A Sense of Perspective Please

[portugull]

I think too many fans are being way too gloomy about our recent form with such a young and inexperienced team.

After loosing 3-1 at Gateshead on the opening day of the season( remember Gateshead reached the play off final last year) we had a fabulous run including 6 straight wins between 30th August and 20th Sept.Since our shock defeat 4-3 at Telford we have lost 6 games out of 10. However 5 out of 6 have been by the odd goal. The exception was the 4-2 defeat at Alfreton were our team selection was very strange. I am being polite!

The very fact that we beat Barnet away 3-2 tells me that we are capable of beating anyone in this league. As fans we have to keep backing the team and Chris Hargreaves who is doing his absolute best with no money to spend.

The signing of Durrell Berry is a big plus as I never rated Dale Tongue. Luke Young is a cracking player as we all agree and in Downes and Pearce we have 2 very good players at this level.

I have really enjoyed the football I have seen this season at Plainmoor and I still think we have a chance of the play offs. Please just get behind the team because our support is vital.We do not want to be like Bristol Rovers last season were the players hated playing at home. Result relegation!

[SuperNickyWroe]

I think too many fans are being way too gloomy about our recent form with such a young and inexperienced team.

After loosing 3-1 at Gateshead on the opening day of the season( remember Gateshead reached the play off final last year) we had a fabulous run including 6 straight wins between 30th August and 20th Sept.Since our shock defeat 4-3 at Telford we have lost 6 games out of 10. However 5 out of 6 have been by the odd goal. The exception was the 4-2 defeat at Alfreton were our team selection was very strange. I am being polite!

The very fact that we beat Barnet away 3-2 tells me that we are capable of beating anyone in this league. As fans we have to keep backing the team and Chris Hargreaves who is doing his absolute best with no money to spend.

The signing of Durrell Berry is a big plus as I never rated Dale Tongue. Luke Young is a cracking player as we all agree and in Downes and Pearce we have 2 very good players at this level.

I have really enjoyed the football I have seen this season at Plainmoor and I still think we have a chance of the play offs. Please just get behind the team because our support is vital.We do not want to be like Bristol Rovers last season were the players hated playing at home. Result relegation!

love your posts portugull, but lets add a bit of realism...

we lost to the two worst teams in the league telford and alfreton - and to cap that, a player we released who couldnt score for us, scored two against us.....

as for beating "anybody" that falls down.......
and downes??? sometimes ok sometimes shocking.

as for gettting behind the team, i think the fans do - its the inconsistancy that p155es fans off.

[lucy6lucy]

I think torquay players hated playing at plain
moor last season aswell Hence the double relegation.

[SuperNickyWroe]

I think torquay players hated playing at plain
moor last season aswell Hence the double relegation.

if thats the case, then why the f*ck were they playing for TUFC then?

[portugull]

Thanks Super. I saw the Alfreton match on TV in Portugal and as much as I respect Chris Hargreaves his selections for this game was a big mistake.

Losing to Telford. Well all I can say is in football it happens quite often that sometimes top looses to the bottom team.

Downes has scored I think 5 goals this season and generally gets his head on everything. I accept he is inclined to give away a few penalties every season but he is a centre back and it happens to the best of them.

I agree inconsistency is annoying but that is what happens with inexperienced players like Courtney Richards who is on a very steep learning curve.

[Dave]

Whether your team is beaten 1.0 or 4.0 is totally irrelevant, a loss is a loss and both results carry 0 points, some times I think the sporting mentality that us Brits grow up with is just wrong, from an early age we're told it's the taking part that counts, playing fairly well and losing 1.0 isn't ok if it keeps happening, if you finish second in a race you didn't nearly win, you lost, if the result ends up 1.0 to the other team you lost, it's that simple.

I do agree with you however, some of the football we've seen has been very enjoyable, and there's no doubt in my mind our team will go on and win more games than it loses, whether that will be enough to get a play-off spot that remains to be seen, when we talk about a sense of perspective this is the bit a struggle with though, I've put forward our financial position as a defence for the manager and the club, however Macclesfield and a number of part-time clubs who are doing pretty well are proof you can gain relative success working of peanuts, and Forest Greens struggles to gain promotion of a budget that dwarfs must proof that money doesn't guarantee success either.

