And back in the real world.............

[Casper]

Ok, we are skint and going nowhere - fast. Yesterday was rubbish for the first 70 mins then Blackwell did what he should have done at the start, or at the very latest half time, and replace the inept Evans and Henderson with Ward and Camara. Pace and movement is everything in this division and these are the only 2 players in our squad who have that.

Right, so what do we do now? Whinge, moan, sulk, cry....abuse anything associated with the club? No. Not now. Now is the time for regrouping and giving everything to the cause. Now more than ever the club needs our support. I couldnt give a fook about business men, properties, share deals etc etc etc, I'm a supporter, a Blade, and all i can do is give my all to supporting the team.

There is 3 months of this season left, and who knows, if we get behind the team and management we might just sneak in there! If, and of course it probs about 90% a possibility, we are still in this division next season, then its got to be back to a 3-5 year rebuilding plan. We did this with Bassett and Warnock when they first arrived. I would thank KB for his efforts, get rid of all the loanees and dead wood and bring in a man to start all over again. Somebody like O'Driscoll, but whoever it is will need time.... and lots of it! We have no money so he would have to generate his own funds via player transfers, and of course drastically reduce the wage bill. We may need to take a few steps backwards, to go forwards, but it is imperative we get the right man and stick with him.

Anyway, it'll be much easier to get a pie and take a half time piss when we are back to 13-15k attendances..... always look on the bright side of life :thumbup:

 

[broomhillblade]

From the "gaffer's verdict" on the official site:

"I said at half-time that courage comes in many guises in football. It might mean making a tackle or a header, but when the crowd is restless and the form isn't there it is sometimes getting on the ball and playing a pass. And if it doesn't come off and the crowd have a go, it is having the nerve and confidence to keep trying it."

KB telling the team to pass the ball? Now there's a surprise!

 

[super_pig]

>KB telling the team to pass the ball
sorry but kev is making a subtle attempt to rewrite history here.. the players can't pass the ball they've got out of the habit due to the tactics of the last couple of years.. some of them it is debatable they could ever pass anyway (monty and quinn come to mind).. listen up kev..
rant on
THE CROWD GET RESTLESS NOT BECAUSE OF THE MISPLACED PASS IT IS BECAUSE THEY CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW THESE USELESS T***S GET PICKED IN THE FIRST PLACE..
rant off.

 

[Foxy]

>KB telling the team to pass the ball
sorry but kev is making a subtle attempt to rewrite history here..

He's made the same subtle attempt a number of times then.

 

[super_pig]

if kev is seriously saying he is encouraging the players to pass the ball .. how come the main protagonists of 'not' playing the ball are continually picked ahead of those who can.. the argument doesn't hold up.. these players are picked because they fit the style of midfield less football that kb supports.. this style will always keep us in the top half of the table and there will be enough 'oooh were in tenth though it could be worse' monkeys to keep him in his job.. it is percentage football simple as

 

[Foxy]

if kev is seriously saying he is encouraging the players to pass the ball .. how come the main protagonists of 'not' playing the ball are continually picked ahead of those who can.. the argument doesn't hold up.. these players are picked because they fit the style of midfield less football that kb supports.. this style will always keep us in the top half of the table and there will be enough 'oooh were in tenth though it could be worse' monkeys to keep him in his job.. it is percentage football simple as

Which players are these?

The worst two for it so far this season have left the club, Walker and Killa.

The majority of the league and half the Premier League is percentage football sadly.

 

[Nick Jansky]

I would thank KB for his efforts, get rid of all the loanees and dead wood and bring in a man to start all over again. Somebody like O'Driscoll, but whoever it is will need time.... and lots of it! We have no money so he would have to generate his own funds via player transfers, and of course drastically reduce the wage bill.

Somebody with a background in developing young players, so that the Academy finally becomes the fantastic asset that it could be.

 

[super_pig]

walker??... you're winding me up mate.. he has been our best player this season.. montgomery and quinn are incapable of making the simplest five yard pass.. you know i'm fed up of arguing about this.. its fucking pointless

 

[Foxy]

walker??... you're winding me up mate.. he has been our best player this season.. montgomery and quinn are incapable of making the simplest five yard pass.. you know i'm fed up of arguing about this.. its fucking pointless

He might have been one of our best players, but having watched them all season, i'd suggest that Walker and Killa have been amongst the most guilty for thoughtlessly booting it forward.

 

[HoodedClaw]

Which players are these?

The worst two for it so far this season have left the club, Walker and Killa.

The majority of the league and half the Premier League is percentage football sad'nt ly.

Maybe, but its done with much more method than KB employs

He might have been one of our best players, but having watched them all season, i'd suggest that Walker and Killa have been amongst the most guilty for thoughtlessly booting it forward.

