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Match day thread: Cheltenham

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  • Re Gormania. Oh the anticipation of Sergio Torres coming off the bench. Compare and contrast with the arrival of D’mani Mellor yesterday (!).

  • Nostalgia does funny things.


    Like when you think back, wow, we had Johnson and Williamson as a combo. Twoi future premier league players, it must have been an unbeatable combo.

    But at the time, the feeling was that we needed an experienced centre back to help them along, and Stuart Nethercott came in.

    Not to mention some assorted madness from Adams trying to play Johnson at left back, and talking about maybe he's a striker!

  • edited November 2022

    I felt for Mellor yesterday. We had Vokes we lumped it and nothing doing. We had Hanlan and Vokes we lumped it and nothing doing. What chance has that poor kid got? If we were simply going to lump it put Wakely up front.

    The last days of Tony Adams saw similar tactical master classes.

  • I loved John Gorman, in fact I'm pretty sure I came up with the term Gormania, but Gareth Ainsworth is without doubt the best manager we have ever had

  • Completely agree with this. Our fullbacks/wingbacks are the biggest weak spot in the team and squad. A fully fit best XI would still leave us with issues in those positions.

  • That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Those that aren’t as daft as me and only go from time to time surely do so on the basis of watching a decent game, not for a car park burger with mayo cheese.

    Oh for some Gormania right now.

  • I’d like to see people get behind young players like Mellor a bit more before writing them off after 8 or 9 brief appearances

  • The trouble is he hasn’t shown anything that suggests he’s anywhere near good enough. De Barr and Al-Hamadi both seem to have more about them.

  • Very much agree. People are too quick to judge and some of the comments on here about our younger players after the Walsall match were appalling.

  • I would like to see a bit more of De Barr. I thought he played well against Northampton in the League Cup and was bright for his 15 minute cameo against Walsall.

    He looks like a footballer to me and someone who’ll give defenders a hard time in an Alex Samuel kind of way.

    I liked this comment on Twitter from a Gibraltar fan on his performances this week (albeit against Lichtenstein and Andorra)….

    “Like you had never been away! Still a constant pain in the arse to every centre half. Always fun to see them cry to the ref. Already looking forward to you roughing up van Dijk in March.”

  • As Mr Micawber might have said: “2-0 away win against inferior opposition, result only 178 comments in over a week. 1-0 away defeat against inferior opposition, result 280 comments and counting, in just over 24 hours - with @TheAndyGrahamFanClub in meltdown...”

  • Man Utd saw something in him. Give him a chance, he's a kid and will develop given the opportunity and coachi.....oh wait. Yeh you have a point.

  • If only Sam Vokes was a constant pain in the arse to every centre half.

  • I see your point @micra but for the first time I now find myself questioning the impact/value the Vokes is bringing to the current squad. It's probably many complex factors and I'm way off in focusing on an individual but that's what came to the front of my mind end of play Saturday.

  • Yeah, we'd have been much better with a different striker watching the ball sail miles over his head into touch for 90 minutes on Saturday

  • You do know he won players' player of the season last year don't you?

    Need to get you up to the training ground to explain to them why they don't know what they're talking about

  • You’ve probably seen more of him than me to be fair.

    Just think when a young player leaves a club like Manchester United and has suffered a serious knee injury, what they really need is a chance for their confidence to be built back up.

  • @LeedsBlue

    178 = only fair performance against rubbish opponents

    280 = rubbish performance against only fair opponents

    The numbers don’t lie

  • edited November 2022

    Probably time to sign out of the gasroom for a bit when De Barr is being favourably compared against Vokes!

  • You should surely know by now after any loss everyone who played badly is rubbish and the person not picked would have done so much better.

  • PBoPBo
    edited November 2022

    I think it can’t be helping Mellor either that he’s only getting scrappy cameos, often at a stage where we’re desperately chasing the game and we’re not playing (as a team) with any sense of unity or confidence.

    But at the same time, senior football is always going to be a case of sink or swim and you have to maximise whatever opportunity you get to show what you can do.

    I wonder if the dev squad are getting enough game opportunities though. Earlier in the season we heard that we now had a size of dev squad where it’d be easier to organise games v other dev squads.

    However, now we’ve sent some out on loan then I wonder if we can still do that. Don’t get me wrong, loans and a chance at first team competitive football are the right way to go for the dev guys, but it may limit the chances to set up full dev squad games if we’ve got fewer players around.

  • It's an intriguing situation with these development players.

    Do they play the games for their loan club and train with us in the week? Or are we putting their development down to the ability of the lower level clubs for a while?

  • We'd see more of De Barr if we could attract more of De Staff

  • I think De Queue has improved to be fair

  • I think the concept of having a development squad will be on the agenda in the summer. If we're so heavily in debt (I don't actually believe we are but that's another story) then we will have to analyse the fundamentals.

    Mellor was a raw teenager signed after being released from a Premier League youth team but went straight into the first team squad. Why? His appearances so far don't really show that he's a better prospect than Pattenden or Parsons. But perhaps the management team felt he was already more developed, or was less of a risk than the others.

    Fundamentally do we need a development squad when 9 in 10 will play for us for a couple of seasons, spend much of that time on loan to Conference / Conference South teams, often only making the subs bench there, and then be released by us? When we rarely have enough players in our squad to play B team matches or, when they're all out on loan, 11vs11 on the training ground?

    Is it worth the coaching costs, the management time, the accommodation and personal development headaches? Or could the club just sign two or three cheap but promising young players who just fail to make the cut from U23s in higher divisions each season and put them straight into our first team squad? We might lose out on the occasional Mehmeti or Forino who blossom suddenly and unexpectedly... but at a time when money is in short supply is that an easy sacrifice to make?

    Let's not forget Luke O'Nien was similarly released from a Premier League youth team, was expected to be squad fodder when he signed but supplanted Stephen McGinn straight away and after securing us promotion was sold for profit. Isn't that the better model to follow?

  • Think it will all be judged on results, it's a separate scheme away from the first team, it costs a certain amount and has so far produced Anis and Chris as valuable first teamers and a few raw prospects and squad fillers. If it continues to provide at that level it probably has a place. Not that we are likely to see cost breakdowns anytime soon.

    Failures in first team recruitment should not be blamed on the dev squad when we are being led to believe we are spending record amounts there also.

    Interesting how people view wether we are in financial trouble too and what that means short term, as I see it the owners seem more than happy to plough on and expand spending over the next couple of years rather than showing any interest in cutting back. Of course if that doesn't deliver increased income generally via gates and food, or via player sales or championship TV money we could be in the brown stuff later.

  • Without the development squad concept, we would be unlikely to have signed Mehmeti or Forino. While we don't know costs of the system, it seems on the face of it to have been very much a success financially on the back of likely sales value of those two. It was always known that the majority of players going through the system would not make it - the problem is that at the start of the season they play for us we don't know which will and which will not.

    Whether or not the system can be maintained going forward will depend on many factors including costs. Having assembled the expertise,it seems a shame to lose it if that can be avoided.

  • Don't want to go in on him too much, but Mellor is older than Mehmeti and already had League 2 loan experience last year.

    He should be a step above the other Development players, which I guess he is by being regularly named on the bench. But his performances don't show it.

    Same age as Pattison was in the 18/19 promotion season, and he's made less of an impact. I'll be surprised if Mellor is still in the EFL in 3 years time.

  • Think your deluded 2nd best maybe i think your forgetting someone.

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