Hardly a controversial opinion is it? I mean who has said they are the best full backs we can hope for and they need to stay in the team at all costs?
I’ll take that as you admitting you got it wrong.
We’re all human 
Are you Neuromantic? Only it’s weird that I’ve stopped getting strange PMs from him all of a sudden and biting comments about the full backs and all of a sudden here you are. I mean, I don’t think I have ever even discussed it with you? 
Find me a post where I “got it wrong” that the full backs where the best choice we can hope for and I’ll agree 
Edit: Ha, indeed you are. Just checked the post history. Challenge still stands 
Nope! I’ve been a watcher for a while 
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Fair enough 
Stumbled across this. 100 votes cast on this site ahead of the start of the season, although this was before a glut of late signings.
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Looks like the consensus was pretty good.
Promotion 2%
Play-offs 3%
Mid table 13%
Lower mid table 17%
Successful survival battle 37%
Relegation 26%
That gives an approximate expected final league position of 2 x 0.02 + 6 x 0.03 + 12 x 0.13 + 15 x 0.17 + 20 x 0.37 + 21 x 0.26 = around 18th, (depending on exactly which position in the range people were thinking off).
That indicates that this season is going pretty much as expected, since we are currently 17th but trending lower.
Our excellent start to the season may have caused us to forget how bad we were last season, right up to the end of it. We really had little or no reason to expect great things.
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“Right up to the end of it” when? We took 8 points from our final 8 games. We’d taken 11 from our previous 10. There was no upturn once keates came, we limped over the line feebly.
The only time we looked good last season was the period before Edwards got injured, when he was inspired and we actually played some football, albeit without a striker of good enough quality.
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Our excellent start to the season may have caused us to forget how bad we were last season, right up to the end of it.
I am not sure why you have misunderstood my comment. I said that we were bad right up to the end of last season, which we were.
Keates brought no improvement last season, so it was a big surprise to me when we had a great start this season, but it was unfortunately something of a false dawn.
Sorry Bernie, I think it was the placement of the comma. I can see it now. Maybe a trigger for me, the idea that keates miraculously saved us last year when the truth is we’d probably have got the same or more points if he hadnt arrived and, therefore, taking those games and this season as a whole, his record is atrocious and I don’t see where we’re heading (apart from down, obviously)
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To be fair I think he did. We had taken 3 points from 18 before he took charge after the Wigan game and, in my opinion, looked like sure fire relegation fodder. That Wigan game was pathetic, I’ve never seen a more one sided affair. We had also been hammered 3-0 at home to Rochdale and put in such a poor performance in a local derby at Shrewsbury our own fans started scrapping.
We took 7 from the next 18 on offer, which ended in the Northampton game and virtual safety. Not a figure that will win you any medals by any stretch of the imagination but the wheels had well and truly come off the cart before his arrival.
The wigan game was after Whitney had left but technically before keates was manager so you can’t include that one. So let’s rephrase and say that we’d taken 3 points from 5 games before the wigan one. Certainly far from good enough and we were sliding but, as others have said further back on this thread, the one thing you could say about that team is that it was capable of going out and getting an unexpected win, as they’d done 3-0 at Southend, so they were more than capable and likely to pick up a point a game in their remaining fixtures. Indeed, I’d argue that, if you look at something like the Wimbledon game, keates arguably lost us 3 points and gave us, in retrospect, a clear indication of his shortcomings.
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And, by the way, I don’t disagree that the wheels had come off. And what did that coincide with? Edwards getting injured when he was in top class form. Tough to handle the loss of such a player but also a clear indication of Whitney’s shortcomings in terms of having a threadbare squad so affected by the loss of one player (and, to be fair, the loss of form of our “star” player who knew he’d be off in the summer)
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You seem to be very pro-Whitney shrops.
Whitney was an unmitigated disaster.
But I’m starting to suspect not as much as a disaster as keates.
And as we did at Gillingham a few weeks ago.
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We had taken 3 points from 18 before he took charge after the Wigan game and, in my opinion, looked like sure fire relegation fodder.
To Shrops point: the Wigan game was on 21 March 9 days after Whitney was sacked and five days after Keates was appointed on 16 March. All the previews and reports of that match describe as Keates first match in charge, his first team selection and so. But by coincidence as things stand today 328 days after Keates became Walsall manager we have taken just 3 points from 18 and are looking like sure fire relegation fodder. This 3 points from 18 is worse than any spell of six matches under Jon Whitney.
If you want to assess Whitney you should do so by looking at his whole time in charge, not just the last few games. His record overall is better than Keates’ so far.
As I have said earlier in the thread I still support Keates and would not want him to be sacked, booed or ridiculed, just as I did not want Whitney to be sacked, booed or ridiculed when he was.
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Agree we looked relatively comfortable until Edwards was in injured
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No I can, it was still the same set of players performing and indicative of the job Keates still had to do. It’s irrelevant whether it was Whitney in charge or not, I’m not comparing the two managers.
No doubt about it. I’m a massive fan of Edwards. But Keates didn’t have him either at the end of last season which is the period I’m talking about.