Daniro

Pack it in!

och for foss sacke

so ... just remind me - how many points do you get for kicking the egg off the pitch these days?

I'm getting worried about psychological damage caused by decades of following BCFC ... I'm actually looking forward to watching 30 grown men chase an egg around this afternoon

agreed - must get three points today and the bounce back begins

not sure - maybe they should split the points?

This is a big game. We have to get three points from the likes of Charlton if we have any chance of staying up. Now is a perfect time time to open up a gap and lift us out of the drop zone.

I hate to say I told you so, but I pretty much predicted this.

Apparently not - they've decided to dig up the pitch and put down Desso Grassmaster because of all the rain we've been having.

my pleasure - anything else you need help with?!

There are some big games in L1 tonight. Carlisle v Shrews Crewe v Notts Co both six pointers - I guess we want Notts Co to win given that they look like they're already down? Colchester and Oldham both have tough away games (Wolves and Orient) which they will hopefully lose. Swindon could do us a favour and beat Tranny away (though based on their form at AG last week I doubt they will.) If we win and these all go our way, we could be very happy later tonight.

Baldock will score first, followed soon after by Patterson. Port Vale will score two in quick succession early in the second half. I'm not sure who will then go on to win. It's a bit like groundhog day - if we score a third, the rest of our season will be sunny - if they do, we're in a relegation dogfight but will probably just about be safe. Then again - it could be 0-0 like Swindon - PV don't seem to be big scorers. Or ... we might give them a right spanking. 4-0. I can't make it tonight so that's most likely, come to think of it - just my luck. On the other hand, maybe we'll get spanked. Oh, I don't know.

Sounds like the Sheffield away game was even worse and the goals conceded under SC is much worse than the last stages of the SOD era - SC appointment has moved us backwards

I agree. I was under the impression that SOD was a long term appointment but the Board lost its nerve and I expect couldn't cope with his dour personality. They seemed to believe that what we needed was a more motivational type of character. Sadly they've picked someone who seems out of his depth and unlikely to be able to build for the future. I had the sense with SOD that he was playing the long game. With SC it looks like tinkering around the edges.

Fair point - bad performance whichever way you look at it. What needs to be challenged is that they don't seem to be learning from experience. In this interview SL boasts of how much experience he and Dawe have - going back to 1996. Now he complains that SOD didn't turn anything around in 10 months. Part of the despair generated in the fans by the SOD dismissal is that he was positioned by them as being instrumental to the delivery of a long term strategy. The fact they they had a strategy was encouraging and they seemed to have a plan - one which included short term pain. We'll never know if SOD's infant team would have manned up and avoided relegation. SL has panicked into another short term fix. By all accounts Cottrill is a short term guy - He's been manager at least seven times as far as I can remember since Chelthenham in 1998. If you don't learn from experience, in life as in football, you die. If you won't take criticism and feedback, however it's delivered, you don't learn. Only arrogant, afraid ego-driven businessmen avoid putting strong characters with real expertise on their board.

But in a later post Monkeh himself says that Dawe should resign as Chairman if he doesn't want to speak to the fans.

You're not on the board are you, by any chance? You've certainly got the right attitude.

He says that the press "pulled the board apart unceremoniously" after they sacked SOD and that's why they took the "deliberate decision" to stay away from the SC press conference. He then goes on to say they have always made themselves available to the press and always will. Which press pulled the board apart? The BEP? Really? Come on! If that is true it's rather pathetic. What is clear form the interview is that he spends a lot of time reading stuff on the internet and that he'd prefer people not to post faceless comments but to "come in and have a cup of coffee". Again, really? It's BS. He also seems very proud of the massive footballing experience there is on the board and specifies that KD and he have been around since 1996 accumulating much footballing experience. But neither of them are learning from the experience and they are making the same mistakes time and time again. And as for the Chairman of a club not needing to be a public figure, he completely misses the point. Every board needs members who offer a different perspective and can provide genuine challenge to the status quo. KD may work very hard "behind the scenes" but that is exactly NOT what a Chairman needs to be doing. Very depressing listening - and sad too because the guy obviously cares passionately. He really really really needs to get some people on that board who can provide the leadership we so desperately lack.

He just will not accept any responsibility for the state we are in. Although in some respects he is right ... It isn't the "Board's" fault because we don't really have a board. We have his stooge Keith Dawe and his son and a couple of other his cronies. There is nobody on the Borad who can exert any authority so therefore they can hardly accept any responsibility. It's all down to him.

This is definitely the most intelligent, reasonable thread I've read on this forum and isn't it interesting that everyone is unanimous? for me the heart of the problem is that we don't really have a chairman. we have a major shareholder and his son who run things between them and Keith Dawe , acting as a proxy for SL who can't take the role because of his tax status. It's a sham - a trick to dodge the law and it also sidesteps the challenge that a genuine, fully functioning chairman should provide It is the Chair's job to challenge and to exert authority over the executives and yet in our case he is a puppet. As it is, the Lansdown's can do what the heck they want with the club and, financial, capitalist clever clogs they are, they still own the only asset, the property that once belonged to the club and can sell it off to whomsoever they want if and when they get bored. tragic for the fans.

Well .... just because JL said they hadn't and he'd look like a big liar if they popped someone out of the hat too soon - but I agree it's not something that matters much now. I suppose if we'll know by Monday if they have a plan!

This is the worrying thing for me. The Board said that they had a definite strategy but they didn't stick to it. Yes the results were disappointing but even by JL's own admission in the interviews yesterday there were signs of improvement - albeit slow. So what on Earth are they playing at? I just hope they have already lined someone up and are keeping it quiet for a bit just to show some decency towards SOD. If they have no alternative lined up, it confirms what I've said elsewhere that the Board are just a bunch of clowns

Agree with you 100% - unless the Board has someone lined up with a proven track record of taking young inexperienced players to the top I fear we're going to struggle very badly for the rest of the season.

don't follow your logic there, fella