Viking Supporters Co-operative
Viking Chat => Viking Chat => Topic started by: NickDRFC on April 23, 2019, 09:40:42 pm
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Positives:
- It’s still in our hands
- The team chasing is managed by Fergie (we all know how shit he is)
- Next 2 games are against teams “on the beach”
- Improved second half performance
- Late goal may give us a bit of momentum
- Sadlier looked sharp
- Whiteman is fit enough to play in two games in the space of 8 or 9 hours
Negatives:
- We lost what’s on paper our easiest game left
- The team chasing is managed by Fergie (would love to get one over us/football is full of stories like this happening)
- We don’t seem capable of handling any sort of pressure
- Marosi keeps making mistakes
- Kane looks a shadow of the player from earlier this season
- Another game without a goal for Marquis
- Copps possibly injured
- Right back is a problem area
- We’ve been so poor at starting games that McCann has made 4 changes at HT in 2 fixtures
- McCann’s decision making - the point above/too much chopping and changing at centre half/starting May above Sadlier/if Whiteman is fit enough to play in 2 games in 8 or 9 hours why not just start him in the one that actually matters
- These defeats inevitably bring out the worst on this forum
Any more for any more?
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I’ll give this one a miss ........
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Oxford and Coventry look like teams that arent on the beach, they look like teams playing with freedom and expressing themselves. Both will really trouble us.
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Just frustrates me that we don’t play any formation apart from 4-3-3, we have no plan B.
Yes it’s still in our hands, win both and it’s ours but obviously with the last two performances that doesn’t look likely.
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Stanley were “on the beach”
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It is what it is, that’s football. If we make the playoffs then great, if we don’t then still a good season.
Good fixtures next season if still in league 1.
Rovers till I die, always through good and bad
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Missing the playoffs wouldn't be the end of the world, we need to look at year on year progression. Rome wasn't built in a day !
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I personally feel like we might have blown it. 2 very tough games left and we appear to have run out of steam. I said on another thread earlier that I don’t think we are quite good enough this season. We could still do it, but if we are all honest we are quite a bit behind the top teams in the league. For one we concede too many goals and just don’t look like we can come through a 2 leg playoff, in my opinion.
The last two games will bring what they bring. Whatever the outcome, I think we can definitely say we’ve made progress this year.
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We've f**ked it, as we always do at this time of the year. Two atrocious performances over Easter yet again.
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Coventry aren’t on the beach
Win on sat and we lose then it would be a winner takes all game
Assuming posh will have bottled it
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Positives: missing the playoff final would save me around $4000
Negatives: I really wanna get to Wembley! Sod the money! Come on lads....sort it out.
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
I think anyone with common sense has known for a while the highest he should be playing is League Two. I'd play Boocock over him.
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I agree
It was like a 5 year old running around
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Stanley were “on the beach”
Accrington were playing for survival tonight
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The positive was we never conceded more than 2 goals
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The positive was we never conceded more than 2 goals
Except against Luton
COYR
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
you do know that GM has given him a new contract dont you...
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The positive was we never conceded more than 2 goals
Except against Luton
COYR
I think he means tonight.
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
I've been one of his biggest defenders on here but I agree. He's not good enough.
Also, to the OP: we have two very tough games left. Oxford are in excellent form and Coventry can still make the Play Offs, and are clearly a good side. We are right up against it now.
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
you do know that GM has given him a new contract dont you...
Doesn’t mean much, Ferguson gave a couple new contracts then shipped them out.
Seriously though, I had forgotten that.
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I’m going to get absolutely slated here. But I think tonight might be the end of Alfie May. Absolutely useless.
Thought he got a new contract in the season
Shit 1st half no fight or battle if you had told me the team in blue were 6th I would have believed that, 5ft May vs 6ft plus right back was never gonna work, Wilks was more direct but had 2 or 3 on him but managed to win some free kicks but then they were crap even the goal needed a deflection.
Nothing went for us 1st half their number 4 headed the ball out again vs Alfie May but ref gave them the throw I knew then we weren’t getting owt from this ref.
2nd half better but still JM, MW and TR all wanted to walk the ball into the net sadlier was the only one that wasn’t scared to hit a ball and could have drawn level late on.
Tactics and team selection was what lost us that game for me I think we will now miss out on playoffs losing vs Oxford and Coventry
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
And you’ve been willing it to happen it seems!
