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Lets have some action this week plse Andy....`


Matt (GNFC)

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I wasnt at yesterdays game but listening to the radio it seemed to be an embarrassment and we could've easily lost 6 or 7 nil. Id like to raise some of my thoughts, which u may or may not agree with...

 

1) 3 of yesterdays team, Protheroe, Moore and Haworth to the best of my knowledge couldnt even get into their starting X1 at their respective Ryman clubs or have ever played conference football. These players are not 21 yrs of age, how do we suddenly expect them to perform on a consistent basis at this level?? Moore has played well but has his limitations as a center half whereas poor Rob is going through a bad patch..

 

2) Why do we continue to play such negative football with one recognized striker. No wonder we get labelled as a one dimensional hoof football team, because at the moment its true. Can we expect Rob to score when all he gets is hoofed footballs upto his head and then has nobody to release it to of significance?

 

3) Why have we got so many loan players. Where was Dennis Oli our fastest striker? Was it a case of Andy having to play Protheroe as he hadnt had a game yet?? We cant play all these players at once.It seems a complete waste of wages.

 

4) Why cant Louie Evans get on the pitch. In a time where our strikers are short on confidence this bloke is banging them in at reserve level yet doesnt even get called on yesterday.

 

5) Why let Strouts go. Im not his biggest fan as i think he's past his best but still seems very strange that Andy plays horses for courses vs Notts County and plays him then deems him not good enough and farms him out on loan. Seems absurd to me.

 

6) Why is Pat Gradley getting in the team. I felt he was really progressing well this season and looking better and better now he cant even get a look in.

 

7) If Andy wants some players out why doesnt he put some of them on the transfer list??? Duku springs to my mind as i think he's looked a shadow of the player he once was. He cant even seem to win a header these days.

 

8) Why does Andy continue to destroy Andrew Drurys confidence by hauling him off every game after 55minutes. Yes we know he's young but he is one of our most offensive weapons when he's played in the RIGHT position. We need to center our attacking options around him as he will be a major asset at this club if we use him right.

 

9) Why can Booth, Wilkins, Barr all go and be leading scorers in their divisions and not do it at this club. Is it Andys tactics that hinder our strikers? Why did we not make more of an effort to play Wilkins up front. Andy said he couldnt guarantee him a strikers role yet after he left and the beast left he was crying out for a striker like Craig and in my opinion ended up signing Haworth who is not as good.

 

These are my thoughts...

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Matt,

 

All your points are valid. Is it one game too far for Mr Ford?? Also if you are losing 0-3 with 15mins too go and your centre half gets injured why not give Evans a run if you lose 0-4 or 0-3 does this matter I feel Evans will not be with as for much longer as it looks to me as if he no longer fits in the plans. Hoof football does not suit him and I don't see Mr Ford changing the way he plays Just my opinion of course

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Have to agree as well Matt. No matter how good our defence looks on paper, that is generally the only place it does look good - we have only had a couple of clean sheets this year.

This puts an added burden on our forwards to score - often one goal doesn't even gain a point.

Midfield doesn't look too badly off, McKimm,Owen, Perkins, Walshe and Strouts all look conference standard.

Then we come to the forwards. Pinnock and Haworth have 9 league goals between them, whilst Grazioli has 20 so far for Barnet.

We therefore need to sort the defence out, by getting better organised, and do need a top rated striker who will score 10 - 15 goals between now and the end of the season, who can play alongside Haworth and feed off Drury.

 

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Agree with most of Matts' points.

 

I will also refer to Andy Ford's comments in The Reporter a couple of weeks ago:

 

''The players have given me everything but it is a sad fact of football that sometimes players have got their levels and you saw that against Scarborough last Saturday that some of them are not good enough.''

 

I'm afraid to say that this is also very true for management. Even with our so called "striker problem" man for man we're pretty much on a par with the likes of Burton, in this league. The difference is their players are being played to their strengths and more importantly playing for the BOSS. Yesterday's line up is probably the strongest Andy can field so the rest of the season looks very bleak, doesnt' it.

 

On another thread the importance of getting 7pts from the next 3 games was mentioned - I agree but on current form can't see us gaining more than 1pt. And that's against the 'Git', sadly!!!

