Wes Tender

Quote: Originally Posted by Deppo LOL! Good one. Shame that school is out for Summer at the moment or that would have been funnier. I wonder how many marks teacher will give Scabby for his homework?

Well, if we had lost, I'm sure that they would have jumped on it and told the World that SCW's influence on us had not managed to give us the self-belief to overcome a team well below us. They're much more motivated to give headlines to bad news rather than good. Frankly, in our current parlous state, I'm much happier that we only get as much media attention as any other team in this division and that expectations of everybody outside the club are lower than they would be if he was still here. But looking at the backroom staff, we might not have SCW, but we still do have qualified sports scientists working with us.

Well, Scabby, I've nitpicked your ignorance about head apparel on another thread to point up your own shortcomings and I'll happily do so again with another little snippet I've found. "By the turn of the 20th century, Kier Hardie, the first Labour MP, wore his long peaked flat hat as a gesture of working-class solidarity when he arrived at Parliament. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum the cap became fashionable at the grandest Edwardian shooting parties when even royalty wore the humble covering. The renowned Shot Albert Edward, then the Prince of Wales, frequently wore one in the royal family’s tweed when out shooting" So unless you wish to held up to further ridicule, I'd stop using the flat cap as a class stereotype if I were you.

Hello Scabby. I just knew that we could rely on you to brown nose Lowe whilst at the same time deriding anybody who dares to suggest that anything he ever did was anything short of genius. And just to illustrate the lack of intelligence that your class rants contain, here is an excerpt from an article about flat caps. You see, every time you use this stupid analogy to illustrate your point that the flat cap is so working class, an image pops into my head of Prince Charles out on his estate. "The labeling of the flat cap as purely 'working class' is problematic. Many landed gentry wore flat caps due to their practicality as they sufficiently keep rain and sun out of the eyes when shooting, it doubles as a handy rag and keeps the head warm from frequent chilly winds. Mather states, "A cloth cap is assumed in folk mythology to represent working class, but it also denotes upper class affecting casualness. So it is undoubtedly classless, and there lies its strength. A toff can be a bit of a chap as well without, as it were, losing face." So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Agreed again. The ability has to be there to begin with. In team disciplines there is also an element where the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole if the players all have a collective belief and will to win against opposition individually more illustrious, but collectively not attuned as a unit. But that team must have a belief that their aim is achievable to start with. If not, they are defeated before they begin. Some achieve this motivational ability as managers of a sporting team, whereas others study it at university and become proficient in it as a science and the better proponents make a career of it acting as consultants. We have had our share of motivational managers historically and McMenemy and WGS were in that vein. The problem arises where you have somebody of the old school like Harry Redcrap, who was bound to feel that bringing in somebody as a motivator was a sideways swipe at his inability to do that aspect of the job himself.

Yes, it was pertinent to compare the players in the same positions rather than the whole team as a way of drawing comparisons as to whether we have progressed or not. There are only one or two flies in the ointment for doing this. Firstly, Burley had played many out of position, making comparisons difficult, as it was sometimes hard to know what their position was meant to be. Secondly, I think it fair to say that there was a distinct lack of motivation in the team and in Burley himself. Players are written off as ageing journeymen, not particularly bothered. But many of them were once quite highly thought of when younger and playing at a higher level than we find ourselves now. It is arguable whether they have lost the skills or ability, or just the motivation. I think that most are of the opinion that we need to have a balance between the youngsters and the older players that remain, as an element of experience is always an asset. My two main worries currently are that we will have to sell any youngster that shines and that we are so thin on the ground that we lack sufficient cover in the event of injury or suspension. Also that confidence will play a huge part in our success and it is vital that we get a few decent results early on to boost the youngsters.

Exactly. It didn't have to be SCW on a rumoured £300,000 a year. Where the point has been made that SCW is capable of crossing over disciplines, so the principle holds good across the board. The ability to motivate a football player ought to theoretically apply to any group of workers, be they sales people or management in industry or commerce or a car assembly plant team. Therefore we could probably have employed a specialist consultant to do that job as and when required, without all the ructions that SCW caused. Mind you, I suspect that there was an element of Lowe's ego involved and he enjoyed having such a high profile name linked with the club for media purposes.

Our previous manager was Pearson, who certainly cannot be accused of what you wrote in your last paragraph. I'm assuming you meant Burley?

Which coach was that? JP or Wotte?

I was being generous and including the ones against West Ham and Stoke, as although they were not league games, they were at least against Premiership teams.

We really are a Jekyll anf Hyde team. It seems that there is always a poor half and a much improved half and it varies as to which half it is. There has not been one serious game yet under JP where we have had two decent halfs in the same game. If an independent witness that didn't know the names of the teams or the players was listening and had been told that one team was being coached in the total football style, he would have put money on that team being Exeter. Several times the commentary counted 12/14 passes strung together by them and their good movement off the ball in the first half. Things go better for us in the second half after some tactical switches, but by then, we could have been chasing the game instead of holding a narrow lead against the run of play. I'll look forward to the time that we play with fluency both halves and hope that it comes against Brum on Saturday.

The post made by aintforever seemed perfectly well reasoned to me. He was only trying to inject a bit of realism into the current situation. If others find it unpalateable to be reminded that we are apparently deeply in the sh*t financially and that it is possible that there is no silver lining to the cloud, then I hope that their eternal optimism doesn't lead them to some bitter disappointment further down the line.

I don't know how you can read what I said and conclude that we cannot lose either way. If the football side of things suffers, then that way lies relegation.

As you continue to call Pearson the boot boy and also use McEnemy, I am going to call you Scabby from now on. Is that OK with you, Scabby?

