Argyle vs Dag & Red - the Richard Blight match thread

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

Anyone who thinks we were the second best team on the park today was either asleep through it or at another game.

You make a good point. For the opening hour it was rather difficult not to nod off, but I'm pretty sure I just managed it.

As I said, we had a spell where we were really in the ascendency, for about 10-15 minutes. But if your take on the opening hour is that we were undoubtedly the better team, you really need to change your green-tinted specs.

Any faint glimmer of hope we had of avoiding being ejected from the football league has now evaporated after this latest debacle. Brent must accept a large proportion of the blame for our demise as there's a lot more he could have should have done. It's no good just blaming the 'M7' anymore.

BRENT OUT NOW!!!!!!

Correct again Charlie.

I too looked for some sort of tactical masterplan and found none.

The substitutions were random and didn't appear to be for any specific reason other than 'oooh! look at the time, let's chuck so and so on' And the highlights?

That bloke falling over the barrier in the Mayflower and Larry getting a yellow card.

What's the betting we beat Macclesfield 2-0 now?

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

Czarcasm wrote "for over an hour today we were the second best team" is where I get my comment from so there is somebody arguing that point.

You may have been the sage of doomsville previously Freathy but how the feck would you know if we are crap or not. Did you watch or are you feeding off other people's opinions now? Currently we are the fourth worst team so no guarantees regarding relegation just yet. Don't sell your house just yet and put the money on that outcome.

Fair enough, I read Czarcasm's post as we were capable of stepping it up a gear if we really wanted or needed to. For me yet again we have failed to take the initiative in getting all 3 crucial points.

As for your attack on Freathy, our form over recent years and current league position says it all, you dont need to be there to make any other assessment.

No but it helps to be there if your comments are to be objective and based on something you've actually seen Coxside. I never once said we were good. I said in essence that Dagenham were generally worse and anyone watching, if they managed to keep their eyes open, could not fail to see that. The result was bitterly disappointing and the standard of fare on offer was poor. We are not in the bottom two and some of the other teams are worse than we are. No pride in saying that by the way. Given the standard at the bottom of this league you would be foolish to put your house on who will be gone and who will be saved. If Freathy is so convinced he has the answer then flog the house and pile in. Somebody might as well have some success out of the season. Bet he isn't quite as convinced to do that.

I wouldn't like to place bets on who is more shit than the rest. The bottom line for me is we have placed all our resources into an inexperienced management. It makes no sense.

Most of the last 4 years have made little or no sense to me Coxside. I say 4 years because the rot set in before the wheels well and truely came off and it isn't just the relegations. Would most people want somebody with more clout and experience in charge? Yes even the green tinted variety if honest but we are stuck with what we have. I see little point in lambasting Fletcher week in week out and am just plain hoping that 2 teams continue to be worse than we are and we get to the end of the season staying in this league. After that well we go from there and my hopes would be more than for this season. We had 7800 there yesterday. Can't be argued that a lot of locals aren't doing their bit. I think Dagenham are cast iron for one of the slots and the other one is any team from 4 or maybe 5 by the shit end of the season. On that basis we have a 20 or 25% chance the other one will be us or on the tinted side a 75 to 80% chance of staying up. That is considerably better odds than it looked 10 games ago.

I think Fletcher has tried to make us difficult to beat recently, hence the 3 clean sheets, but there was definitely a case of false euphoria after the Accrington game, and picking through accounts of that game it does seem to have been a case of us taking all of our chances for a change and also having a slice of luck or two.

The last game I saw was away to Port Vale which was about as dire as I have ever seen Argyle or anyone else play for that matter. Again it seemed as though the priority was not to concede with little in the way of any attacking intentions. Barnet was similar but we kept the clean sheet against a team everyone was saying were actually pretty good, yet the point they got at HP was followed by 3 defeats.

I still don't see that Fletcher is turning things around as well as some people suggest, and still can't fathom out why he was given the job in the first place, other than a cost cutting excercise. I can't imagine for one minute that Peter Reid would not have done a better job given the complete new squad that Fletcher has had, albeit on a shoestring, because Reid's squad was probably the weakest by far in the League.

To my mind, Ridsdale sacked Reid and appointed Fletcher in order to save Reids back wages being paid in full as soon as Brent took over. Whether this was solely a Ridsdale decision or if Brent had any input I don't know, but with the situation we are in, a rookie manager and losing our best player in the process is and was baffling to me.

Then it looked like we had the chance to try and get Sean O'Driscoll on board in some capacity officially, but dilly- dallied around because Warnock had been sacked by QPR, and O'Driscoll was snapped up by Forest who have improved massively since he joined them. That left us in a bit of a spot because Fletcher had apparently already asked for some help, so we were left scraping around for an alternative to O'Driscoll, who I'm sure Fletcher had in mind, and we get John Deehan!

I don't know if we will go down, I still think we have some good quality players for this League so we ought to be able to stay ahead of 2 teams, especially if we can secure Macdonald on loan until the end of the season, but it's going right to the wire for sure, and I really hope Fletcher is replaced by someone with a bit of experience and with at least a vague semblence of a plan other than to not concede a goal for 90 minutes.