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All of a sudden things are looking massively different.
We really need to win Saturday.
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For me it wasn’t the losing it was the losing to an absolutely shxxe team.
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
And you’ve been willing it to happen it seems!
Yes mate
It’s exactly what I want
Clown
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
And you’ve been willing it to happen it seems!
Yes mate
It’s exactly what I want
Clown
That’s what I thought yeah. Kipping on your pal Fergie’s couch toneet?
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The positive was we never conceded more than 2 goals
Except against Luton
COYR
I think he means tonight.
he meant this game I thought and that is what I meant. And we could have been 3/4 down, but we did play a bit better second half
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
And you’ve been willing it to happen it seems!
Yes mate
It’s exactly what I want
Clown
That’s what I thought yeah. Kipping on your pal Fergie’s couch toneet?
Don't talk b*llocks mate.
He'll be tucked up beside him.
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
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Chris black come back says it will never happen, nobody can catch us. He’s been telling the “idiots” on here for weeks posh and Coventry can’t catch us it's impossible
And you’ve been willing it to happen it seems!
Yes mate
It’s exactly what I want
Clown
That’s what I thought yeah. Kipping on your pal Fergie’s couch toneet?
Don't talk b*llocks mate.
He'll be tucked up beside him.
You’re wasted on here, should have your own tv show
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I agree with that
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The only reason we played better second half was 1, we couldn't play any worse, & 2, Stanley sat back, let us have the ball, & watched us huff & puff.
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We are better off without the playoffs and save time and start building for next season. Our lacklustre performances are just not good enough to expect anything positive to come from them . Tonight was not only pathetic but a good indicator of what we can expect if we progress any further . We haven’t the players or the experience to build momentum through to a final .
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We played better in the second half because whiteman and sadlier did a lot more than Crawford and May.
They sat back all the first half too but still looked dangerous on the break.
In the second half they only got in our half of the pitch a couple of times
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They didn't sit back first half, their goal had been coming from the previous ten minutes when they were wining corners & free kicks, that's not sitting back & letting us have the ball.
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They scored in the 16th min, from then onwards they sat back
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It's baffling. You have to wonder why we don't seem to have to mental capacity to perform at key times for successive seasons.
It's a different manager but yet the same weaknesses still come to the surface. It's not like we're asking the players to do more, but just to perform at the same level they have done for the most part of the season. For me, it's the senior players who for whatever reason are not as influential as they should be. Rowe, Marquis, Andrew to name but few don't seem to be able to impose their presence on the opposition. I'm not solely blaming them tonight for the defeat mind.
Maybe Ferguson wasn't the problem afterall and McCann must be equally puzzled why the wheels have gone very wonky!
Anyone else got any ideas?
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I'd go along with that, DBR and only add that this where no strength in depth comes and bites you on the ass. We simply have no back-up for key players.
And, it doesn't help when the manager changes what looked like a workable solution (4-2-3-1) back to the one he really wants to play, in 4-3-3.
As supporters, we've seen this collapse of form at the end of a season for the last 2 or 3 seasons, now, and it really is wearing thin. We maybe all thought that a new manager was the answer but it clearly isn't and even he is making mistakes, now. I despair.
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
Heard more of the "bet they've offered them a bonus not to go up" last night. :laugh:
Christ, some of our fans need to give their f**king heads a wobble.
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Absolutely shambolic perfomance. Cant remember the last time we played as bad as in the first half. We looked tired. We looked lethargic. Looked like we had no ideas or creativity whatsoever.
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
I don't doubt that Rob at all and of course we should go for it, but would we be stronger with another year in the league?
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
I don't doubt that Rob at all and of course we should go for it, but would we be stronger with another year in the league?
Not necessarily. It's all about budget size. We are where we expected to be, a budget size that gets us into the top 6 but doesn't make us stand out like those above us. And next season would be pretty much the same. There will always be a handful of clubs whose budget will give them a significant advantage over the others.
Last season we had Wigan with a budget of £12m, Blackburn £17m, Rotherham £6.5m. All promoted.
We had the 6th biggest budget, but ended up 15th.
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This is where we should be. A very good manager would push us up a little bit, while McCann has done a good job and has us on course for hitting where our budget should take us. Pissing around in bottom half of table would be abject failure for this budget.
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They scored in the 16th min, from then onwards they sat back
You said they sat back all the first half, so now it's after 15 minutes, they did what they had to do & got their goal by attacking us.
