Pezo

7 minutes ago, 054123 said:

Exactly.

Its just a bit of nonsense.

I used to like it when for the bigger games, most of the b block in the dolman would stand and sing. If I didn’t have the kids I think I would probably go down there for the more tasty games.

Although my middle aged back kills me if I sit down for an hour

Similar but younger, I've been told by the physio that due to having a desk job I sit down way too much and need to stand (and more importantly move around) whenever possible.

7 minutes ago, 054123 said:

Absolutely this.

Its become part of the ‘pantomime’ to boo the other areas after their ‘bounce around’

If I were the other areas I’d laugh or applaud as you know it’s coming

 

I found it funny when the unenthusiastic participation in the EE (I think it was the Bournemouth game) was about 25% and they booed themselves.

1 minute ago, Port Said Red said:

I think the voucher code (2 4 1)  offer may have had an effect, and perhaps shows there is an audience out there at a particular price point.

 

Yes to be fair my comments (apart from the "how shit must you be" stuff) was more of a response to the annoying negativity from other posters. The stuff about shouting down other chants was more about previous seasons so I take that back. I am right on the edge of the singing section but even from there, myself or others around us have prompted some chants. It's something I have often found fascinating, why sometimes an individual shout will become a chant and yet often it can just fall on deaf ears. I'll bet there is a paper somewhere that someone has done for their dissertation sometime on just that phenomena.  

I bet there is something that would link it to fluid dynamics especially turbulent flow, that's essentially what it is, a melting pot of songs where some drown out others.

I've stood just behind the S82 lads quite a bit so far, they start a lot of songs that don't get outside there "group".

If you think about it it's very democratic, if you can hear more than 1 song sing the one you want, if everyone agrees by singing the same song then it gets loud/popular. It's messy and has its worts but works eventually. Just keep going.

17 hours ago, Port Said Red said:

Well it certainly made a change that all the crowd joined in with them, rather than the East End shouting them down with their own chants like kids throwing their toys out of the pram. 

While we're at it, it pisses me off when they ask other parts of the ground to bounce around, and then boo them no matter how well they respond. ******* "superfans".

Oh and while I am on a roll, I think they have been responsible for this bad run of results by tempting fate every time we have been winning. You all know what I mean........

"How shit must you be we're winning at home" ..........

Cue the equaliser/winner from the opposition. 

As someone relatively new to the "new" EE having moved there this season it's quite an interesting place and not what it seems from the outside. There's no shouting down of others chants, you can't hear any of them TBH - there seems to be about 5 different places songs start from in the corner and at any one time the EE might have 3 different songs going at the same time, it's really only the drum or megaphone that brings it all together. If your outside you would only hear the ones that get to 3 or more of these smaller groups.

I don't think anyone in there thinks of themselves as superfan, that would be something others project on to them because they are the noisy singers, from what I have seen they mostly like having fun, want to create/enjoy the atmosphere and want to enjoy the football (mostly in that order).

Booing other parts of the ground is stupid but it's very much part of the type of humour I think - tongue in cheek, self depreciation, gallows humour much like the "how shit must you be" song but in the context of the order of preference of fun, atmosphere then football it kind of makes sense if a bit counter productive, same as the same Joey Barton songs 5 mins into the game.

Having moved there from the middle of the SS I certainly prefer it to having some obnoxious moaning old bloke sat behind me that thought he was the next next Andy Gray but knew **** all about football. Despite the results this season I have always walked away having enjoyed myself more if also a little horse.

10 minutes ago, ZiderEyed said:

I dread to think what it'd have been like had they gone 2 up. First time I've ever heard booing of a performance at home, and not immediately after a goal. Weimann's horribly weighted pass seemed to set off a fuse with the people around me. 

I think we'll look at that first Weimann goal like the Wolves game under Johnson eventually. 

Forget 2 up, if they had gone in at half time at 0-1 the place would have erupted.

Let's face facts for at least 35 mins of the first half we weren't in a game against the worse side in the league. We actually seemed to give them the belief they could win the game on a platter, they are a league 1 side and we looked non league for a lot of that game.

I feel like I've seen the club release this one before.

26 minutes ago, hollydog said:

I love Loftus Road. Proper ground bang in the community. My view is that the Council should do all they can to help relocate them locally. Other Councils do much to support their club eg Exeter City Council bought St James Park to keep the club afloat. Councils have a duty to support the culture in their area. 

Do they really? When it comes to using taxes paid by people on minimum wage that maybe don't even like football to support a club owned by billionaires as a play thing I think that's somewhere I would draw the line.

After a bit of reflection I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened before safe standing, there are commercial interests at play and money to be made so I'm genuinely surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

Start by doing it in the upper tier, see how it goes.

18 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

The problem is we’re not exactly well stocked with players other clubs might want to buy, assuming they have the money. Kalas, Massengo, Bentley and Wells might be of interest but, if sold, they would go for bargain basement prices in today’s market. If we sell any of the better players, to buy another player, we haven’t gained anything. We might be able to offload some of the fringe players for a free transfer to reduce the wage bill but that’s it. 

In reality the only player you list there that's worth more to another team than to us would be HNM.

Bentley might go to the prem but GK don't trade for much so is worth more to us than selling him. Kalas is 28 clearly never going to step up to the prem so we might get £8m max from a club with parachute payments but all the yo-yo clubs seem to have a decent defence at the moment so unlikely, everyone else can only afford 2 bags of crisps an curly wurly so we will get more value out of him staying. Wells at 31 isn't going to the prem and isn't breaking into a parachute payment club either so likewise not likely to get any money.

The other challenge with with selling players is the likely lower contract offer they will get elsewhere so we will have to fund the difference, not sure about anyone else but the idea of paying Wells to score against us for QPR doesn't seem appealing.

