All this cack about ‘giving them time’ 
what an absolute whopper
Collective time on board well over 100 years 
What I would give to see a young, smart, successful woman, Karen Brady style (even though I dont like her particularly) on that board to kick that pathetic, 1990s boys clique into shape
Spot on PT. As a fan base we’ve not galvanised our support to effect change since the mid 80’s. The board know this too & their contempt for us is now for all to see, should they choose too.
Ive said & thought ever since we became a division 4 club, we should be looking down the pyramid not up. This view has not changed & unless their is change at board level, change in our approach to this window, more fans will drift away this summer; resulting in success being more difficult to obtain & our league status even more difficult to secure.
The same board have presided over this decline!
Until we signed Meyanese this week, we hadn’t signed a single player on permanent deal since the first week of July. We don’t own a striker. Yet we have a DoF. This month is huge & if it isn’t, then it’ll be the final nail in the coffin for many.
Some say the continued off field issues, trivial as they may seem, do not impact on our performances; that’s clearly not true. It sets a tone, it’s sets a culture, it sets a standard. Sadly our culture, our standards are woefully out of date and consistently poor.
(For the record, I’d have this view if we’d won 4-2 yesterday and were on a 5 match unbeaten run).
Wasn’t Tisdale the owner or whatever of Sign Specialists?
Presumably he had some input into the large advertising boards (that are now screens) above the away end and on the high poles on the car parks that are also visible from the M6.
Now, if you were very cynical you could say that they increased the rental value of the Bescot site, and the main beneficiary of said rental income possibly invited him on to the board of his football club to to keep a close eye on that?
You, and PT on the board, now wouldn’t THAT be a club worth following!
Current has-been’s (including our No.3) are strangling our club out of existence or into non league.
We all stand by and let it happen.
There will be no fan’s reaction at Bescot because we are all too busy arguing amongst ourselves on a constant basis, as is proved by UTS posts!
Oh no we are not!
Not just UTS.
You only have to look at the attempts of protesting over the last decade or so and see fans disagreeing on the form protests should take, even doing things that counteract each other. It’s no wonder they never really get anywhere.
Agree with this and the question I keep asking myself is protest against what/who?
Pomlett? We know he doesn’t have a pot to piss in, he has tried to instigate change with the DOF, but ultimately we are trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
The board? Most of them are faceless entities who I doubt I could pick out in a lineup?
Taylor? No doubt he is trying he best and what would it achieve after 6 months apart from highlight to every prospective candidate out there the poison chalice the job is.
Bonsor? Doubt he would hear us and given he wasn’t arsed when owner, he will be even less bothered when creaming 400k for doing nowt.
Gamble/Mole? Never changed anything before.
Going to the football is a purely social activity now, chance to get some fresh air, see family and people who have sat around me for years and generally vent a weeks anger because we are shit. The real aspect of enjoying the football on offer is further and further down the list of reasons to go.
Unfortunately for the club, that is where the loyalty aspect sits, the reason fans just keep forking out because “they are my team”. I can’t be on my own in this and as that emotional attachment become less, the fans will just drift away because most could list dozens of better things to spend the cost of a match day on. Therefore the club would have to offer significant reductions in ticket costs, depriving the football side of cash and it become a viscous spiralling circle.
I honestly think it is a mess, and unfortunately a static board doesn’t fill me with confidence that appropriate governance is in place to drive positive change. We will just continue to lurch from crisis to calamity to crisis.
Another thing.
Where the hell is Jamie Fullarton?
We should be hearing from him right now. To my knowledge he’s given one, maybe two public statements.
That’s appalling.
Ditto. It’s a social thing now, mainly. As with you, a chance to meet friends and catch up with some familiar faces in the ground. If my friends stopped going (many/most already have) I would stop too, probably. Never thought I would entertain that, always thought I would be last man standing, still there as we took on Bumblebury Rovers in the North Worcs & South Staffs League second division.
Yes, a football club is different to anything else. If something about Aldi annoys me, I have an Asda, a Home Bargains and four Co-ops all in walking distance so it wouldn’t bother me, likewise with all other commercial transactions, easy come, easy go. A football club has you in a vice-like grip, and they know it.