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How is it still in our hands???? Posh only gave 7 goal difference 2 make up on us they have 3 games left
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How is it still in our hands???? Posh only gave 7 goal difference 2 make up on us they have 3 games left
It’s still in our hands as we aren’t reliant on other teams losing for us to make the playoffs.*
We could technically win both games and Peterborough could still overhaul us but for that to happen they would need a bare minimum of 3 victories by 3 goal margins. Posh have managed that 3 times in 43 games this season, 2 of which were back in August, so I think it’s fairly safe to say that is only a very, very remote possibility.
*I mean this in the sense that Coventry, for example, need both us and Peterborough to collapse to make the play offs. We probably are reliant on other teams slipping up but that’s because we are playing dreadfully, not because it’s a mathematical necessity.
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Upton, It's still in our hands because, if we win our two remaining games, it doesn't matter what Peterborough or Coventry do, they won't catch us.
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It's such fine margins but it could be all over by 5pm on Saturday if we win and Peterborough lose (away at Walsall, who have to win to avoid relegation) - Coventry will be out of it and Peterborough would have to win their remaining 2 games away from home AND overturn the goal difference AND hope we don't get a point against Coventry.
We need to go all in at Oxford, who should be on the beach by now...
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I'd go along with that, DBR and only add that this where no strength in depth comes and bites you on the ass. We simply have no back-up for key players.
And, it doesn't help when the manager changes what looked like a workable solution (4-2-3-1) back to the one he really wants to play, in 4-3-3.
As supporters, we've seen this collapse of form at the end of a season for the last 2 or 3 seasons, now, and it really is wearing thin. We maybe all thought that a new manager was the answer but it clearly isn't and even he is making mistakes, now. I despair.
It is a good job we got McCann instead of Ferguson.
The football has overall been more enjoyable to watch and we have improved our position considerably over last season.
Had we continued this season like we had played last season our crowds would have been down as well.
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We need to stop fannying around and start with some real purpose. Get in their faces and an early goal. Too often recently we only wake up in second half.
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I would disagree that it’s ALL about budget size. It’s about bang for buck as well.
If we had the 6th biggest budget last year, then not only did we underachieve for the budget we had, I’m also compelled to wonder where that money went because we certainly didn’t have a “6th best” standard squad. Nowhere near.
Equally this season, I don’t think we’ve got the sixth best squad in the division, but with the canny way McCann has used the loan market he’s got us closer than we were.
It leads me to conclude, albeit just my subjective take on it, that either the sixth biggest budget doesn’t go that far, or there’s a lot of money tied up on a handful of above averagely paid players at the club.
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I would disagree that it’s ALL about budget size. It’s about bang for buck as well.
If we had the 6th biggest budget last year, then not only did we underachieve for the budget we had, I’m also compelled to wonder where that money went because we certainly didn’t have a “6th best” standard squad. Nowhere near.
Equally this season, I don’t think we’ve got the sixth best squad in the division, but with the canny way McCann has used the loan market he’s got us closer than we were.
It leads me to conclude, albeit just my subjective take on it, that either the sixth biggest budget doesn’t go that far, or there’s a lot of money tied up on a handful of above averagely paid players at the club.
But that's just your personal opinion, whereas the figures I've quoted are fact. In most cases the clubs with the biggest budgets are at the top of the division and those with the smallest are at the bottom, but sometimes games show that to be a nonsense.
Take last nights game for example. Accrington have one of the lowest budgets, if not the lowest in this league at just over £1m. Ours will be 4 times that.
Sunderland though, will be at least 5 times the size of ours.
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I would disagree that it’s ALL about budget size. It’s about bang for buck as well.
If we had the 6th biggest budget last year, then not only did we underachieve for the budget we had, I’m also compelled to wonder where that money went because we certainly didn’t have a “6th best” standard squad. Nowhere near.
Equally this season, I don’t think we’ve got the sixth best squad in the division, but with the canny way McCann has used the loan market he’s got us closer than we were.
It leads me to conclude, albeit just my subjective take on it, that either the sixth biggest budget doesn’t go that far, or there’s a lot of money tied up on a handful of above averagely paid players at the club.
But that's just your personal opinion, whereas the figures I've quoted are fact. In most cases the clubs with the biggest budgets are at the top of the division and those with the smallest are at the bottom, but sometimes games show that to be a nonsense.