 

On the money front, if Gladwish was so impressed with the Fleet after the Notts game, why doesn't he put up the extra cash now, rather than next season, and help us maintain Conference status??? The Conference has got to be a better publicity stage than the Ryman.

 

Yes we have striker probs but who supplies them with the service?? who allows the back four to be under continuous pressure for 90mins?? It won't matter how much is spent on a striker because without a strong creative midfield and more importantly, a smart, tactical, people orientated, respected manager, it will just be wasted.

 

Time for big changes is upon us now... leave it much longer and a lot of Fleet Fans' dreams for league footie in a few years could be gone forever!?!?!

 

Strong words? maybe.. but I, like many others, are very passionate about the club and fear we're on the slippery slope for sure.

 

Shape up now or ship out!

 

 

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One more thing, although may seem very easy to stand on the terraces and criticise, it should be remembered that Messrs Ford, Pennock Hillyard and Aitkin have upwards of 1000 league games experience between them.

It must be obvious to all at the club, (especially if the management team read the Forum) where our problems lie.

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Please someone enlighten me - are our players really not good enough? I may not be an expert, but I feel I have seen some of the best football played by us at times this season. Players seem to come in and give an excellent performance for a while, (when we keep the ball down and pass it we are a joy to watch) then for some reason they tend to go 'off the boil' a bit. Are players not playing in their best positions for some reason, or do we just panic at the first sign of adversity and change our manner of playing. I am not a specialist in the game, but I do know that when I enjoy watching us and the way we are playing we do seem to do better than when I see the long ball just going anywhere and hoping for the best.

Yes experts you can come back at me. I really would like to know as I feel we have some decent players.

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Twelve games ive seen this season. That means at the match. I havnt seen the fleet win one yet. Perhaps its me. Maybe I should stop going. Bad news I will be there on Saturday.

 

Sorry Vera I havnt seen 'good football' not this season. It must have been at the games I missed.

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Exactly Daz.

 

Vera, you're as much an expert as any of us. You are quite correct, when we play ball to feet we're quite a different team and a joy to watch but something is going blatantly wrong somewhere. Maybe the coaching, dressing room etc.., We do have some good players who are quite capable of keeping us in this league and I believe it boils down to good coaching, team consistency and utilising players' strengths. In Sept we played some great football, was it a coincidence that some of our established players were suspended at the time??

 

Fortunately, teams around us have very difficult fixtures over the next couple of weeks but it's a time when strange results tend to occur. Relying on other teams results may be our only option, at present. I really hope the team can turnaround and get 3 wins out of 3. I don't think we'll need as many points to survive this year but if you look at the remaining fixtures, it's difficult to see where 25-30 more points is going to come from.

 

Come on the Fleet please don't let us down...

 

 

 

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I believe everyone has made some really telling points,and this make do and mend policy, taking players who aren't exactly irreplaceable with their previous clubs,can't go on.

At the beginning of the season I got the impression that an awful lot of Conference clubs(both full & part time)had really strengthened their squads,which I don't believe we have,were merely treading water,struggling the same as last season.

I agree with Vera when we play the ball on the ground we do look so much more effective,iv'e watched a recording of the Notts County match and this bears this out.

I also attended the Hereford game and the same could be said there,I do agree that some players aren't being played in positions that suit them,and the Evans situation is frankly laughable,I mean our few strikers are really doing the business aren't they so it's very hard for him to force his way in!!

Now that the excitement of the cup is over reality has hit home,though i'm sure most of us were more than aware of the problems,youv'e got the money now Andy so start speculating or we are relegation candidates for sure.

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Vera, I think where Andy has excelled as a manager at this club is getting players to perform above themselves constantly. When we won the league we did so on a limited budget. We won the league because Andy Ford is/was a better manager at that level than Jeff King. Now we played magnificent flowing football in that division and was an absolute joy to watch. I remember quite clearly that we beat Burton 2-0 in the FA Cup at their place and the comment even at the end of the season was that we were the best team they faced all yr.