But, they shouldn’t be complacent (and if WFC is top of the league at anything, it is surely complacency) because I know several fans, 50-60 games a season chaps a couple of them, every single home game the others, who don’t go at all now. There was a straw that broke the camels back, and we probably all have one, although we might not think we do until that something happens.
It is dispiriting though. Someone at the club needs to act, needs to take action to put things right, and to start seeing us few thousand obsessives as an asset that can help take the club back where we would like to be, rather than seeing us as a bloody nuisance at worst, or as a cash cow to be milked at best.
We can’t conjure up a winning team over night, but a lot of this other crap, the club shop, the toilets, the no-beer, no-bovril, no-burgers, leaky pipes, dirty seats, embarrassing waste of space of an SLO, the scoreboard/big timer, they could sort all of that, if they were bothered, and if they were competent.
I tend to look at this from another way. It seems to me that the club is successfully making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
Take your point but has any of our regular media outlets like WM, Express & Star actually asked to interview him?
Either way, it would be a statement that says a lot and tells us nothing and contains some/all of these…
We have already acted quickly in this window to permanently secure Menayese.
We have a number of targets identified.
We are working to bring numerous players in.
We will only bring in players who are better than we already have.
We are doing our due dilligence and background checks of some
of them.
Etc etc etc
Most clubs at any level would probably say the same things during any transfer window tbh.
WM interview MT every week. That Wolves presenter nearly always cuts the interview short, thats if he plays it all.
I would still add one person to the board. Someone mid forty, who has some experience, skill in dealing with things called ‘football club in rough business seas’. When I read that list posted above, it is quite striking that new blood is needed. But not only someone younger, but also someone with some skill and experience. Of course I perfectly know, there is covid and many other issues stopping us from doing it. But rent is a small snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. Results of the last games are meaningless too for this topic.
Thing is, how many interviews do you see from directors of football at other clubs in relation to transfer deals?
Even if they did, its only going to be the generic responses because they won’t want to give anything away to scupper any potential deals
It’ll be the usual, “We’re working on 1 or 2 deals” “We know the areas we need to strengthen” "“Hoping to have something sorted in the next few days” etc
Taylor has already stated he wants a full back and a striker, so I’d much rather Fullarton be working behind the scenes this week going all out to sign atleast a left back ready for next Saturday.
It’s not about the transfer window I want to know mate.
I want to know about the trajectory, style of play, philosophy etc etc.
I think the style of play can be answered by reading this
I think with us being so inconsistent, with us averaging a win, a draw and a loss every three games, means the four points we pick up to then go and lose a game (usually against a team who haven’t won in 5 games) means that it’ll always be one step forward and two steps back, and that’s the most annoying thing about us.
Clarke has done fairly well wherever he has been apart from here why is that? He’s just one in a long line of managers who got the blame in recent years Taylor will be next unless the morons who run the club suddenly change
Its not about the current on field issues though. Its about the off the field problems we see week in and out.
I’ve just written the following meandering, directionless thoughts and so apologise in advance if you do bother to read it, as it’s a couple of minutes of your life you won’t get back!
You suspect that it is going to be years before our Academy, or youth system, or whatever it is called produces a sustained level of throughput capable of holding down first team places.
I get the impression that the wholesale playing side review allegedly being undertaken by the DoF includes the developmental stages, which again I get the impression that he doesn’t think too highly of. It therefore begs the question of what exactly the once highly praised Miguel Llera has achieved/is achieving. Is he as good as we are told/hoped him to be, or is he hamstrung by the reality of the actual level of resources going into “infrastructure”?
I feel that all the talk and information that we do get from the club is just something that we can beat them up about when things don’t happen, or work out and so it just seems to turn out to be waffle.
I can’t remember whether I’ve made this point on here before, but the concern for me in respect of the DoF is who is “qualified” to judge whether he is actually doing a good job, as the Chairman has stated that nobody on the board has football expertise to judge that performance/approach? Does the DoF have to come clean at some point down the line and recommend to the Chairman to sack him as he hasn’t done a good job? The Chairman seems to have given the Head Coach two years to get promotion (I think), but what about the DoF? Has he been given a timescale to prove himself? Or does it get to a stage where it’s bleedin’ obvious that the DoF might be rubbish and gets sacked anyway? I don’t understand why the Chairman seems to think that a DoF is necessarily a long-term appointment, especially a successful one, who is possibly just as likely to be head-hunted as a Coach/Manager would be. I appreciate that there fewer DoF positions around, but the principle remains.
