Turgid, attritional

[Campsall rover]

I would hazard a guess our wage bill is something like 7th to 10th
That is just a guess as I do not have any info to substantiate it.
I would think that Wigan, Blackburn, Charlton, Portsmouth, Bradford possibly Rotherham, Plymouth will have a bigger budget this season.

[GazLaz]

Rotherham’s is 4th biggest in the division I know that.

Bury’s is bigger than ours as well.

[The Red Baron]

Rotherham’s is 4th biggest in the division I know that.

Bury’s is bigger than ours as well.

Blimey, not getting much of a bang for their buck, are they? Ditto Plymouth, although their biggest problem is keeping eleven men on the park.

[The Red Baron]

Decent result yesterday and I the penny has finally dropped that we need to become hard to beat.

What concerns me is the number of poor teams we have lost to- Rochdale, Northampton, Walsall for three. Those three will all be in the bottom ten and those are teams we need to take points off.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

Walsall was an aberation. Every team has a match like that every once in a while. Rochdale was lack of concentration. Shouldn't happen but it does.

The key things for me are:

1) We've rarely been outplayed. We've been slack in matches that we shouldn't have lost, but as you say, we're addressing that.
2) Redults are unquestionable improving as a result.

I reckon we've found our feet. I hope and expect that we'll be OK from here on.

[anne honemous]

I think the problem we might have with the wage bill is 4/5 players maximum will be on a mega amount and then a lot of others will be on peanuts in comparison.

If we got rid of one of those players on the big bucks, it'd allow us to bring in 2/3 who are on the same sort of general salary as everyone else.

That's my take on it.

[Chris Black come back]

He has though been here long enough that all the recruitment and retention decisions are his and his alone. We have I think we can all safely assume at least a top half budget yet we are languishing in the bottom half and have not been out all season. We have stable, realistic and generous owners, consistently solid if not spectacular budgets and a great stadium that is churning revenue out, and very good season ticket sales. Yet we are #17 in League One and have not really moved all season. Something doesn’t quite add up.

[IDM]

Why does something not add up?  All you say about the budget, stadium, attendances etc don’t make any difference to individual performances.. you don’t always get the results the performances deserve, don’t always get the rub of the green..

[dickos1]

Because he likes to moan about Ferguson

[The Red Baron]

TRB

Walsall was an aberation. Every team has a match like that every once in a while. Rochdale was lack of concentration. Shouldn't happen but it does.

The key things for me are:

1) We've rarely been outplayed. We've been slack in matches that we shouldn't have lost, but as you say, we're addressing that.
2) Redults are unquestionable improving as a result.

I reckon we've found our feet. I hope and expect that we'll be OK from here on.

So do I but losing those games has made our record worse perhaps than it should be.

[Chris Black come back]

Why does something not add up?  All you say about the budget, stadium, attendances etc don’t make any difference to individual performances.. you don’t always get the results the performances deserve, don’t always get the rub of the green..

That is true enough IDM. We are though 40pc through the league season so the odd unfair result (and there have been a few, yes) should have been evened out by now.

If anyone here genuinely thinks that we are playing at, or above, our potential in this league, then please do step forward.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

I agree. But teams often take a while to find their feet in a new division.

Look at Penney's side in 03/04.

Or O'Driscoll's in 08/09.

That's why I'm more interested in the recent form (which is actually quite good - 14 points from the last 10 games including matches against 6 of the top 10 and being competitive in almost all of them) than the overall record.

If we're still averaging only a point a game overall by the New Year then my arse will start to quiver abut. But I'm not expecting that to be the case.

[SydneyRover]

TRB

I agree. But teams often take a while to find their feet in a new division.

Look at Penney's side in 03/04.

Or O'Driscoll's in 08/09.

That's why I'm more interested in the recent form (which is actually quite good - 14 points from the last 10 games including matches against 6 of the top 10 and being competitive in almost all of them) than the overall record.

If we're still averaging only a point a game overall by the New Year then my arse will start to quiver abut. But I'm not expecting that to be the case.

................and you have to look at recent form because the only benchmark that really matters is how we are playing now because decisions will be made around that. Where we need to improve, what we may have to spend during the transfer season, who needs to go on loan. We have wobbled a bit but we appear to have a platform, maybe looking back we were a bit ambitious in our playing style and DF says himself the he's surprised about the amount of money being spent in this league, or similar words.

[Alan Southstand]

CBCB, you can't assume any such thing about the budget and all we know is what we're told, that is that it is 'competitive'. I would love to know where we stand wrt budgets set this season, but it's not going to be made public. So I think we really can't assume anything and, as DF has explained, he has been shocked by the amount of money being splashed around, so you could easily therefore assume that we thought we had a competitive budget but we may have since found out that it's not as competitive as we first thought.

[Chris Black come back]

Let me use a blunter proxy then. We have an average home gate of 8,300 which places us at #9 in League One. Unless our owners are picking the pockets of fans, we will all things just about equal have more or less a top ten budget.

Perhaps SM could give some broad indication - do we have a top half of bottom half budget this season, as far as we know?

