pompey beat them and we beat Orient then it's difficult to see how they would haul themselves past us with 3 games to go.

According to my previously expounded theory that we need 12 points from 6 games (total 90) because Bolton won't get more than 15 points from 7 games (total 89), right now we are ahead of that (4 points from the last 2 games rather than 2 points), whilst Bolton are on track as per my prediction (4 points from the last 2).

I've predicted a win for them against the Gas tomorrow, so anything less than that makes us even more likely to be able to hold them off.

An announcement:

As of today, the artist formerly known as LondonRam2 wishes to be known as StantonRam because that's where I live now.

Message ends.

Thanks for reading.

Great day for us today, TBH I don't care what Pompey do, the Posh and Barnsley results put them out of contention for 2nd place now, most important was the Bolton result combined with ours, which stretches the margin to 6 points now (or really 7 if you count our better GD).

2 wins and 3 draws minimum now will do it.

It's now possible that on the 13th at home to Orient we might be celebrating a 2nd place finish with 3 games to go.

To avoid the "commentators curse", I stress the word MIGHT above.

Adams again proving the difference as he often has since coming here, surely he has to be persuaded to sign up for the long term so that a team can be built around him next season to compete in (hopefully) the Championship.  I haven't checked how long his contract is, but surely we need to get him tied down for the next few seasons if we haven't already done so.

Great to see Collins back and CBT getting a start.

IMO the bottom line is that we must assume for now that Bolton are capable of getting 15 points from 7 games, whilst still hoping that they will slip up somewhere.

As I said before, that means that if we get 12 points from 6 games then we are finishing 2nd, especially if we can keep GD superiority over Bolton.

Update - good news about today is that NML and Collins might start for us, and Jordan Rhodes is injured and won't feature for Blackpool.  That might give us the edge over them going forward and creating chances.

Most teams around us are having end of season injury problems as well, which maybe evens things up a bit.

12 points is what we need, doesn't matter how we get them or against which opposition.  I really believe that 3 wins and 3 draws will be enough.

My strategy would be to go all out for the win every game, rack up the 12 points as soon as possible and by then hopefully it will be done and dusted.

Knowing us however, in reality we will probably get a surprise win against one of the teams around us and also a surprise loss in one of the last 3 games against the bottom half teams.

Looking forward to what might well turn out to be a season defining weekend!

Good game this, so here's my 2p worth.

Just for fun, I will assume that both Bolton and ourselves will draw against top 10 teams and win against the rest.  That gives us:

Rams - 3 draws (Blackpool, Pompey, Orient - next 3 games) followed by 3 wins - against bottom half teams, as our walking wounded start to return from injury/suspension, with Brown recalled from loan, and with other Academy discoveries stepping up, total 90 points

Trotters - 3 draws (Stevenage, Pompey, Posh) and 4 wins, total 89 points

On that arithmetic, we finish 2nd - BUT along the way, as we fail initially to get wins and Bolton creep up on us, and possibly even briefly snatch 2nd place (possibly in between the final whistle v Orient and the final whistle at Wycombe), then there shall be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, bums will be squeaky etc, BUT as we rack up those final 3 wins, each with 2-3 goal margins (thus reinforcing our GD advantage) their challenge will melt away and we are UP!

Believe, brothers and sisters, beliiiiiieeeeeve!

Hallelujah! etc...

LR2

I'm neither pro nor anti Warne per se, and I do get the Clough analogies, but the plain fact is that, however bad things were (except for during the mid 1980s), this is the lowest, in league table terms, that we have ever been.

This would be acceptable had we still been in extremely dire financial straits, lucky to survive (OK we were), plummeting down the leagues, having to play half of the U21s each week (as we did for a while under NC and others), and with an inexperienced manager.  In those circumstances it's blind loyalty that counts, and we have collectively shown plenty of that in recent years, myself included.

Fortunately, none of the above are true now.  As I understand it, finances are now at least stable at this level, some good players have been brought in, and the home grown talent that we didn't have to sell is still here and still performing well for us at this level.  Plus we have a manager who supposedly knows this league like the back of his hand.

My point is that, given all those advantages, plus large home and away attendances, the PL standard infrastructure etc etc, I believe that we should be more competitive than we are.  I believe this is because, for whatever reason, the whole is still less than the sum of the parts, whereas for many of the frankly ordinary sides we encounter the reverse is true.

To return to my central point.  If PW, supposedly knowing this league and the teams in it, and with the advantage of a superior squad, can't at least scrape an away point at Shrewsbury and get 3 points at Cheltenham, then what exactly is all that knowledge achieving on the pitch, and where is the evidence of that knowledge being applied on the pitch - where it counts?

It does seem that many opposing teams, other than the most naive or unlucky, have sussed out how to contain us and/or beat us.  So, a manager with PW's alleged knowledge and nous should have a solution, at least sometimes.

I don't expect to win every game, even at this level, and despite the irritating verbally incontinent interviews I do still believe that PW is capable of getting us out of this swamp of mediocrity.  However, the signs are that once that has been achieved his days will be numbered.  I would love for him to prove me wrong, starting today.