Has the DoF decreed that we play a rigid 4-2-3-1 system throughout the club for so long as is here, or is that down to the Head Coach? Is the club identity being established by the DoF, or the Head Coach?
The conveyor belt of “right character” players that the DoF has allegedly got lined up to replace any departees, are they available and will they want to come here? Presumably those players are just names and that is as far as it could go at the moment.
The latest example of Leak appearing not to be trusted by MT to perform for the first team is very concerning, especially as two senior central defenders were unavailable and he is a regular on the bench. If not against Stevenage, then when is he is ever going to be given another chance, as if not him, then who? A full back! Does it take three central defenders to be unavailable for him to be “risked”, or more? Surely if you’re going to bring somebody else into the side from “out in the cold” like Mills, equally and preferably Sadler would have been a more obvious solution especially as he is a left sided central defender? Do we assume that both Sadler and Leak are finished as players here?
Whilst not all necessarily products of our system, Bates, Perry, Willis and Foulkes, don’t seem to be close to either making, or re-making breakthroughs to become regular starters. Bates and Perry are struggling for game time having both demonstrated an ability to perform at this level, whilst the concern in respect of both Willis and Foulkes is that they can’t even command regular first team selection for the lower-level clubs they are loaned to. None of this augurs well for the short, or medium-term prospects of them making an impact for us. Are none of these players good enough for us now, or ever? Have we got to write them off, dispose of them and wait for a new batch to filter through? Are they so cheap that we can afford to have them making up the numbers? I can’t see where we are going.
The current squad is a mess as has been said many times and I don’t know where the responsibility really lies. DoF, Head Coach, or both?
The carefully vetted “right character” signings are now having their mindset questioned!!
I would like our “clear identity” which is spoken of to be clearly explained to me because I don’t really know what it is or means. If it relates to a style of play whereby from a goal kick the keeper passes short to a technically limited central defender who then passes it around between other defenders and probably to the keeper again, who then try to pass it to technically limited midfield players facing them who generally aren’t comfortable/confident enough to pass in a direction other than back (Earing excepted) and so on it goes eventually forward in an uncontrolled way and momentum breaks down. Surely the coaching/awareness training should extend to those deeper lying midfielders to be coached to be able to receive the ball from a defender having assessed already what space they have got and to be able to control the ball and turn in a timely manner to carry the ball forward. Too often the likes of Labadie and Kinsella simply lay the ball back to the defender irrespective of whether they have the time and space to turn and progress the play forward. They are arguably shirking responsibility and passing the ball (and buck) back to a theoretically less equipped defender for the sequence to start again. Of course, there are times when you have to play the way you are facing, but they do it too often unnecessarily and therefore restrict our ability to advance constructive play into the heart of the opposition.
I didn’t watch the Stevenage match but I hear that Wilkinson was played centrally behind Miller. Why would the Head Coach play him there, when it seems fairly obvious to me that wider right is his best position and to play him anywhere else is likely to be to the detriment of the team? Earing has to be the player centrally because he has the technical ability to go forward, right and left. He is one of very few players who possess two good feet, to such an extent that it’s not that easy to know which is his dominant foot. His ability to effectively move onto either foot should be cherished and utilised to its utmost, rather than the overall benefit to the team being compromised by playing him deeper.
In my opinion, it is difficult to understand why you would not deploy your better players where they are likely to be most effective as it contributes to our general inability to be effective.
There is so much on which to comment both on field and off field, that it’s difficult to know where to start and end. Perhaps I shouldn’t have started!
Not at all sure why I’ve written all this, other than because deep down I must still care, despite being fed up and losing interest on a daily basis and with the futility of it all.
Absolutely. The question is whether it’s those individual players, the system, the managers direction… or all of those things.
Our midfield has been absolutely abysmal for years and years now. That’s the engine room, and we don’t dominate games, especially at home.