Now IMHO we all know that the step up from the Ryman level to conference football has been a big step for a semi-professional team. Its quite clear looking at the league table that we've not progressed in the same manner as Burton Albion. At Ryman level Andy brought in XYZ number of players who werent stars yet were able to adapt to our system and play a part in winning us the championship. The problem Andy has had over the last two yrs is that he's had to abandon the free flowing football of the Ryman championship team and focus on as he says "having a game based on work rate and hussle" simply because he hasnt been able to attract the standard of player needed to enable a free flowing football team due to the precarious financial position at the club. The problem in my view is that Andy has frittered too much of the money he has had available by signing crap after crap after crap player. Three crap signings = one decent player in my opinion. Andy wants a big squad, but i feel over the last 1yr especially he has built a big squad but squandered quality. Again, this all stems back from pre-season where we brought no strikers in of note even though we knew we had lost Che, Wilko and also knew we would lose the beast. If you have a team which in my opinion only has half a team of conference standard footballers then we are always going to struggle if they dont perform to 110% of their ability. Andy has always been a tinkerer and likes to have 45 people a season coming through the club. This worked at Ryman level but at conference level we have not achieved as we should have and Andy Ford himself knows it. Pretty spot on assesment?

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Matt I am not criticising Andy Ford and I doubt if anyone could have done better given his budget, but I do feel that to rubbish the players isn't fair, they can't all be bad, and the NLP has on occasions picked one of our players to make up their team of the day. I think our problem really stems from the fact that we weren't ready to cope financially with the Conference so soon, none of us expected to get promoted when we did, but wasn't it worth it at Bedford? Unfortunately, we had to spend money on the ground to turn it from a bog into a football pitch, or did we get that money from the F.A. I really don't know? I take on board your comments, but are they really that bad? I promise I won't comment further on this point

as I told myself I would never write on the Forum and here I am again.

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In my opinion yesterday’s 2nd half was bloody awful. After travelling 160 miles and seeing the team sheet we was optimistic, but 15 seconds into the 2nd half the fleet were back to one of their normal sub standard performances. Moore in my opinion saved us from at least another 2 goals, and regularly puts in a good show, so I have to disagree with the point made earlier that he isn’t up to it, he gets my vote. Drury I thought was having a very good game, until he came off, injured I can only think. Gibbs for a league player is crap and the sooner skins is back the better.

 

The support at Burton was top entertainment, and was my first away match this year (sorry), but I will be seeing if I can go more often. The banter with the Burton fans was very good, and I think between the 50 or so of us there we made enough noise.

 

Kenny made enough noise on his own for all of us Talking of Kenny, cant we threaten the team that if they don’t pull their fingers out and start performing, we will stick him on the return journey home that should do the trick (Only Joking Kenny). I also heard a rumour that a loan signing is coming in from wycombe wanderers, does anyone know anything about that or is it just a rumour? I think at the end of the day we all think the same thing SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE SOON…………..

 

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We are a Jekyll and Hyde team. For 2/3 rds of the match vs' Exeter (league) at home we played constant, fluent, on-the-floor football. Other times we ahve hoofed the ball over only for Rob to have no support. Surely if we can record results like that against full-time teams who are chalenging for play-offs, we can figure out that we are a better team when the ball is on the ground and we are not hoofing the ball to no-one?? A consistent striker is needed to partner Rob up front. Where is he??

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I'll keep this brief as Matt's original post sums things up nicely. Questions I've been asking myself:

 

a) Why have we not yet signed a recognised Goalscorer?

B) Why do we have so many loan players at the Club?

c) Why is a loan player such as Protheroe in the first X1 ahead

of an established player like Rob Owen?

d) Whats happening with the left back spot? Skinner's injured, Gibbs

suspended/unwilling to commit his long-term future to the Club?

e) Why play Route 1 football?

 

As soon as Sky confirmed they would broadcast the Notts County match, the Board and Manager had money to spend. Several weeks later and many points lost there is no news of this elusive goalscorer.

 

Promises were made in the Summer regarding quality signings. All these were broken. Its time to start fulfilling some of these broken promises!

 

 

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I was wondering how even though teams that are below us (or supposedly worse off) can have decent strikers. Boylan for canvey, the other names from the ryman team that i cant remember. McNiven from Northwich, Piper who joned Margate allbeit a loan deal but he scores. How come wwe cant get that elusive 20+ goals a season man??

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Cant agree with anyone that doesnt rate Chris Moore at the back. He is first centre back on the team sheet each week!!!!!! he is good enough for this level easily. Some players can come through from a lower level and perform and Chris is certainly one of these.

 

Strikers do not look conference standard! Any of them! Spend the cash up front and keep the attackive footy going!!!!

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