DangerousSausage

The people running that club are odious. I hope they fall flat on their faces. I remember Albert Scardino praising the pyramid, saying how it made our leagues so much more exciting than American sports. The new breed of American owners don't seem to agree - they see their system with franchises and no relegation as the default and want that in England too. Our game is a cash cow for them. 11 Premier League clubs are already under American ownership - just three more and they can implement rule changes. Our sporting culture could scarcely be more different to the American one. Are we just going to allow it to be sold off for the benefit of international TV viewers?

Let's go again! Get your predictions in by 3pm on Saturday and remember your joker. Good luck! Derby County v Southampton Swansea City v Leicester City Huddersfield Town v Stockport County Port Vale v Northampton Town Bromley v Tranmere Rovers Salford City v Grimsby Town Braintree Town v Sutton United Wealdstone v Altrincham

This is a sensible move as he's too far from the first team right now. Hope he can get some games under his belt now.

We've heard precious little about Gagliardi's departure and the reasons behind it (although we can probably guess) so I'd like to hear something about that and find out what's being planned to replace him. It's an absolutely pivotal role at a club like ours so it should be a major topic. Perhaps there'll be a more detailed explanation about why the Football Radar debt was waived. But in general, I do think the club wants to work on its communication and building trust with supporters.

Andy Hughes - who played over 100 games for us around the year 2000 and went on to play for Leeds among others - started his career at Oldham.

Winning is a good habit regardless of the competition! Let's hope a few players can take this confidence boost into the weekend.

In a show of multi-tasking, here are the results: Ipswich Town 2-1 Portsmouth Watford 2-1 Hull City Burton Albion 0-4 Plymouth Argyle Mansfield Town 2-1 Rotherham United Bristol Rovers 2-1 Salford City Crawley Town 1-2 Barrow Halifax Town 4-2 Aldershot Truro City 5-0 Morecambe Those of you who like the scoreline 2-1 will be smiling already! Congrats to @theAnticlough for winning the round and @Chris for picking up the points he missed out on last week! I was pretty great too ;) @JustLikeJuve remains top of the table by a single point, with @allardyces tash moving up to second! So that's us up to date! We've got another round coming up on Saturday, so expect to see the fixtures for that tomorrow evening. Thanks for playing!

The factor 50+ sun cream has been put away for another year and the results are in! Blackburn Rovers 1-0 Ipswich Town* Sheffield United 0-1 Charlton Athletic Cardiff City 1-3 Bradford City Wycombe Wanderers 2-0 Northampton Town Bromley 2-2 Chesterfield Salford City 3-2 Swindon Town Altrincham 1-2 Carlisle United Tamworth 1-0 Yeovil Town *This match was actually abandoned, but since 80 minutes had already been played I've decided to count it. @cheeky~k8 and @TheSkipper smashed it in round 9, congrats! @JustLikeJuve remains a point ahead of @magpiejue overall, with @Ash also joining the top three. But what a lively table we have - about half of us are still just a really good round away from the top spot! So those are the results for round 9, the ones for round 10 will hopefully follow in the next day or two. Thank you for your patience! The next round will be on Saturday, with the fixtures being posted on Wednesday. Thanks for playing!

Yep, this is sad. Victoria station deserves a place here too but that's been discussed elsewhere. In mitigation, a couple of those buildings (the Crystal Palace and the wheel thingy in Blackpool) were never intended to last long. And the thinking regarding the future of railways (and hence railway buildings) must have been very different in the 1950s and 60s, when the car looked like the way forward. All the same, it's often cheaper to demolish and rebuild than restore old buildings, and sadly we tend to take the cheap option.

Ipswich Town 2-0 Portsmouth Watford 1-0 Hull City Burton Albion 0-2 Plymouth Argyle Mansfield Town 2-1 Rotherham United (joker) Bristol Rovers 2-1 Salford City Crawley Town 0-0 Barrow Halifax Town 0-1 Aldershot Truro City 1-1 Morecambe

Hi everyone, I'm still on the beach but, through the magic of the internet, here's the next round anyway. The rules are the same - the games all kick off at 3pm on Saturday, you get a joker each, standard commercial crystal balls are allowed but necromancy is not. Good luck! Ipswich Town v Portsmouth Watford v Hull City Burton Albion v Plymouth Argyle Mansfield Town v Rotherham United Bristol Rovers v Salford City Crawley Town v Barrow Halifax Town v Aldershot Truro City v Morecambe

Blackburn Rovers 1-1 Ipswich Town Sheffield United 0-2 Charlton Athletic Cardiff City 2-1 Bradford City Wycombe Wanderers 1-0 Northampton Town Bromley 2-1 Chesterfield Salford City 1-2 Swindon Town Altrincham 0-2 Carlisle United (joker) Tamworth 1-0 Yeovil Town

Welcome everybody to another prediction league round! As you read this I'll be sunning myself on a beach hiding in a shadow caked with factor 50+ sun cream. As I've got no intention of taking my pocket calculator with me, the points for this round will be delayed slightly. But good things come to those who wait (possibly)! Anyway, these all kick off at 3pm on Saturday, and remember your joker! Blackburn Rovers v Ipswich Town Sheffield United v Charlton Athletic Cardiff City v Bradford City Wycombe Wanderers v Northampton Town Bromley v Chesterfield Salford City v Swindon Town Altrincham v Carlisle United Tamworth v Yeovil Town

The results: Stoke City 1-0 Birmingham City Wrexham 1-3 QPR AFC Wimbledon 2-1 Rotherham United Leyton Orient 1-1 Bolton Wanderers Bristol Rovers 2-1 Barrow Fleetwood Town 1-1 Walsall Hartlepool United 0-0 Brackley Town Wealdstone 2-2 Gateshead No fewer than three of you equalled our season's best score of 13 points. Congrats @allardyces tash, @JustLikeJuve and @upthepies! Overall, our three winners make big moves up the table, with @JustLikeJuve moving into first place ahead of @magpiejue and @gtownjohnno. But it's all to play for still, even for those of us languishing in 19th... As we don't cover the prestigious tournament that is the National League Cup, the next round of fixtures will be on Saturday, so they'll be posted on Wednesday as usual. Thanks for playing and have a good week!