Take last nights game for example. Accrington have one of the lowest budgets, if not the lowest in this league at just over £1m. Ours will be 4 times that.
Sunderland though, will be at least 5 times the size of ours.
Yes, it is my opinion. Which is why I used phrases such as “I would disagree” and “it leads me to conclude”. Posting some facts doesn’t shut down all discussion does it? Especially when I’m not disagreeing with the facts and am discussing them.
I didn’t dispute the facts that you posted for one second. It is my personal opinion that you can have a good budget but if it’s mismanaged and misused, you won’t get the results that your budget suggests you should.
I think you’ve backed that up with your examples of Accrington and Sunderland. Accrington - lowest budget but nowhere near the bottom. Sunderland - biggest budget but not at the top.
So basically, we agree.
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Pib
It's not a perfect correlation. There are factors like management quality, injuries and a little luck. But I'm sure that if you plotted out final league position against budget rankings for any division in any year in any country, there would be a strong correlation. With a spread of course, and the odd wild outlier.
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Whaddya know? The Open University has done a study on this.
(https://www.open.edu/openlearn/sites/www.open.edu.openlearn/files/ole_images/szymanski_piece_fig_1-inline.jpg)
That's a far stronger correlation than I'd have thought.
Bear in mind that above the line means the club outperformed relative to budget and below the line means the club underperformed.
Look where we are. And Leeds...
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Not sure I denied that at any point BST.
I’m questioning the bang for buck we got out of this sixth placed budget, especially with regards to our 15th placed finish last year.
This year we’ve closed that gap due to better management of resources, but we still have areas where we look short which, like you say, can be partly attributed to injuries, luck, or just that existential lower-league issue of finding the balance between quality and quantity. If we finish 6th this season then we will indeed be where we should be for the budget we’ve got.
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Dutch Uncle can probably make more from that graph than I can, but if my fag packet calcs are right, it's deeply depressing. It looks like, at the bottom end of the Championship, the extreme outliers (us) only outperformed the average for our budget by 4-5 league places.
So it looks like, on average, even the very best set up and management can only make a trifling difference compared to the effect of budget.
Football eh? f**king hell.
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Pib.
I wasn't contradicting you. Just adding to the discussion. I think my point was that it's not that surprising that Accrington didn't finish bottom and Sunderland didn't finish top. What WOULD be surprising would be Accrington regularly finishing above Sunderland.
As for our performance, I agree with you. If we did have a 6th placed budget last year, that really highlights how badly Ferguson underachieved.
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Good stuff.
I hope, and believe, that McCann can use those resources wisely again next year and have us in a similar position this time next season if we miss out this time around.
Plenty of conjecture about the players we might lose and how we would replace them, but with a top 6 budget it shouldn’t be as difficult as people might think. The players we fear losing (Marquis, Whiteman, Rowe etc) were attainable at the time we signed them so replacements should be equally within our reach if the budget stays about the same.
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I would disagree that it’s ALL about budget size. It’s about bang for buck as well.
If we had the 6th biggest budget last year, then not only did we underachieve for the budget we had, I’m also compelled to wonder where that money went because we certainly didn’t have a “6th best” standard squad. Nowhere near.
Equally this season, I don’t think we’ve got the sixth best squad in the division, but with the canny way McCann has used the loan market he’s got us closer than we were.
It leads me to conclude, albeit just my subjective take on it, that either the sixth biggest budget doesn’t go that far, or there’s a lot of money tied up on a handful of above averagely paid players at the club.
But that's just your personal opinion, whereas the figures I've quoted are fact. In most cases the clubs with the biggest budgets are at the top of the division and those with the smallest are at the bottom, but sometimes games show that to be a nonsense.
Take last nights game for example. Accrington have one of the lowest budgets, if not the lowest in this league at just over £1m. Ours will be 4 times that.
Sunderland though, will be at least 5 times the size of ours.
Yes, it is my opinion. Which is why I used phrases such as “I would disagree” and “it leads me to conclude”. Posting some facts doesn’t shut down all discussion does it? Especially when I’m not disagreeing with the facts and am discussing them.
I didn’t dispute the facts that you posted for one second. It is my personal opinion that you can have a good budget but if it’s mismanaged and misused, you won’t get the results that your budget suggests you should.