I wonder if KB's Insitence on getting the ball forward asap to Henderson has any bearing on this.

As Super Pig intimated, if the players arent doing what KB wants why does he pick them??

 

[WhiteHawk]

walker??... you're winding me up mate.. he has been our best player this season.. montgomery and quinn are incapable of making the simplest five yard pass.. you know i'm fed up of arguing about this.. its fucking pointless

He might have been one of our best players, but having watched them all season, i'd suggest that Walker and Killa have been amongst the most guilty for thoughtlessly booting it forward.

Completely agree Foxy. I've said many times this season that Walker has been the worst culprit for just hoofing it long.

 

[Foxy]

I wonder if KB's Insitence on getting the ball forward asap to Henderson has any bearing on this.

Judging by his regular barracking of Walker from the sidelines and telling him to calm down, I wouldn't have thought so.

As Super Pig intimated, if the players arent doing what KB wants why does he pick them??

Because, whoevers fault having a squad our size is, we have little choice. Drop Killa and Walker? (when we had them), can you imagine the outrage?

Did we get an official comment as to why Wardy had been taken off on Tuesday?
I'd imagine it was a combination of him constantly wandering inside and taking himself out of the game and his hamstring....

Again on Saturday, Blackwell had a go at Wardy for wandering inside and not using the wing like he'd asked him.

 

[Casper]

Somebody with a background in developing young players, so that the Academy finally becomes the fantastic asset that it could be.

I agree, but i think the academy has already been a fair asset. Ok everybody hates selling the family jewels but looking over the last 10 years or so we have generated quite a chunk of money via the academy and the youth setup previous to this.

Off the top of my head :

Morris - £3m ish
Woodhouse - £1m
W Quinn - 800k
Jags - £4m
Tonge - £2.2m
The Kyles - £8-10m

then of course there the bit part players who went for a few hundred k - Forte, Hurst...

All in all thats £20m ish generated in around 10 years!

 

[HoodedClaw]

Judging by his regular barracking of Walker from the sidelines and telling him to calm down, I wouldn't have thought so.




Because, whoevers fault having a squad our size is, we have little choice. Drop Killa and Walker? (when we had them), can you imagine the outrage?

Did we get an official comment as to why Wardy had been taken off on Tuesday?
I'd imagine it was a combination of him constantly wandering inside and taking himself out of the game and his hamstring....

Again on Saturday, Blackwell had a go at Wardy for wandering inside and not using the wing like he'd asked him.

He could explain reason for dropping them:

"Ive left them out cos they ignore what Im telling them to do and just hoof it forward with no thought instead"

I could live with that, unfortunately as I said before IMO them hoofing it forward is more to do with how KB wants to play than them taking it upon themselves to just do it.

 

[Nick Jansky]

I agree, but i think the academy has already been a fair asset. Ok everybody hates selling the family jewels but looking over the last 10 years or so we have generated quite a chunk of money via the academy and the youth setup previous to this.

Off the top of my head :

Morris - £3m ish
Woodhouse - £1m
W Quinn - 800k
Jags - £4m
Tonge - £2.2m
The Kyles - £8-10m

then of course there the bit part players who went for a few hundred k - Forte, Hurst...

All in all thats £20m ish generated in around 10 years!

What did we get for Mellis?

 

[Casper]

What did we get for Mellis?

oh yes, sorry, forgot about him. Wasnt he £1m ?

 

[alcoblade]

I agree, but i think the academy has already been a fair asset. Ok everybody hates selling the family jewels but looking over the last 10 years or so we have generated quite a chunk of money via the academy and the youth setup previous to this.

Off the top of my head :

Morris - £3m ish
Woodhouse - £1m
W Quinn - 800k
Jags - £4m
Tonge - £2.2m
The Kyles - £8-10m

then of course there the bit part players who went for a few hundred k - Forte, Hurst...

All in all thats £20m ish generated in around 10 years!

Of that list, only the 2 Kyle's came from an academy.The others were brought through the previous, and far cheaper, youth system.

I'm not arguing one way of the other about the academy, but we did bring a few through long before we spent millions on it.

UTB

 

[WorkingtonBlade]

Totally agree with Casper's original post.

When you go from being a big-money team (by the standards of the level you're at) to being penniless, it is bound to take a bit of time for fans to adjust. Initially, it's just incredibly depressing - particularly for those who have been through it all before.

But most of those who have been through it all before will also remember the fantastic fun that was had in what on paper should have been hard times - such as the 4th division season, and the years on a shoe-string under Bassett. In those later years, beating the big money sides with sheer guts and determination. There was no money, so no-one (well, hardly anyone) was under the illusion that we had a right to be better than we were. Every win was an achievement.