I think he's waiting for the right vacancy. He doesn't want two straight failures on his CV. As for Montague, he did a very good job for us overall - there was a reason why he was on Swansea's radar. Was the timing of Gagliardi's sacking coincidental?

I agree with @theAnticlough - I think what we're being served up with now is the result of poor recruitment and MP being unable to convey his ideas (or both) rather than being our ultimate aim. The owners know this is not where we should be and that's what ultimately cost our DoF his job. They were aiming for a more incisive possession-based style with more pace from wide positions but it's not happening so far. In general, there's more than one way to skin a cat! You just need to have a clear idea of what you want your team to be and recruit the players that fit it.

That's why you shouldn't rely on AI @Robbie! Kiwomya and Jones were in charge when Grealish and McGregor joined in August/September 2013. They were then sacked a couple of months into the season, with Derry joining in November 2013, but the loanees were both already first team regulars by then.

Chris Kiwomya was in charge when they joined, with Mick Jones as his assistant. I think Jones was responsible for bringing Grealish in (there was some scepticism as we already had a teenage loanee in McGregor). Derry took over later that season to keep us up.

Stoke City 1-2 Birmingham City Wrexham 2-0 QPR AFC Wimbledon 0-2 Rotherham United Leyton Orient 1-0 Bolton Wanderers Bristol Rovers 2-0 Barrow (joker) Fleetwood Town 0-2 Walsall Hartlepool United 2-0 Brackley Town Wealdstone 1-1 Gateshead

To latch on to the discussion from the other thread, I'm very much in favour of the current model as it reflects the game as it is today. If you go back a few decades, managers stayed in post for a few years and you had two or three new signings a season, so it was sensible for the manager to be on charge of recruitment. With the higher squad fluctuations and transfer windows of modern football, it makes sense to split the roles. Personally I'd prefer the DoF to be a kind of super scout responsible for building the squad than an ex-coach as I think a former coach could undermine the head coach.

Ahem. Notts currently hold this record, so it is incredibly important and meaningful 😁 Of course it's an advantage if you're in L2 or L1 as you have the chance to play and beat league newbies. At the minute, only the 27 teams that have played Bromley come into question. If you want to see a really pointless football record, have a look at the unofficial world football club championship. They picked the first ever FA Cup game in which a goal was scored in 1872 and crowned the winners, Clapham Rovers, "world champion". Then it works like boxing - they hold it until they're beaten, and then the team that beats them is the new champion. The current champions are Chelsea. https://www.stevesfootballstats.uk/ufcc_full_results_2020_-_2030.html

I think some of us are veering towards a general "DoF/HC or old-school manager" discussion. That's fine, but maybe we should keep that discussion to the other thread (linked) and stick to the topic of Gagliardi and hus squad-building on this one.

Interesting post @Randall. I'm not at all biased, but I think Notts definitely need to come to Mannheim next year! 😉 The tour wasn't perfect though. We were very early in our preparations and travelled with a new head coach and an experimental team. To compound that, the first two sides we played were significantly above our level, so we ended up chasing shadows and didn't learn a lot. We learned more about our team against Stuttgarter Kickers than we did in the other two matches combined. I think it would have been better to play Stuttgarter Kickers plus another team at about our level, and then a stronger team to finish with. An itinerary like FSV Frankfurt - Kickers Offenbach - Darmstadt would have put us through our paces, and hopefully we'd have been more competitive for the final game. But it all depends on calendars too. The advantage of Germany is that it's fairly close and there are a lot of teams we can play. English teams in the same division don't tend to play each other in pre-season. A tour of Scotland or Ireland would also be a team bonding opportunity and there would be no visa issues for certain players, but there's also a smaller pool of competitive teams we could play; in Scotland we would need to find Championship teams bare minimum. I don't think fitness is an issue at all, during the tour it was clear that they were working extremely hard on fitness (they had a full training session on the pitch in Darmstadt straight after the final whistle, after the home team had long gone). The problem is that there were too many trialists and a number of our new players hadn't joined yet or were not fit, so the games didn't really help us gel as a team. With some better planning it can be a more useful exercise in the future.

You know what to do - these games all kick off at 3pm on Saturday and you get a joker each. Good luck! Stoke City v Birmingham City Wrexham v QPR AFC Wimbledon v Rotherham United Leyton Orient v Bolton Wanderers Bristol Rovers v Barrow Fleetwood Town v Walsall Hartlepool United v Brackley Town Wealdstone v Gateshead

Swindon Town are definitely missing some that they are unlikely to get in the near future @Robbie (one of them is Manchester United). I think Bradford is more credible. I've also found out that we've beaten Arsenal 20 times!