The Journalist

Oh I get that - it’s more some of the abrupt comments, bordering on rude and slightly entitled in a couple of instances, towards people giving up their free time to maintain an internet forum. It’s a bit much, innit? It’s probably just not how I’d talk to people, but each to their own.

None of it really matters though, does it? Not really? (Thanks to @phantom and the admin team, though. I used to do it and it’s a somewhat thankless task.)

Perks of the job. Only dropped that in because I knew it would trigger someone…

I wasn’t that far off in the end. Watched it on a stream and thought we gave it a really good crack.

If it goes to penalties I’ll set up a Zoom call and tell you all what’s going on if you like.

We’ve settled really well since going behind - almost like the early goal lured Forest (and most of the forum, to be fair) into thinking it was all going to be very straightforward. We’re playing pretty well.

But factually correct.

Shades of the team we put out in an FA Cup replay against Middlesbrough when we were in League One and they were in the Premier League. Injuries and suspensions galore, even David Patridge got a game, and we took them to penalties! So, you just never know…

I'm only in my mid-30s so you've endured this club longer than me, but scrolling through this thread I just kept coming back to this view - you can't really expect anything, can you?! The older I've become the more I've realised how little influence we have over anything and, so, how redundant the concept of any kind of expectation is. However, I do hope that at some point during my lifetime on the opening Saturday of the season I'm able to put Match of the Day on and see us among the running order. It's kind of remarkable that 50 football clubs have been able to experience that at least once during the course of the past 32 years... but we still haven't.

Post-match will be interesting - it’s really the first time we’ve been embarrassed under Manning. Unacceptable levels of bad, we’ve barely laid a glove. Being out-passed and out-played is one thing, they’re better than us, but we’ve been completely out-run, out-fought and out-thought too. Worst 60 minutes we’ve produced in a couple of years.

This is what a top-end team looks like.

Notwithstanding options to buy on the two loanees the club aren’t revealing, this looks the most sensible bit of business this January. It just makes complete sense, not least because he’s with us from day one of pre-season. The change in style was always going to require a ripping up of the midfield.

We sign all of Derby’s best players and Bournemouth sign all of our best players. Not a sentence you’d have expected to be saying 15 years ago when the former was in the Premier League and the latter near the bottom of League Two!

As I said in my first post, having an option to buy very much changes the complexion of it. I really hope that's the case. I'm really not intending to be doom and gloom - everything will be much clearer in the summer. And I'm certainly not judging Manning by any of this, either.

Presumably it'll mean even fewer minutes for people like Sam Bell, who could do with as much exposure as possible with our season going nowhere? I'm all for loan signings with a purpose - the additions of people like Matt Smith and George Saville were huge when we were promoted - but there's got to be a longer-term vision than just seeing us through to a mid-table finish. All opinions, though, innit.

It does seem they're absolutely desperate we're not going to finish further down the table than we were when Liam Manning was appointed.

Given we're in mid-table obscurity and signing a 19-year-old on loan, that much-coveted pathway's suddenly not looking quite so clear, is it? (Unless there's an option to buy, obviously...)

Controversial opinion - I never liked having Milan Djuric because I always felt if you picked your best XI playing the way you wanted he would never be in it. He was only ever an expensive plan B. He was symptomatic of the clubs-in-a-bag era that got us into such a mess.

To be fair, if a low cross came in I never heard anyone shout "shoot it" either.

Curtis Fleming's first 11 days at Charlton consisted of losing three games in a row and seeing the manager get sacked. Talk about making an instant impact!

I always had a soft spot for Peter Beadle because I thought he brought the best out in players like Christian Roberts... but looking back his record really was pretty rubbish, wasn't it?! That said, he played in the 5-4 at Mansfield and I'll always love that team.

Amusingly, the other 'underwhelming' signing that immediately springs to mind is Matt Smith, who was brought in as cover when Wilbraham was injured during that 2014-15 season and also sparked a pretty scathing reaction. He scored 13 in 20 games for us.

To be fair, GJ only privately called Robbored out (and, for the newer posters among us, Robbored denied being Robbored).

Not sure this level of common sense is welcome around here. For what it's worth - and I watch way less of us than many of you, so I'm by no means an authority on this - but the sentence in bold is the key bit to all of this. The results being broadly similar sort of confirm it. By my eyes, we're now less aggressive in and out of possession but pass the ball more and aim to have more control. Some people will prefer one, some people will prefer the other, but because the players are the same the results are the same. I posted this just before Pearson was sacked and I think it kind of tallies with what you're saying now... "There is some sense in moving on at the end of this three-and-a-bit-year period and bringing in some fresh eyes to make the next push. We are trending upwards and that’s arguably a good time to change. And many of us were in favour of this - in principle - three years ago. We predicted it. "But now we’ve arrived here it just feels wrong, it feels slightly unfair on the manager and at best seems tone deaf to the supporters. That’s the bit (I think) we’re all uncomfortable with." I feel like, three months on, that's sort of playing out? We're broadly content with Manning and supportive of him, it's just difficult to shake off how the board got us from A to B.

It is weird how it all ended for Carey, given as @GrahamC points out on paper you'd think he should be considered one of the absolute greats of our club... yet just isn't really truly loved by the fanbase. It makes you wonder if he'd be more highly thought of if he'd played two fewer games (and none of that is his fault, obviously!).