Best Of

My understanding is the timing wasn’t great for Dan Rice, since he was focused on the transfer window, but he’s been speaking to a number of potential candidates. There will be an interview process, although that may have concluded by now. From everything I’ve heard I can’t see Sam Grace being offered it as an interim but it’s football so anything could happen.

He's kept the faith well, put the hard yards in and hopefully gets a deserved spell of luck now.

Cut and paste the comments for Gape. Good when fit, which sadly hasn't been anywhere near enough. Wrap him in bubble wrap and you might get 10 games out of him during the second half of the season

Exactly this

I think he is just hot-and-cold for me. Not clinical enough to be a 9, does not create enough consistently to be out wide. I posted something similar recently, but here is the strike rate (at least per appearance, not sure of the per 90) for our main goalscorers:

Kone: 20 in 55 appearances - 0.36 goals per appearance.

Lubala: 12 in 38 appearances - 0.31 goals per appearance.

Vokes: 30 in 139 appearances - 0.21 goals per appearance.

Udoh: 6 in 31 appearances - 0.19 goals per appearance.

Hanlan: 16 in 110 appearances - 0.14 goals per appearance.

I am sure there is some context if you get into goals per 90, or how often someone has played the 9 v wide, but I would guess the above stats would mostly bear out what we have seen with our own eyes bar Udoh, who I think is more clinical than the numbers give him credit for, owing to playing out wide an abnormal amount for his skillset.

Hanlan actually has the same strike rate as Kieran Sadlier, who exclusively plays out wide. I think Mustard was good as a second option in the prime Vokes years, but with the quality we have now, the stats above would put him as our 5th option to play as a striker.

The above is also the reason I keep banging on about Lubala being our backup 9 - he is more clinical than anyone bar Kone, but does not offer anywhere near as much out wide. There is a pretty significant caveat of him feasting for 4 goals in one game against kids in the Pizza McCheckatrade, but that is probably balanced out by how often he has been played out wide recently.

After the Mansfield Away Game: Match 26

Changes at the top this week - Many congratulations to @wwfcblue who reaches top of the Leaderboard for the first time this season with a new personal best prediction for the season. Congratulations also on the first sub 50 score of the season. The scores and maximum discards are such that @wwfcblue will keep top spot for at least the next match.

Congratulations to @Commoner who takes 3rd place, also with a personal best prediction of the season so far, missing by just four, one which does equal @DevC's existing all round best prediction of the season so that accolade is now held jointly. Congratulations to @Commoner for that too.

In fourth place @93Chairboy's score of 191 in the Mansfield game was just enough to hold onto 4th place as a new tenth best prediction.

There is clear water between 5th and 6th, it looks around a '5 point' gap to me.

In eigth place @perfidious_albion's score of 208 was also a new tenth best score so far and enough to move him up from equal 8th place to 8th place alone, which is why the table show @ryan_w_kirkby2 moving down a place with no-one appearing to move up.

Congratulations to @bookertease, @mooneyman, and @BSE who all moved upwards in the section of the Leaderboard.

Congratulations to @LDF who moved up the most places this week and congratulations also to @our_frank who moved upwards who was the only other forecaster, apart from @wwfcblue to reach a highest point in the table so far this season.

Chat gpt had another good week and was the third entity to record a closest prediction of the season so far.

No point doing Cressex petrol station jokes as this lot are so modern they'll do all the interviews on computers

Yep, we're still in a period of official mourning. All jokes are off the table.

Too early for some for sarcasm I see

Interesting article about Paul Lambert (did anyone realise he had won the Champions League?)

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/jan/19/paul-lambert-interview-dortmund-motherwell-celtic-zidane