I think you’ve backed that up with your examples of Accrington and Sunderland. Accrington - lowest budget but nowhere near the bottom. Sunderland - biggest budget but not at the top.
So basically, we agree.
The point I made, which you missed, was that I was answering the post above mine, where the poster suggested another season in this division should see a stronger side/team. So I made the point that it doesn't naturally follow and that it's about the size of budget. It was a completely different point I was making. So, my use of the word 'all' had a different meaning to the one you picked up on.
Apart from that I was pointing out how poorly we were managed last season relative to the size of the budget. In fairness we spent about a £1m more than was originally planned for because of the situation we found ourselves in, i.e. having to buy Ben Whiteman for example.
But we don't agree, there are exceptions that's for sure, but in general it is about the size of the budget.
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Posh can get 9 points we can get 6 goes down 2 goal difference. Yes ours is better but can be caught
Upton, It's still in our hands because, if we win our two remaining games, it doesn't matter what Peterborough or Coventry do, they won't catch us.
[/quote]
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
I don't doubt that Rob at all and of course we should go for it, but would we be stronger with another year in the league?
Not necessarily. It's all about budget size. We are where we expected to be, a budget size that gets us into the top 6 but doesn't make us stand out like those above us. And next season would be pretty much the same. There will always be a handful of clubs whose budget will give them a significant advantage over the others.
Last season we had Wigan with a budget of £12m, Blackburn £17m, Rotherham £6.5m. All promoted.
We had the 6th biggest budget, but ended up 15th.
Do you have the budget by club to hand? And can it be shared? I know we can find out actual spend by club on Companies House (if disclosed) but given the ease with which you’ve put those positions/absolutes it would be fascinating to see the full list.
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The title of this thread is how I feel about us finishing either 6th or below. There are pros and cons to each. I do feel finishing 7th may not be a bad thing. We are a long way from ready to be promoted.
Don't worry. The board would certainly invest if we did get promoted. They want it as much as we do (most of us, anyway).
I don't doubt that Rob at all and of course we should go for it, but would we be stronger with another year in the league?
Not necessarily. It's all about budget size. We are where we expected to be, a budget size that gets us into the top 6 but doesn't make us stand out like those above us. And next season would be pretty much the same. There will always be a handful of clubs whose budget will give them a significant advantage over the others.
Last season we had Wigan with a budget of £12m, Blackburn £17m, Rotherham £6.5m. All promoted.
We had the 6th biggest budget, but ended up 15th.
Do you have the budget by club to hand? And can it be shared? I know we can find out actual spend by club on Companies House (if disclosed) but given the ease with which you’ve put those positions/absolutes it would be fascinating to see the full list.
Hi Nick, I do have it.
I generally leave it to the experts, like Swiss Ramble and The Price of Football for example, to put it out in social media circles. It wouldn't be seen as right for me to do it, sitting in meetings with the EFL for example might be a tad difficult!
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Whaddya know? The Open University has done a study on this.
(https://www.open.edu/openlearn/sites/www.open.edu.openlearn/files/ole_images/szymanski_piece_fig_1-inline.jpg)
That's a far stronger correlation than I'd have thought.
Bear in mind that above the line means the club outperformed relative to budget and below the line means the club underperformed.
Look where we are. And Leeds...
Interesting looking at that graph a bit more.
Clubs that averaged a similar league position over that period (us and Coventry, Preston and Leeds, Swansea and Charlton) had wage bills that varied by a factor of 3 or 4. That's a more satisfying indicator of how good/bad management can affect a club's long-term performance.
Looking at that graph and seeing just how much we over-performed under O'Driscoll, on a budget that was 9% of the average of the top two tiers, you do have to feel for the guy that he never got a chance to prove himself with a truly competitive budget.
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Posh can get 9 points we can get 6 goes down 2 goal difference. Yes ours is better but can be caught
Upton, It's still in our hands because, if we win our two remaining games, it doesn't matter what Peterborough or Coventry do, they won't catch us.
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Goal difference won’t be caught if we won our last two games.
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Posh can get 9 points we can get 6 goes down 2 goal difference. Yes ours is better but can be caught
Upton, It's still in our hands because, if we win our two remaining games, it doesn't matter what Peterborough or Coventry do, they won't catch us.
Goal difference won’t be caught if we won our last two games.
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Agreed. We win our last two we will get the play-offs however it's looking like a tall order at the moment given current form and the opposition.