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Match Day Thread: Shrewsbury

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  • Old saying.....if you keep doing the same things you get the same results....wake up Matt

  • After next weekend’s trip to Derby County, we end the year with three huge games against sides who are also in dreadful form.


    Port Vale (H) 23/12 - six points from a possible 36 (W1 D3 L8)

    Exeter City (A) 26/12 - five points from a possible 36 (W1 D2 L9)

    Leyton Orient (A) 29/12 - five points from a possible 24 (W0 D5 L3)


    For ref: Wycombe Wanderers - three points from a possible 24 (W0 D3 L5)


  • I consider that game more like a free hit than anything. It's not the games vs the teams at the top end of the table that are your bread and butter, if you win the games against a decent proportion of the lower 2/3 of the table then you'll be all right, but we're not doing that.

    It's more the Port Vale (mistyped 'Port Value' for some reason) game that worries me, a poor and demoralised team that's exactly the kind of game that we really need to be winning, but at the moment...?

    Let's hope for the best.

  • The many people who suggested we were playing much better football than under Gareth, have almost to a man disappeared too.

  • Oh we played some turgid stuff when necessary under GA. But with 10 minutes to go and a goal down the home fans would have absolute belief we could still win, let alone draw. Today the place was emptying long before the minutes board was even picked up.

  • I don't want Blooms gone... yet. But he has to change. It's not working. Today was an improvement on the last few games only inasmuch as sticking me in midfield would have been an improvement, so low was the bar. This does feel a bit too much like the Smillie era.

    I've had a ST for over 30 years but am wondering whether there are less depressing options on the 23rd. A gung ho defeat against superior opposition is one thing, tedious, predictable football with little creativity over and over again is another, and not something I want to put myself through again anytime soon.

  • If we are comparing MB to GA, we need to fess up that most of us probably were keen for GA to go 19 months into his tenure. Many may have booed him as we lost to Bristol Rovers at home. 12 months after that we were in the play offs.

    That showed what giving someone time can get. We were never going to go up this season. I still don't think we'll go down. Until its looking more likely than it is now, I want to see us give Blooms time.

  • I see ‘I don’t think we will go down’ a lot in comments. Apart from blind faith what makes you think not? We are an absolute shambles of ability and tactics. It’s Tony Adams era levels of tactical ineptitude. We very much COULD go down.

  • Completely different situations - Blooms has been well-backed to assemble a squad that should be comfortably in the top half and he's just not delivered

  • Main reasons is there are 3 worse teams than us.

    If that fails, a blind belief that a side with our players should get 25 more points to keep us up

  • So a serious question @ReturnToSenda , what would you do if you had the decision right now. Would you sack Matt and if so, who would you bring in instead?

  • Starters? We're giving our opponents second helpings.

  • edited December 2023

    The truth of that situation though is that, if the club had had the money GA would have been sacked. And we only survived because Bristol Rovers couldn't score.

    I don't want to be relying on the inability of others to survive in league 1. I'm sure MB will be a good manager in time, I'm just not sure we can afford for him to spend the time learning with us.

    Right now, I can't see us winning the necessary points to avoid being in the relegation scrap. And I just don't see MB currently having the experience to guide us safely through that.

  • We have 5 games up to and including 1st January. Unless we get a minimum of 7 points from those games then reluctantly I think Matt and Wycombe need to part ways. I would NOT reappoint Gareth, we need to go forwards.

  • We need to crack on as we are for now and hope it improves as the injured/unfit players get back into things. Potts is still to come back who is arguably our best player. Vokes looked semi fit, as does Lyle Taylor etc.


    However, people need to stop using the outlier Ainsworth was poor at first then became amazing example.

    There's plenty of examples of managers who were poor and wouldn't have got better like Smillie, Smith and Adams.

  • I imagine Duff would pitch himself at a higher level than us, sadly.

  • edited December 2023

    I agree, but in an ideal world...

    I'm a fan of Mark Bonner too, not quite sure why it unraveled at Cambridge

  • I'm very surprised the Cowleys are still out of work too

  • The Cowleys would be a good shout if Matt was dismissed.

  • Danny Cowley has been at AP at least twice this season already.

  • I don't think they'd be very popular based on the reaction when they've been mentioned on here before

  • Interesting comparison with Ainsworth and the QPR scenario.

    QPR took the tough decision to release him and it looks as if that decision is working for them.

  • If we have the money to pay off MB and his team and then bring in someone and his team that the Gasroom are convinced will get us promoted...I will applaud the business skills of RC.

    For me until they scored from nowt we were playing well...then we fell apart. As someone pointed out second half reminded me of the 24 shots on goal 0-0 of the Ainsworth era.

    Along with the people who thought we were playing well at the start of the season being missing...a lot of the people remembering how we always knew we would win even when losing under GA are the ones who spent 18 months calling for his head.

    If we are still struggling post Christmas perhaps Matt will get the hook...but I would be surprised if we get a name manager if he does.

    As the Gasroom cliche goes I hope to be proven wrong...

  • edited December 2023

    I’m still in the ‘Matt in’ camp but if he does go I’m very much of the view that we should be beating Gareth and Dobbo’s doors down.

    The idea that it has to be someone else to be progress (and therefore by implication that appointing Gareth is regress) is for the birds.

    We should remember just how good his team were when he left. We’d just won five on the spin including titanic victories over Bolton and Derby. I’m convinced that with two months of the season left that team, in that form, would have reached the play-offs.

  • I'm trying to remember when going to games has been as dispiriting as it has been recently, probably not since 2013/14 when we seemed to be inexorably heading down the black hole of relegation out of the Football League.

    I suppose today was marginally better than the last game I saw against Reading, though it was frustrating to see how few ideas and the general lethargy of our play. Shrewsbury only came here to keep a clean sheet and yet they showed more attacking threat than we managed to muster with all the possession we had.

    Killian Phillips was probably the only player who came out with any real credit. Aside from some fantastic displays of close control he put in a real shift where others seemingly didn't want to put themselves out too much.

  • Portsmouth under the Cowley's were slow and ponderous and often ineffective up front. Pretty much everything Bloomfield's Wycombe is accused of. I don't understand the interest there. Portsmouth were one of the poorest sides I saw at AP last season.

  • I honestly can't understand why anyone would not want Gaz back.

    We know, through a decade of almost unparalleled success, that he is among the best football managers in the league.

    Why would we ignore that!?!

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