13 minutes ago, pl00peh91 said:

Gregor shows are the best ones IMO

He does seem to have a lot of strange interactions with the club outside of what we see through press conferences ect.

21 minutes ago, bris red said:

Didn’t realise they were top of League one to be fair. Plymouth are a funny one, it must be what 15-20 years ago that we would of viewed them as a club on a par with us and as a direct rival to get promotion out of League one.
Feels like we have overtaken them by some margin in those years both on and off the pitch but fair play to them, would be a decent derby (of sorts) if they came up.

A derby? Isn't Wolves closer to us?

33 minutes ago, archie andrews said:

Bet theyll be in the prem before us.... 

I think if they came up this season they would have more money.

It's going to take time to put the correct people in the correct place on and off the pitch.

I would be really interested to know what his plan is and what are the things he is look for that will actually make a difference on the pitch.

What does he mean by giving the players more responsibility?

What's the biggest problem he is working on in the squad, what actions is he actually taking?

Does he have a framework that he is trying to implement and/or refine or is it more ad-hoc than that?

1 minute ago, cidercity1987 said:

The most annoying thing is we wouldn't have had to be very good at all to make the play offs this season. 17/18 and 18/19 squads would have done it with ease 

Yes in hindsight we made a mistake by spending money on trying to get promoted a couple years ago and fell short, now we don't have the money to challenge at the opportune moment.

For those economic experts I guess this is standard fiscal policy and as we don't have a money tree can't do counter fiscal policy.

It is a joke, it's basically 3 premier league teams and one basket case of a premier league side (that will still make the playoffs) playing against a mix of 4 traditionally average championship sides, 5 plucky underdogs doing well (I've had to stretch that definition quite a bit) and all the rest are championship basket cases to different degrees.

If we don't win things will start to get very ugly.

Can the players handle the pressure.

Ole's, at the wheel 

33 minutes ago, Moments of Pleasure said:

Our record season by season over the four games v the eventual top two automatically promoted clubs in points and goal difference:

15/16: 6 points, -3 gd

16/17: 4 points, -2

17/18: 4 points, -1

18/19: 7 points, +1

19/20: 0 (nil) points, -9

20/21: 1 point, -10

 

So, started ok, got better, peaked, fell off a cliff.

 

And our record over the same period over the six games v the three relegated parachute-payment minted clubs:

15/16: 2 points, -10 gd

16/17: 5 points, -2

17/18: 11 points, +2

18/19: 12 points, +5

19/20: 10 points, +3

20/21: 1 point, -12.

 

So, started meekly,  improved quickly, peaked, still good, fell off a cliff.

 

Conclusion: it's not about them, it's all about us.

 

Does that highlight when we "went for it" and we all thought that it was natural progression?

7 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

Well at times we've barely been able to lay a glove on the likes Watford, Norwich  Bournemouth, WBA and Fulham so it certainly feels that way.

It doesn't help that we sit there watching this in the full knowledge that we've currently got the most expensive set of players in our entire history who - as a team - are pretty mediocre, in fact borderline dysfunctional.

This is compounded by the vivid recent memories we have of a team built on League 1 players who stuck it to Man Utd and made Man City sing for their supper. 

The million dollar question is do we have the time to find a better mix of players, a potentially lengthy process, or do we go for the shortcut and change the bloke in charge of them? 

We have Barnsley, Birmingham, Coventry and Blackburn up next. Unless we get back on track against that lot, even Pearson's staunchest supporters might begin to wonder about the answer to that million dollar question. 

Yes it's quite a dilemma, the clear problem is we don't have enough good enough players.

If we're thinking of sacking the manager the conclusion we need to have come to is that this isn't ever going to work, the next question is who to replace him with, for me I can see this working but not this or next season, I don't like it but I can see it.

As the known problem is the players and we can't just sack them all what else can we do other than bide our time and hope not to get relegated. A different manager might get a short term bounce but that's far from guaranteed with this group of players.

For those that want to see us win every week and watch entertaining football, I just can't see anything other than "come back in 2 years and see how we're doing".

42 minutes ago, RoystonFoote'snephew said:

Parachute payments clearly make a difference but its not the parachute payment per se that presents a problem but that the EFL allow the payments to be used for other than they were intended. The purpose of the payments was to ensure clubs relegated from the Prem could meet their current contract commitments. They were never meant to be used for new contracts or as an additional transfer slush fund. The parachute payment should be a one off payment based on the valuation of current contract commitments, not spread over several years. If the three relegated clubs receive different amounts because of their contract commitment so be it. 

While I don't disagree I always wonder what the unintended consequences are, wouldn't that just encourage these clubs to spend even more money, it would basically give all prem teams a blank cheque.

Before parachute payments we had the same teams going up and down but the argument was that the prem was uncompetitive. What parachute payments have done is push that uncompetitive situation down on the championship.

I just don't know what to do with Vyner. Too weak to play central defender, stands off and doesn't read the game well enough out wide, center midfield and the game passes him by due to poor positioning.

From where he was in 2018 and playing for Plymouth on loan and getting rave reviews he seems to have not progressed, always being just under our required standards.

We have been completely overwhelmed by both Bournemouth and West brom sides putting in 3rd gear performances within a week of each other with Fulham looking considerably better than us and us only looking competitive through maximum effort.

Are parachute payments making more of a gap than ever before, are they now a guarantee of finishing in the top 6 rather than a very big helping hand?

10 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

I will talk about the previous CEO until the cows come home as it’s that bastard that has ruined this club for the foreseeable future. You can keep Pearson, sack Pearson do whatever but this is a long term fix and people had better get their heads round that.

This. When CEO's ruin things they ruin things for a long time.

Players can ruin a games, Managers can ruin a season, C level execs ruin things for years, owners can ruin things for decades.