[BillyStubbsTears]

CBCB

After a rocky start to the season (see my post yesterday about other successful seasons which started off badly after promotion) we have had top 10 form for the past 6, 8 and 10 games.

This is what I don't understand. We're actually in decent form and have been for 2 months or so. Yet the complaints are getting louder.   

[Jim Dobbin]

Let me use a blunter proxy then. We have an average home gate of 8,300 which places us at #9 in League One. Unless our owners are picking the pockets of fans, we will all things just about equal have more or less a top ten budget.

Perhaps SM could give some broad indication - do we have a top half of bottom half budget this season, as far as we know?

How can you use 8,300? Not half way through the season and played the two local derbies already, that figures not entirely accurate.

[Chris Black come back]

We have played nine home league games and attracted a total of 74620 people, delivering an average of 8291 per league game.

[Dutch Uncle]

Let me use a blunter proxy then. We have an average home gate of 8,300 which places us at #9 in League One. Unless our owners are picking the pockets of fans, we will all things just about equal have more or less a top ten budget.

Perhaps SM could give some broad indication - do we have a top half of bottom half budget this season, as far as we know?

How can you use 8,300? Not half way through the season and played the two local derbies already, that figures not entirely accurate.

Often I might agree, but in this case there is a strong case to suggest our final average might not be too far short of 8000 since our lowest attendance to date is 7194, reflecting high season ticket sales. This would put us probably at worst 10th highest (Oxford currently 11th on 7440 and Southend on 12th on 6875.

[dickos1]

CBCB

After a rocky start to the season (see my post yesterday about other successful seasons which started off badly after promotion) we have had top 10 form for the past 6, 8 and 10 games.

This is what I don't understand. We're actually in decent form and have been for 2 months or so. Yet the complaints are getting louder.   

This will be ignored billy and then in a couple of days time he'll post the same nonsense again

[Chris Black come back]

Ignoring the rather odd aggression for one moment, we are averaging 1.1 points per game and the season is 40pc gone. That form would deliver us 51 points. Last season saw the final relegation at 49 points. Bit close for comfort - particularly for a team with a budget one might reasonably assume is top 10.

See, it is possible to construct an argument without confrontation or aggression.

[BillyStubbsTears]

CBCB

But I still don't understand why you are so determinedly ignoring the recent form.

It's been frequently pointed out that we have a squad with little Tier 3 experience. So it was perhaps unsurprising that we took some time to find our feet. Both players stepping up to the mark and manager figuring out who would make the right mix.

So surely recent form more indicative of the state of the club? In fact, if anything, it might be an underestimate, given that we've played 6 of the top 10 in the last 10 games.

If we continue the form of the last 10 games, we'll get 60 points. Which I would have snapped your hand of for at the start of the season.

[Dutch Uncle]

My head agrees with you BST. However we seem to have been programmed to expect a disastrous run near (2 seasons ago) or at (last year) the end of the season. So it is perhaps easy to see a small gap above the relegation places and factor in a bad run late this season and be worried.

If we can keep up recent form for another 20 games then we should be alright.

[SydneyRover]

We're doomed! apparently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7NlFWh7Sz8

[anne honemous]

There's every reason to believe attendances will stay relatively strong.

Half season ticket prices are really good and attractive and we get a lucky run of home fixtures towards the end of the season which could pull away fans in

Blackburn, Oxford and Bradford, who will easily shift 3,000, all look like play off chasers and come to us after Easter and then we've got Wigan on the final day of the season who might need something to go up.

Throw in a cheap game with £10 tickets or whatever and that'll always attract a few passing punters.

There's no reason to believe attendances will decrease after Christmas whatsoever.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dutch

My two pennorth.

1) That side in 15/16 was gutless and not particularly strong. Looking at the players who played a lot of games in that run, it's not really surprising that we went down. Dickov left us with a squad where the players who had grit had no talent and the ones who had talent had no grit. And certainly Ferguson didn't help himself with his loan signings. But just look at the list of some of the players who played a large number of those games.

Evina
ATS
Lund
Calder
Stewart
Gooch
Middleton

Kids, (or good impressions of kids) let down by some woeful performances from senior pros like Tyson, Williams and Chaplow. The wonder is that Ferguson managed to take that squad to the top half before they collapsed. The current squad is stronger in pretty much every position.

2) The bad run t the end of last season and the start of this. It's no coincidence that the most important player in the squad was missing for most of that run. If Baudry stays fit this year, we're more likely to finish in the top 10 than the bottom 4.

[dickos1]

The bad run last season happened after promotion was secured. The players thought the job was done

[SydneyRover]

The bad run last season happened after promotion was secured. The players thought the job was done

I think it was more a situation where after promotion was secured and they had given everything they couldn't sustain it and once momentum was lost they were spent. It's seen a lot in tests where as soon as the series is secured a team can't win the final game. In this case of course it was many games but similar situation.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Back to 2015/16's players. You have to feel for Lyndon Gooch.

The lad's made 31 league appearances for us and Sunderland. He's been in the winning side twice. Once when he came on as a sub in the 84th minute once when he came on in the 89th minute. (Neither of them for us of course...)

[drfchound]

The bad run last season happened after promotion was secured. The players thought the job was done

So did the manager.