Probably the same as if we do start well, judging on this season
It’s how you finish that counts.
Expectations will be very high next season and rightly so . We have had incremental progress so far on and off the field which I appreciate.
Next step for trivelia is to step it up With the team building as I think we would only need 3 or 4 quality players to make us possible top 3 never mind play offs contenders.
Show us ya money🤪
Can’t believe this is still being debated. Rookie manager in his first year of being a manager, awful bad luck with regards injuries, gets us to the brink of the playoffs, and our best finish for 6 years, and there’s still a vocal minority want rid.
Quite what some people expect astounds me.
Not really.
The starts under Clarke and Flynn were always pretty tedious at this level. Having those terrible runs in September and October just leave too much work to do for rest of the season.
When you look at the results there hasn’t really been any bad run. Longest without a win was six games and that included 0-1 at home to Harrogate and 0-0 v Forest Green so that was as close as Sadler came to the sack.
Since the win at Notts County it’s been 25 played in league two with 13 wins and 7 losses.
Replicate that for first 25 games of next season and will be comfortably in the top 7 for Xmas.
It would be nice to start a season with three or four wins from first five games just to get a feel that automatic promotion is a realistic goal for once.
No more so than Douglas James Taylor coming in every week when we need a goal and Danny Johnson sitting on the bench
I expected 12-14th.
Our range of possible finishes is 5th to 13th so in all probability we’ll do better than I expected.
A great base for Sadler’s second season.
He’s raised our expectations which is fantastic but that does come with some added pressure.
I think Doncaster might disagree with you! but my comment, a rather flippant one, was in answer to those who say that if we don’t get a good start pressure will be on MS. Firstly I am not sure how anyone defines a good start and secondly the season is long and things can change. As for me I would like to see us in top half ,at least, after 10 games which is the first staging post of the season. Obviously top 6 would be better and that should certainly be our aim. That is down to Trivela more than MS in my view as significant investment in players wages will be needed to get the forwards we need.
MS will only be in trouble , as any Manager would be, if we start the season with a long winless run which in my view is 5 +games.
Good point.
I think the issues people have with Sadler boil down to these two
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The feeling he was the cheap and easy option, meaning pressure was ramped up on him immediately.
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Rookie manager or not, he’s been too dogmatic at times, so hasn’t helped himself with consistently playing the likes of DJT instead of DJ, whom the fans have had a real affinity for.
Therefore, for many I feel, this season has been a curious mixture of we’ve done much better than previous seasons, but perhaps we should have done even better.
‘Stubborn’ worked when he stuck by Matt ahead of DJ, given that many on here thought he was a waste of space.
The same Matt that won the header that put DJ in the other night.
Should we select the team by public vote each week?
Yeah, that was a glimpse of what a real strike partnership should look like. It was great work by Matt, it fell to DJ on his weaker foot and he buried it with some ease, it was not an easy chance. Had it fell to any of our other strikers, I reckon the M6 was in more danger than the goal. Harsh but probably not far from the truth.
Sadler obviously knows more about football than I ever will but from a fans perspective, whether it is DJ or someone else a strike partnership requires one striker that can put the ball in the net. To be fair Faal is starting to knock a few in even though he misses some.
Matt contributing more has no doubt helped us as a team. I wouldn’t want to start next season with him and Gordon as our main strikeforce though.
If Matt leaves we should look at Harry Smith or Ollie Palmer for that type of striker both will probably be available
Matt Smith from Salford is one player we should look at getting. Sure he’s contract ends in the summer?
Go back to the thread when Sadler was appointed and you will find that we have done much better than people expected as well as much better than in previous seasons. Given that in recent seasons we have been in relegation trouble and playing boring football, this is a breath of fresh air. In fact, I would be apprehensive if we sneaked into a promotion spot this year but next season, we should be targeting automatic promotion.
And one man’s stubborn is another’s confidence in his decisions. I was fairly neutral about Sadler’s appointment but thought that a rookie was at least as likely to succeed as a seasoned 4th tier manager - I do not believe that any of the names touted would have done a substantially better job.
Oh I don’t know Laundryman, David Artell is ripping it up at Grimsby
I think my issue with Sadler was he was a part of the preceding years and thought that a new face may have been needed. On contrary it may be Sadler being around the club has avoided some of the pitfalls we seem to have been getting into a regular cycle of as he would have seen it all before. The Notts County win away was a pretty big moment as the pressure on the Tranmere game after would have been palpable considering the position we were in at the time.
Since then my other criticisms such as players not improving has been off the mark, Taylor Allen being the obvious example of that but could name several other players, Knowles being another who defensively has really come on.
We are improving, we managed to come out of January losing a key player and ended up with a better squad who has dealt with losing key players to injury so much so some can’t get back in the side. Smith had a similar points tally and trend in his 2nd season in league one where we just missed the playoffs. The following season was a rebuild which then took another 2 years sub 60 points so depends on the summer and squad churn. If we can keep the core which I can’t see why we can’t then give it a real good go next season assuming we fall short this one.
I agree with this to some degree, but there are a few exceptions.
At one point, it looked nailed on that we’d appoint Neill Collins and I’m quite confident that he’d have done better. I do agree that others who were more league 2 managerial merry go round types probably wouldn’t have done any better though.
Also, I’m all for confidence in decisions, and don’t buy into the DJ must start every game thing, but he should definitely be coming off the bench ahead of DJT, and so should Oteh.
The desire to play a very extreme system of very low possession (the lowest in the league), a lot of long balls (the highest in the league), high pressing often, physical attributes valued over almost everything else and only really playing football in the final third leaves most good players who would sign for us unable to play in such an extreme system.
As a result, we’re stuck with non-scoring strikers and struggling to make the midfield work (defender in midfield) to force the physical attributes into each role.
We’ve got a decent team, so rowing back on this a small amount and building a foothold in the game would actually allow us to play with a wider variety of players based on the opposition/players needing a rest/form without making us look totally disjointed and risking a battering.
I’m not totally against Sadler, but he really limits us unless he becomes a bit more flexible in his approach.
My only concern with Sadler is how he has treated DJ. To basically make our most natural goalscorer 5th choice is criminal, will cost us a play off place.