Congrats to PW and the team for saving his job on Tuesday...this time.

However, it's a measure of just how far we have fallen that we celebrate beating Exeter as if it were winning the FA Cup, and would apparently regard a point away at Stevenage (STEVENAGE!!!???!!!) as a good result.

I know that football, like most things, is a kind of pyramid, that the lower leagues are necessary for discovering and developing home grown talent etc, and I'm not averse to a bit of National League action myself, or lower, on a good day it has it's own magic for sure, especially in the FA Cup.  We accept local non league footie for what it is, and enjoy it for what it is.

However, when it comes to DCFC I'm of the generation whose expectations were raised (spoiled perhaps) at an impressionable age by the success of the 1970s, enjoyed the 1990s hugely, and now find it hard to adjust to current realities.  The many false dawns of recent times (the 2007-8 debacle, getting so close recently under Lampard) can induce a kind of existential ennui that's difficult to shake.  

Please PW, however you do it, get us out of this awful league, with its c**p grounds, cynical fouls, time wasting, hoofball, physicality at the expense of skill - and FAR too many games, leading players to burn out or get injured - players who need more time in training, skills development & physical maintenance than those in the PL, not less.  A PL team without cup runs or Europe plays 40 games a season, our bunch will end up playing maybe 60 if we have a couple of cup runs and end up competing in the playoffs.  In which case, even if we do go up we'll arrive in the Championship knackered before we even start.

We might deserve to be here morally, but in footballing terms we should not be here.  PW does seem to know how to compete at this level on its own terms (see above), but once back in the Championship we will need someone who has worked and succeeded at a higher level than this.

But who?

8 hours ago, BathRam72 said:

Are you David Clowes? Or in the know? Or like everyone else, a speculation master? Hoping one of your little snippets comes true, so you can say, "I told you so".

Perhaps I should have prefaced each of my comments with IMO, which I did towards the end.  I stand by my OPINION that unless we are back in the top 10, and not too many points off the top 6, by 6pm on Saturday, having taken at the very minimum 3 points, or preferably 4 or 6 points, from the next 2 games, then Clowes will, with reluctance, in my OPINION, have to make a change.  Even 2 draws and remaining in 11th won't be enough.  In my opinion.

No one expects to win every game, but to be surprised week after week by teams that PW supposedly knows inside out as a "League 1 expert", is both disturbing and depressing.  I thought the idea of hiring a League 1 expert was that this person would usually have an answer to the players, formation and tactics of most opposing teams.  If that's the case, then where is that expertise and why do we see so few signs of it week in week out?

I for one would like to see what someone like Steve Mac would get out of this bunch.

11th in League 1.  Is this the lowest we have ever been in our entire history?

If so, does PW really understand what that means, and just how humiliating it is for a club of this size?

We are not here because the team as it was under Rooney played badly, but for other reasons.  In purely footballing terms we should not be here, and yet we are struggling to escape.

This squad is theoretically one of the strongest in this league, and yet are clearly underperforming.

To struggle, and lose, against all these League 1 minnows is embarrassing frankly.  If PW understands this league so well, how come this keeps on happening?  Or is he, as Roy Hodgson was at Liverpool, a good manager but simply out of his depth?

IMO unless we pick up at least 4 points from the next 2 games and/or return to the top 10 during the next week then he is toast.

He has 2 games to save his job.

I like the guy, but maybe if he stopped being so damn nice, and cared a bit less about being popular in the dressing room, then we would see some better performances and results.

This season so far is shaping up to be similar to last season.

On current form, we'll get very little from the top 6 teams but should be able to take 4 points from the 17 teams below 7th place.

17 teams x 4 points = 68.

In other words...erm...7th place again.

Apropos of Neil Warnock, OK he's an a*** but at least he knows when to stop talking LOL.

Am in agreement with most of the above, and am not suggesting that he be jettisoned, just that he seems slow to learn from his mistakes.  Most L1 managers simply don't get the kind of interest and coverage that he now does, and I stand by my central point that it really matters what you say about players on the national stage (and managing Derby does put you on the national stage whether you like it or not), rather than on the back page of the Rotherham Bugle & Dubious Advertiser (circulation 94).

"One of the lads" sums it up.  When you become a manager you have to learn to distance yourself a bit.  In my years in Senior Management I would never accept invitations to go down the pub, because that's exactly where they can let off steam by complaining about YOU.  PW would accept, buy drinks for everyone, talk too much, and leave his people griping even more because they still hadn't been able to let off steam and complain about him.

Promoted 3 times yes, but you could argue that the 2nd and 3rd promotions only became necessary because, erm, he couldn't keep them in the Championship.  Can he deliver the one (promotions) without the other (relegations back to L1)?  In that respect he is, one could argue, as yet untested.

I'm not qualified to critique his football knowledge, but I am qualified to critique his approach to people, especially his players.  TBH, despite all the bonhomie, I just don't buy it, and I think some players don't buy it either.  Furthermore, I think that to some prospective signings PW's verbal diarrhoea is actually a reason NOT to sign.  I suspect that most players would prefer an honest b******ing where needed rather than all this passive-aggressive "I'm just a normal bloke, me" rubbish.

hi all

What most concerns me about PW is his inability to just shut up when necessary.  Rambling interview answers, accidental revelations of what should be confidential and kept within the squad - he does seem to be verbally incontinent TBH and this needs to change.

