GrahamC

Champions & over the 100 point barrier. Delighted for them & even more pleased that Mark Ashton didn’t get his hands on the trophy as champions.

4 clubs immensely above them; Cheltenham, Burton, Exeter. Fleetwood. **** me that’s truly pathetic, gained a remarkable 2 points from the last 21 on offer. Still, summer’s usual mass recruitment of 5 loan players (1 of which joins a higher placed club in January’24) plus some ex Fleetwood Scousers with criminal convictions & poor disciplinary records will see them aim for the heights of 16th in the third tier next season.

Looks like Bolton have rested a fair few with the playoffs to come. Keeper Trafford isn’t playing & top scorer Dion Charles on the bench.

Can’t see too many changes, maybe Williams in for King & possibly Weimann for Scott. Be interesting to see if Kalas makes the squad, really can’t see the point in that if we’re not offering him anything, likewise futile for Dasilva to do so, as we all expect him to leave.

What small time losers they are.

I’m 60 soon & this is one of only 2 occasions I can recall us getting promoted at home. The other was when Clive Whitehead scored against Pompey & I was about 11 so really had absolutely no idea of the magnitude. This was just a great day, the sun was shining, the ground virtually full of City fans, Rotherham were already relegated so fair play to the 50 odd who came down, true supporters. David Noble reminded me of Donnie Gillies in that he was not a big goalscorer but a scorer of big goals, as he was to prove at Palace a year later. Despite one nutter on here that GJ era was special & after a few false dawns we haven’t replicated it since.

Leaving aside our own situation Coventry seem to have good cause for complaint here. At least as good as Blackburn but on only a third as often.

You can make a case for Brentford who are a smaller club than Brighton with nowhere near the fan base but agree 100%, as well run as anyone & as I’ve been saying for ages, the perfect club for Scott.

Watford, they could even be blander than Reading. Only disappointment with Reading being relegated is it was our closest game, Cardiff aside. They are though absolutely delusional about their place in the scheme of things, remember their gates dropping under 10000 fairly recently when results were poor. No loss, third tier club in a dated stadium.

Lee Hendrie got one out of three right then. Very wrong with us though, the *****.

Got to say this seems a really odd choice. Conway, Scott & Bell were all eligible, weren’t they?

All 5 of them started at Shrewsbury. For a side who had absolutely nothing to play for I struggle to understand the logic behind all of them starting in end of season games like this, but clearly (in his own mind anyway) Barton is some sort of football genius. Cotts was very keen to point out (twice) afterwards that his budget was little more than half of Barton’s, the implication clearly being that as he’s finished above him in the league & taken 4 points from 6 that’s not bad for a “rugby team” who “hump it & chase it”. You get the impression these two really don’t like each other, don’t you?

Being widely reported today that their wage bill for this season was just £6m, wow. Fair play to them for getting promoted despite that. Says the average wage bill in the Championship is £32m, which seems a bit high to me post pandemic.

Sam Frost uncritically reports all this shit as well. He is undoubtedly the most biased & sycophantic reporter the Post has ever employed (last night’s HT Tweet was a real gem) “Rovers the better side despite the score line, should have had a couple of penalties, I can see them winning this one”. He’s moving on at season’s end, that’s either because he’s been hired by Kim Jong-Un or he’s finally breaking free of the Merseyside crime syndicate.

Absolutely nauseating. The fact that they’re Welsh & the BBC has to find something for the disproportionate number of journalists they have to report on is definitely a factor, but the blanket coverage is farcical. Plenty of Championship sides doing very well like Coventry & Luton are getting a small fraction of the airtime they are. Shame that the number of Welsh sides in the league has returned to 4, be far happier myself if it was zero & they played in their own little league.

I would still expect our summer recruitment to address this, so us signing Joe Bryan (or not) won’t be a factor. Atkinson said last week that his ACL injury was a “7 to 9 month” one, so realistically he’s not going to be back until November. We therefore already know this, so adding Jake O’Brien & either bringing in another CB as well or offering Kalas reduced terms, plus of course having the ever available Vyner to call upon is how we address this, not by playing our best LB out of position for months.

Bizarre part of that article is the contention in it that Pring could play CB is in any way a factor. Can’t see that at all.

Steve Evans will be there next season to remind them of their cheating, too. To be fair to Evans he won’t stop calling that day out & they absolutely hate it.

Started the game with 5 players who are on loan, that’s what you call long term planning. 1 point above Burton Albion, 4 behind Fleetwood Town, the bloke’s a genius. Best 2 results he got this season were in court.

If they lose tonight it will be 2 points gained from the last 18 available, level on points with Cheltenham Town. Don’t expect The Post or Radio Bristol to mention either of these facts.

Used to watch him “accidentally” stand on the foot of an opponent when he faced up for the first throw in when coming on as sub, knew all the tricks.

Wilbs doesn’t take any shit, he’s a properly hard bloke.

You’re entitled to your opinion but Naismith usually has a better availability record than this season, he started 45 for Luton the year before. Williams has actually been in the match day squad 35 times this season with a game to go, 36/46 isn’t too shabby at all. James started 32 last season, this season he’s started…32, great for planning, we can expect to need someone to fill in for him 14 times. He’s our best midfielder. King will certainly reduce his game time but as someone who didn’t expect him to feature 25 times as he’s done & be available for all 46 I’m not writing him off. Pearson talks about not collecting players & as Massengo really hasn’t been part of the squad much this season I don’t see us effectively replacing Scott with 3 players. My recollection of Hartley’s one season was he struggled to play Saturday then midweek, I actually thought peak Korey Smith was better than him, myself & Matty James is at least his equal..

We need 2 if Scott goes. If we assume he & HNM are leaving that still means we have James, Williams, Naismith, King, plus Weimann, Mehmeti & Benarous who can all play the 10, two more seems enough to me. I see a lot of people say we need a defensive midfielder, James is certainly one, Naismith too when he plays there & no one appears to think that’s what Williams is, well he’s minimal goal threat & hardly box to box, he’s a defensive midfielder for me & as he is into the last year of his contract next season is huge for him.

Trialists, from memory the first one (despite the name) was a midfielder from Finland, second one a Greek centre back. Obviously didn’t sign either but can’t recall if this was their only game or GJ gave them any other chances before moving on.