I posted a lot stuff on the match thread last night, it wasn't an attempt to cry over split milk, nor was I trying to harp on about the past, because after all only if Robin Stubbs was still in his 20's, wasn't the point I was trying to make at all. I felt there was a blasé attitude amongst people at the club and parts of our fan base towards relegation, more than a few were of the opinion, well we've been there before , play-offs, Wembley it wasn't so bad, that was never going to happen again, as the club is in a different financial position and the loss of income was always going to be a bigger hit.

Think the doom and gloom is coming from the fact that the penny is beginning to drop with most, failure to gain promotion this season could leave stuck at this level for along, long time, even worse possible down the line.

[tomogull]

Since our shock defeat 4-3 at Telford we have lost 6 games out of 10. However 5 out of 6 have been by the odd goal.

And there you hit the nail on the head, Portu. We have lost too many games by conceding very odd goals ........

[Gullscorer]

Not to worry. Paul Buckle will loan us a goalkeeper until Martin Rice recovers his normally excellent form..

[tufcbrett]

I think alot of people thought we would walk the conference, and with our good start them thoughts grew. Its now kicking in that its not easy but in the same level saying were go down the the conference south is again ridiculous. Its tough we all know that and we keep fighting with such a young squad.
Big teams lose to bottom of the league teams all the time from Barcelona to us. Its also very rare that any side bounces straight back up. People forget its a tough league and most sides in the top half have good players and squads.

I dont understand either why people are so devastated by losing to macc who are an ex football league team that do have alot of potential to get back to the fl one day.

if you look the likes of luton, Crawley, fleetwood they have all spent a number of years in a tough conference and the gone on to flying starts and even getting to league one (yes I know luton have not gone up yet)

The season is only in november and got alot of games to go to find form and get up the table. But again if it doesnt work out this year then we add and replace to a squad with potential and go again. Its taken barnet a few seasons to find their way and it took us two seasons last time.

Its not all doom and gloom. At the moment we maybe getting bad results but once we find our form everyone will be raving again.

[Dave]

Hi Brett, agree with your sentiment, it's relatively early in the season and I'm no doubt the team will go another run of good results, will it be enough, at this stage no one can say. No body's saying we're going down the conference south this season, or in the medium term, if things don't change at the club however, it can and will happen down the line.

The devastation is not because we saw our team lose to Macclesfield , it comes from the fact our team has now lost touch with the top spot and if our current form continues we 'will' lose touch with the play-off zone very quickly and a return form might not be in time to reverse any gap.

For those out there thinking, well we'll soon be back into a run of games against the part-time no hopers, click the link to the conference current from table, a sobering read if there ever was one, and maybe every one at our club might want to get that into perspective.

http://www.footballformguide.net/form/v ... conference

[Dave]

In fact and just to add, if this current form was to continue for every team, and yes, I know it wont as some will play each other, and form can be temporary, but for the sake of it lets say it does, that would leave us around 14th and 9 points adrift of the play-offs , so obviously we need to see a change in results and soon.

[PlainmoorRoar]

In fact and just to add, if this current form was to continue for every team, and yes, I know it wont as some will play each other, and form can be temporary, but for the sake of it lets say it does, that would leave us around 14th and 9 points adrift of the play-offs , so obviously we need to see a change in results and soon.

interesting that, i would be very happy with playoffs this season, current form plus an extra 3 wins, very doable!

[Dave]

Considering I thought we'd finish somewhere between 12th-14th, I agree, reaching the play-offs this season would be a fantastic achievement, and I really hope we make it. Just have a slight concern looking at that form table, thinking that soon we'd have a run of match's against the so called lesser teams in the division which might give our team a chance to get some results and build confidence for the second half of the season, yet the majority of those teams are all currently above us the form table, some, way above.

Dover for instance, our next away game, and they've won 5 and drawn 1 of their last 6 home games, yes, a gap of 9 points is doable, but if we go into February 9 pts of the play-offs we're under a lot of pressure and the gap could easily grow.

[portugull]

Forevertufc the point I was making about 5 of the 6 defeats being by the odd goal was that we were not being hammered.

I agree a loss is a loss but the results show that we were in the games right up to the final whistle.

As an optimist I think 3 consecutive wins would put us right back in the top 5.

[Dave]

Got the point your making Portugull , this time last season we were in League 2 losing by the odd goal week in and out, in fact I think we broke some age old record for the amount of games we actually lost 1.0 and got relegated because of it, now a league lower we're still getting beat by the odd goal, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it's nothing to be optimistic about as the team have lost games because of schoolboy errors to sides we should not be losing to with all due respect to all.