In your workplace, if your boss (who after all is responsible for your career) wanted you plaster your cubicle with photos of your family and asked inappropriate questions about them all the time, how long would it be before you reported that boss to HR?  Players are entitled, as professionals in the public eye, to a private life and to confidentiality.  Some of the stuff he says on the radio makes even me squirm, so I wonder how some players must feel?

At what point does concern for his employees well-being morph into just David Brent-isms?  I wonder if we have now passed Peak Warne?  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  A footballer who has read a few Psychology books is also a dangerous thing.  This, remember, is a profession in which Roy Hodgson is regarded as a high level intellectual and Eric Cantona is apparently a philosopher by virtue of having a French accent and talking b******s.

I'm not accusing PW of any malice at all, but I do accuse him of naivety in the extreme.  There is a reason why most managers choose their words carefully in interviews.  Also, an apparent lack of verbal and cognitive discipline in public makes one wonder if he isn't actually similarly disorganised in other respects and relying on his staff to make the difficult calls behind the scenes.  Note also the "election" of the team captain, which is actually a complete abdication of his own responsibility to decide who has the necessary leadership qualities to wear the armband, accept the responsibility for that choice, and appoint the right player.  A football team is not a democracy.  

PW is very typical of the modern zeitgeist, in which everyone is all nicey-nicey on the surface, but underneath lurks a refusal to (a) grow up and accept the passing of time, (b) accept adulthood and the burdens and tough decisions that go with it and (c) accept that we can't be all things to all people all the time.

At this club, bobble hats and bull***t will only take you so far.  He has adjusted badly to being at a larger club with much more press and public scrutiny, and the signs are that it's gone to his head.  Time to cut the c**p and focus on delivery IMO.

"Popularity is a crime from the moment that it is SOUGHT".  No employer can ever keep everyone completely happy all the time, it just isn't possible, especially when you have 22 players competing for 11 starting places.  Gaining respect is more important to a manager than cultivating popularity, and respect lasts longer than popularity too.  In seeking popularity, my thesis is that PW has actually lost the respect of many people, hence the flat performances.  And a desire to be universally popular is nothing more than the manifestation of his own inner insecurity, and if he is to address that properly then he needs to take a sabbatical.  Failing that, just rig him up to a machine that delivers an electric shock if any answer to a question goes on longer than 30 seconds.  A few days of that should do it LOL.

If PW lived up to his own hype, we should see (a) a team greater than the sum of the parts, (b) in an appropriate formation, (c) busting a gut for the manager and the club.  So what happened?  Last seasons' tropes are already evident again this season - lack of imagination, fragile under pressure, losing games in the last 15 minutes, wrong formation for the strengths of the available players etc etc.

Warne lovers, by all means disagree or tell me I'm wrong.  However, when he was appointed we were 7th and we finished...7th.  Not a disaster, but not earth-shattering either.  

22 hours ago, ram59 said:

I think that they deserve more than honourable  mentions.

Dave Mackay walked into the club devasted by Clough's exit with players threatening to go on strike and took the job by the scruff of the neck and actually improved on what Clough had built, building a team, but for injury to George, which could have easily won the double, the year following winning the title.

Cox walked into a club at the depths of despair in our current league, not dissimilar to our position 12 months ago and within 3 years would have had us in Europe, if not for the ban on English clubs. Could you imagine, with the exception of B4,  us just missing out on champions league qualification in 3 years time?

Fair enough, I suppose if we are picking "the best" and "the worst" there will also be differences of opinion around the places below "the best".  For the record, for me it's

Still Cloughie

Dave Mackay

Arthur Cox

Shteve Mac

George Burley

Sorry, yes, Honourable Mention to Arthur Cox - and also to Dave Mackay, put in an impossible position but carried himself with dignity and won a 1st Division title.

The title of this thread is ambiguous.  Is it inviting us to think of a "worse" manager than those listed (a relativistic judgement and matter of opinion, comparing one manager with another), or was the title a mistake and the intention was in fact to ask for who was the "worst" manager (in which case, only one name is needed to fulfil the request)?

"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad".  And those whom they wish to make mad they first make managers.  As soon as any human being acquires power over others there will be problems.  Add to that the deadly cocktail of money, publicity and pressure to win that applies in football, and factor in the mostly under-educated nature of most footballers (with a few exceptions such as Roy Hodgson), and only those with either a huge ego or a vast inferiority complex or both would willingly step up.

I'm not sure if our history of eccentrics, egomaniacs, overachievers and underachievers is all that different from that of other clubs really, it's just that we know more about ours than about anyone else's.  Anyway, for what it's worth, here are my nominations.

Worst ever - Docherty, for all the reasons stated above.

Best ever - Cloughie, and you'll never be able to tell anyone of my generation any different.

Honourable mentions - Shteve Mac, Jim Smith & George Burley.

Dishonourable mentions - most of the rest for many different reasons.