Your opening line says it all though greenjock which shows there has been a change at least. Where once we were rife for shipping goals we now are not. You could also argue that other managers have set up teams not to lose. Pullis was a bit on that side. The change is we are not shipping goals now but the non change is we still don't score enough consistently. Take this last game which was not the best I conceed. The number of chances we allowed Dagenham was a couple in 90 minutes. One save by Cole which was an easy affair. Now that is good. We on the other hand created numerous chances and therefore could have and should have put the game to bed fairly easily. We didn't put any of them away. But, if we were not creating the chances at all, which we weren't earlier in the season, then I would be even more worried. Results say we have improved even though the management is a tad lightweight. The question mark for me is have we improved enough and can we keep that improvement going to the end. Second question is will the other teams around continue to be shit or shitier than we can be. There is nothing to suggest currently that we cannot keep it going and nothing to suggest any of the other teams are open to vast improvement. Yet.

I see nothing wrong with hoping in our position. We can either do that and give them the backing we can or we can all hang up our boots and climb into the pit now. I know which one I choose and it has nothing to do with tinted glasses or love of the owner or manager or anything else.

My concern is 'being difficult to beat' isn't going to attract customers through the turnstyles. It may well turn out these tactics save us from this nightmare, I just think it's unnecessary. To back things up, our home form is appalling.

I'm thankful I didn't have to witness coming runners-up on 6 consecutive seasons decades ago. I'm also thankful I didn't have to witness a debacle in the early 60's. There does seem to be parallels being drawn with our current predicament. I hope I'm just being paranoid.

The bloke who dived over the barrier was lucky he isnt in intensive care for 6 weeks!!! very lucky, that could have killed him it really could.

4 or 5 great chances to win it yesterday, but no one could hit the net & that will be costly soon, teams like Dagenham arrive at Home Park asking to be beaten MUST be put to the sword.
The whole performance was flat - 7800 turn up & thats what they get.............

it will go the wire thats for sure with results like that (stuff performance results matter)

Exactly Greg, a larger than usual crowd and the team fail to deliver.

When exactly did we last win in front of a large crowd?. I really wanted to post during the week against enticing a large crowd, added pressure and all that.

On the size of the crowd, I think I heard on TV FL Show that Bradford had a huge crowd because they made ticket offers to the locals.
Why o why don't Argyle do the same, at least for the Cheltenham game if it goes down to the wire?

(Selfish thought - I'm coming for that one so it'll save me a few bob!!)

pafcineurope wrote:

On the size of the crowd, I think I heard on TV FL Show that Bradford had a huge crowd because they made ticket offers to the locals.
Why o why don't Argyle do the same, at least for the Cheltenham game if it goes down to the wire?

(Selfish thought - I'm coming for that one so it'll save me a few bob!!)

During the 'Back The Bid' debacle, we played Forest on a Sunday, live on Sky Sports. Tickets were given away. We still fell short of capacity by about 5,000. So even if you give away tickets for free, the punters don't come - and that was in the Championship, against Nottingham Forest, ffs. What chance have we got against the likes of D&R, Cheltenham, etc?

Same old Argo syndrome Andy. The club rightfully has a woeful reputation locally and that won't change until we are winning and or have some cash backed ambition.

Brent and his advisors are flogging a dead horse if they believe that 'reaching out' to the community will work.

Only a spell in the top flight will repair decades of damage to our potential fanbase. It is possible but it's getting more difficult as apart from getting there, the club has to remain for a while to convince the missing thousands that they are for real, at last.

That was why I tried so hard on the farm years ago to point point out that Stapleton and co were outclassed financially and should have done the right thing and found new owners when our stock was high.The local, diehard fans, just can't seem to see reality and accept that most of the population couldn't give a toss about Argyle until the club has been there and got the Tshirt.

The days when Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton etc achieved, were less about money than the situation now. They cemented their fanbases then and we were at least on a par with them support wise.

pafcineurope wrote:

On the size of the crowd, I think I heard on TV FL Show that Bradford had a huge crowd because they made ticket offers to the locals.
Why o why don't Argyle do the same, at least for the Cheltenham game if it goes down to the wire?

(Selfish thought - I'm coming for that one so it'll save me a few bob!!)

Bradford were offering tickets for £1.
I posted on the "other site" that despite calls from Fletcher,some of the team and Webb to pack the stadium,it fell on deaf ears.
Webb isn't as good as he thinks he is.

katman wrote:

pafcineurope wrote:

On the size of the crowd, I think I heard on TV FL Show that Bradford had a huge crowd because they made ticket offers to the locals.
Why o why don't Argyle do the same, at least for the Cheltenham game if it goes down to the wire?

(Selfish thought - I'm coming for that one so it'll save me a few bob!!)

Bradford were offering tickets for £1.
I posted on the "other site" that despite calls from Fletcher,some of the team and Webb to pack the stadium,it fell on deaf ears.
Webb isn't as good as he thinks he is.

This would appear to be a real problem. Brent's current fans' generals share the view that everyone should be like them and follow Argyle wherever they are pointed. If they don't , they are apathetic janners.
They will not convert people until the club actually steps out of its parochial mindset and has a real go at reaching the PL. It could be quite some time before the opportunity arises again. Promotion pushes in the lower leagues will get crowds back into double figures. It's what happens next, that needs to break the mould of the Waiters', Holloway experience.

I have a feeling that on Saturday the increased attendance was partly due to the Scum, sorry Sun 2 tickets for £19 or something along those lines, was valid for this game. It's not a huge reduction but probably enough to tempt a fair few people along. There would have been the feelgood factor after the 4-0 win at Accrington, so on that basis if we don't beat Macclesfield tomorrow, I expect Saturdays gate to be under 6,000, unless Gillingham bring down a good following.

Just watched the BBC highlights. It's when you see that you become more aware of how close we came to scoring a load of goals. And how many goals we should have scored. The match was awful. We were awful - but better than the Daggers. But it could have been and should have been a much better scoreline.