Hate is the wrong word. Despise would be more accurate. And that goes for the Quisling Wilde too.

Just think, Dalek; you can make the same assertion three times a day without shelling out a penny. But unfortunately you won't have enough posts to argue the toss with anybody who disagrees with the stuck record that is your opinion on this matter unless you cough up your fiver. Go on, be a good lad; even Scooby, that other well known wind-up merchant has paid. You know you want to.

Well, there is where you and I differ and many others like me and Richard Chorley beyond any reasonable doubt too. We'll gladly support the team, but that doesn't mean to say that we have to support the two failed chairmen. But you seem to believe that somehow the two things are inseparable. I've made this distinction many times, but you seem unable to grasp the concept for some reason.

It's win -win from the point of view that we benefit from having him here and then get loadsamoney from selling him if he turns out to be a great signing and the top clubs are vying to sign him. But sorry to put a dampener on it, but there is a downside potentially. If the financial situation was normal, i.e. we're more or less solvent, then the monies raised would ideally go towards replacements of a quality that Scneiderlin demonstrated when he was signed. In other words another player who could be developed to sell on at a profit later. But will this be what happens, or will the money be ploughed straight into reducing the outstanding debt leaving us a bit better off financially, but worse off from the team's perspective?

Sometimes, if you haven't got anything interesting to say, it's best not to say anything. See, it's not nice, is it, having one's opinion disparaged in such a way? But back to your opinion to see whether there is any more validity to it than Saint Robbie's. Whether Lowe is interested or not in bringing in loan players, he might not have much choice in the matter once they have offloaded any player surplus to requirements purely on grounds of the cost of their wages. That strategy will inevitably lead to the squad being a bit threadbare in some areas. It will only take a few injuries or suspensions for there to be a need for cover, unless some even less experienced youngster steps up to the mark. As for your preference for players who want to play for the badge instead of those playing to get themselves back into their team, do you not think that the incentive to impress their own manager doesn't motivate most loanees enough? And finally, your opinion that most loan players have not set the World alight whilst here; Recently I would have said Chaplow for one. Oh, didn't Saganowski score a hatful of vital goals whilst on loan? Others have covered glaring gaps because of injuries and not done a bad job. Bennett, Lucketti, Perry and of course Wright. But still, if you're so dismissive of loanees, then you're going to be a bit disappointed later this season, as I suspect that some will be inevitable.

Well, just over 11% of those who voted believe we'll gain promotion this year. As for the brigade label, well yes, certainly there are categories of fans on here. There are factions for and against Lowe, those who are pro Lowe but against Wilde and vice versa, those for Crouch and the previous board and those who are heartily fed up with the lot of them. Put me in with the last lot, but with a particular dislike of Lowe and Quisling Wilde.

He doesn't need to be tight to post on here, does he? He can make three posts for free. As his posts tend to be long, rather than one liners, he can say quite a lot in three posts. I'm sure that when he has something relevant to say, he'll say it.

All the indications are that we might carry on like this, selling any players who shine to keep afloat until somebody takes us over. In other words purely as a feeder club to the Premiership, never acumulating enough momentum to give us a decent chance of a promotion push, as we will have to accept any reasonable offer for our better players, whether we wanted to sell them or not.

So for a third of the match they couldn't get the ball, but for the entire match we had only one third of the possession. So that means that we didn't have the ball at all the rest of the match. For me, the big worry is not playing the kids, as several of them aren't kids anymore anyway and they are at least used to playing together. My worry is that the essence of their style of play is that they should keep possession and yet they only had one third of it. What changed after the first 30 minutes? Did they suss us out that quickly, or did we stop passing effectively? And as stated already, what precisely did we do with the ball even when we had most of it during that first half hour? Not a lot, was it? Considering that Poortvliet has urged the lads to get into the box and shoot on sight, there didn't seem to be much evidence of that. I'm personally not much enamoured of having effectively a lone striker up front and although McGoldrick has done well so far, the back-up for him is not so far a weapon with much potency. I hope that John gets to play now that his suspension is over. Derry: Where there is lack of fitness, motivation and poor results, you are blaming the players. I blame the manager for the lack of fitness and motivation and suggest that his constant tinkering with the squad and playing some out of position might have had a lot to do with the poor results. As for the "pretty poor Derby side", it turns out that they were the third best side in the league that year, having led for much of the season. If they were so poor, just think how crap the teams below them were, eh? Derby were a team criticised for the style of football they played, dismissed as hoofball and Stoke were considered to be a similar team this last season. The fact is that both teams played to the strengths of their squads and succeeded. Had we had Billy Davies managing us, no doubt the lack of motivation and fitness wouldn't have been a problem and it would have been us promoted instead, even with the squad we had which some are so disparaging of. In conclusion, I believe that if we play with too many of the youngsters without the balance and experience brought by the older heads, we will not be playing to our squad's strengths, but as financial restraints dictate our policy there is not a lot we can do about it, as most of the quality we had will have been sold.

Apologies, you're right. Mixed up my Saggy's with my Luggy's. I was never one to call either of them by those nicknames. Lowe has been punched over 27 million times, whereas all Redcrap has accumulated is 8.8 million. That Sh*tty femail is romping ahead. Either she is the most dispised person in the country at the moment, or there are loads of spotty juveniles off school at the moment who are continuously hitting her full pelt. I suspect that they are putting in their practised wa*king action to good use.

Ah, but the common denominator between the two of them was the person who appointed them both. Besides, Saggy has Parkinsons and it wouldn't feel right hitting a man when he's down.