Making the psychological transition takes time, and many fans won't be prepared to make that change and will drift away (no criticism from me, that's their choice). But the quicker the rest of us make that change, the quicker we can start enjoying it again. It's easy to stamp our feet and say that, given the size of the club, we should have the right to expect to beat the likes of Watford - but it won't actually change the situation. If we want to beat such teams in future, we'll have to do it by getting the best out of cheap players and the academy system, and by the fans getting behind the team, and the club.

None of this means we can't still be aiming for the top flight. My experience of watching the Blades suggests we don't tend to do any better when we've got money than when we haven't. It just means we have to do it a different way - we can't just out-spend other teams any more.

I don't necessarily care too much whether we go forward in the style of, say, Doncaster, and try to pass our way to promotion, or whether we do it in a more direct style. What I do know is that there's no point in screaming at the team to pass the ball, then booing them when a pass goes a stray. If we're going to string hundreds of passes together in a game, some of them are going to go astray (particularly if those passes are going to achieve any kind of penetration - anyone can just pass it around at the back) - and if we boo the player who delivered the rogue pass, next time he's going to hit it long (or just settle for an easy pass which is low risk, but gets us nowhere).

This is NOT an attempt to say that our current style is the fans' fault rather than Blackwells. It isn't. But if we're going to start passing the ball more (and I think people have made it pretty clear it what they want), we can't boo the player who gets it wrong!

 

[William Large]

I don't think that there would be too much complaint if we played the long ball but were actually good at it. Too often we lump it forward aimlessly to areas of the pitch without a red and white shirt within 10 metres. This is the frustrating part for me. I accept that we aren't always going to play flowing, patient, passing, football but when we do manage to keep the ball for a while (rarely) we tend not to look that bad. Lets be honest last season we were mostly dire to watch with the exception of the two Prestons play off games where we suprised everyone by passing them off the park.

 

[Blade58]

Of that list, only the 2 Kyle's came from an academy.The others were brought through the previous, and far cheaper, youth system.

I'm not arguing one way of the other about the academy, but we did bring a few through long before we spent millions on it.

UTB

Hopefully the academy will continue to churn out decent players and it may be that it has an even more important role to play whilever we are in financial difficulty, both in terms of providing the odd first teamer and generating revenue.

There are certainly one or two more lads on the conveyor belt worming their way through the ranks.

Connor Brown...........believe it or not, another right back
Mcfadzean (spelling)
A very promising GK in Willis, who has represented England at U16 level whilst still only 14.

There will be others. I can only think of the above.

 

[Bladeloyal]

I don't think that there would be too much complaint if we played the long ball but were actually good at it. Too often we lump it forward aimlessly to areas of the pitch without a red and white shirt within 10 metres. This is the frustrating part for me. I accept that we aren't always going to play flowing, patient, passing, football but when we do manage to keep the ball for a while (rarely) we tend not to look that bad. Lets be honest last season we were mostly dire to watch with the exception of the two Prestons play off games where we surprised everyone by passing them off the park.

to play the long ball game you need a deane and agana sadly we have a ched and hendo.under blackwell we get poor clumsy one dimensional crap.

 

[Toronto Blade]

As long as Blackwell is there the style won't change.
Making lovely passes like Arsenal did today with all their little speedy midfielders doesn't help them against the physicality of Chelsea.

 

[super_pig]

>i'd suggest that Walker and Killa have been amongst the most guilty for thoughtlessly booting it forward.
killa yes.. i'm glad he's left.. totally overrated.. it is where you boot it to that counts.. i'm not arguing about this any more.. i'm fed up of arguing with people who seem to feel sorry for monty and quinn who are probably on ten grand a week.. i don't care if they've been here since the jurassic period and if they were born on shoreham street.. they're the worst two players i've seen for a long time.. and coming from someone who witnessed cutbush, de Gooey, butlin et al thats saying something.

 

[Grecian2000]

Which players are these?

The worst two for it so far this season have left the club, Walker and Killa.

The majority of the league and half the Premier League is percentage football sadly.

Aye, out they go and we revert to a nice passing game. Or NOT in the real world.

I have seen this criticism of Walker all season and frankly it makes me laugh. Oh, how Harry will regret signing the lad and watch him playing in the Prem whilst we HOOF it up to Hendo every chance we get.

Walker out, you know it makes sense!

 

[raul]

Marked improvement in the overlapping department since his departure too.

 

[Grecian2000]

I find the whole thing totally barmy.

We have a class player who looks comfortable going forward, has the pace to recover from his inevitable "learning" errors and has been head and shoulders the best player for us all season.
And yet, we get people accusing him of being the leading exponent of the "hoof". How he can be this AND be the focal point of our right sided attack (which he has been provided Blackie hasn't gone to 1-0 up, stop the full backs going forward mode), is astounding.

Thank god he's gone, save these people from having to watch proper football.

Hoof in, football out. You know it makes sense!