Dean (hick) Saunders

This is a great interview with Jake. He appears to be making good progress with his injury, as well as becoming a guitar virtuoso! 
 

Chris Martin was not particularly special during his initial loan spell.

"Statistics are like a mini skirt, very nice to look at but hide what's really important" - Jimmy Sirrel.

Reckon it’s a tough game tonight and the forum an even tougher read if we get anything less than 3 points ,
coyr 

@Andicis it’s not just you, but you are the most recent culprit. 
I don’t get this constant need to discredit the league and the teams within in it. It’s league football and each league every season is tough in its own way. A new season brings change, new opportunities, new variables and also new challenges.
You take it for what it is, surely? 46 games. 3 points for a win. You don’t get an extra special trophy for getting promoted one year over the other, do you?
Shall we forget the open top bus parade, the medals, and the ticker tape because we are playing Blackpool, Reading, Northampton and Orient rather than Ipswich, Wednesday, Morecambe and Forest Green?
Or shall we bow out of the promotion race altogether and wait to test ourselves against the might of QPR, Rotherham, Wednesday and Stockport? 
Eye test this, eye test that. The eye test will show some good and some bad, of course it will. We are currently League 1 level and everything points to that. Ultimately we are a work in progress. You may want to ignore it, you may want to qualify it, but there is progress nevertheless.
Look at this season itself. We’ve gone from getting 21 points from 14 games earlier in the season and looking barely like a top half team, compared to 39 points from 17 games most recently and now being amongst the main contenders for promotion.
Everyone wants to focus on the fact we are not Man City Lite. Everyone wants us to be more like Peterborough and Oxford (who are stuttering and seemingly slipping out of contention might I add).
No-one wants to give Warne and the players credit for finding the belief, character, and consistency to turn the season around and no-one wants to give Warne and the players any credit for showing even more character and toughness to dig in and continue getting results to keep us in the hunt while those much-fabled footballing sides begin to fade.
Yesterday could still be a very important point.

Positive #1. 2nd in the League 
Positive #2. I have been too busy to come on here since last night and get irritated by the bed wetting posting minority who want us to be Ipswich re-born and anything less is not good enough.

We picked up a point and 2 better goal difference on Peterborough. 
A team that was promoted in September (Oxford) failed to win. 
And 2 teams promoted in January (Peterborough and Bolton) failed to win. 
Adams is looking like a decent addition.
Cashin will be back soon
Washington will be back soon.
We have yet to unleash CBT.
 

For me go with a 433 formation, our wingbacks did nothing yestetday, and go with 2 widemen
                  Wildsmith
Nyambe.    Nelson.     Cashin.  Elder
                      Adams
                Bird.               Hourihane 
CBT.               Collins.       NML. 
This team will bring the 3points home. 
All those who are going roar us onto victory, great following, hope you all have a great away day. 

Just 3 mins needed to go 1-0 up against the league leaders who have won every game this season.

Welcome to my world. My first trip of the season to Pride Park today. Only the second time all season that my Saturday off work has coincided with a home game so I'm taking full advantage. Don't let me down you beautiful Rams. UTR. 

Weather is Jodrell Bank

One of the most ridiculous ideas I've come across in football.
If someone goes in the sin bin, the team with ten men are going to clearly sit in with everyone behind the ball, making that 10 minutes completely boring. This isn't Rugby.
Make it simple, cynical foul is a yellow card. Dissent is a red card. It's going to cause even more confusion. The referees can't get VAR to a good standard.

Thanks and yeah we’re getting there with social services and fostering, edging closer to completion.
The Mrs has her personal assessment next, just done mine where they build your autobiography. Couple more after together.
3 more Solihull parental course sessions and we’re off to panel.
All pointing towards being approved as foster parents as the backup plan, with the SGO order being plan A.
The boys are great, settled right in and now pushing the boundaries to see what they can get away with 😂
Been a real into the deep end with a 2 and 3 year old with no parental experience. We’re doing alright though, they are happy, healthy and heading in the right direction.

sadly, a colleague of my girlfriend had been struggling with mental health for a while, people were aware of his struggles, yet someone saw fit to complain about his standard of work, and reported/complained, eventually, he reached a cruel and devastating state of mind and decided to end it all. Some of my GF's friends are absolutely heartbroken having worked more closely with him (than my GF). We were in Prague over the weekend, and we had a few natural beers and it suddenly hit her quite hard, and she was totally bewildered and struggling to understand why this lovely fella had decided to take his own life.
In answer to some of her questions, I made reference to my own struggles, which I try to play down as low mood nowadays, but back when I started this thread, I was really struggling to find a reason to be alive. This shocked her a lot and I was mentioning some of the stories and explanations in this thread, and ultimately how it helped me.
I'm in a good place now, as I said a few weeks back, and I also know how to spot my decline and what to do to halt and reverse it. Basically, I jump on a treadmill 3 times a week for a month and I'm automatically on top of the world. I'm a rubbish runner, and it hurts, but sense of achievement is immense. I remember wanting to get to 1km non-stop, then 10mins, then 2km, then 2.5km nonstop, then all the way up to 5km nonstop, and then it was doing 5km in under 30mins, and eventually did it in 26mins, which for me was amazing having been medically advised to never run.
Anyway, what I am saying is, awareness is the first step to recovery, then needing to find your little cure is vital.

Any opponent in top half can be really dangerous. I think how we and others do against top 6 is important but not necessarily the most decisive factor. If you deal well with everyone else then a defeat against a top rival is less likely to be damaging.

In our own hands now, all we have to do is win our last sixteen games and we’re up.😂

Stevenage 0 - I reading 

Blimey.  This is worse than I thought!  😲

Paul Jewel at our cost.

Seems that he’s like a lot of managers that have a purple patch at one or two particular clubs, and then dine out on that for the rest of their careers. 

Saturday 10th February 2024. 3pm kick off.
Fingers crossed NML’s foot injury isn’t too serious and he’s able to play a part at the weekend. No midweek game is a big plus so he is able to fit in some more recovery time.
Do we stick with the 3-5-2? Probably the best we looked in the system so far this season. Can’t help but feel Adams inclusive made a huge difference to the way it worked.
Let’s go make it 3 wins out of 3 shall we?
UTR! 🐏

This always looked like a massive trip hazard, so to grind out a win and keep a clean sheet should be a huge boost to Warne and the lads, especially given the results around us.
The line up looked questionable, so credit to Warne after a job well done. It was also great to see some of Warne’s signings being involved in a crucial win after the recruitment came under fire. Hopefully there’s more to come from Bradley, Ward, Adams and Vickers.
I was buzzing until my father-in-law took the celebratory drinks too far, ordered a £30 glass of whiskey, and didn’t flinch as I paid the bill. 😆