5waller5

3rd April 2027

Good point. I agree, there’s certainly an element of this

And yet we signed a keeper and a winger that haven’t played. There is no excuse for us not signing a striker - it’s such an obvious priority position and has been for 4-5 windows now

It really is a mystery why our management think a youth team player would be a risk against playing Daka

The KPFC fans can’t understand the situation at all. That’s not a wilful decision they are making. The socio-economic reality for the majority of them (and wider football fans) is low paid “blue collar” (in old terminology) people that are familiar and comfortable with being told what to do, and who to vote for (by parental / peer expectation), and generally fit into this role by not standing out with radical or different ideas. Acceptance is king. “Fitting in” is extremely important… Wearing the uniform / clothes of their peers, being angry at the same set of people, having the same opinions. Loyalty is seen as an alpha trait… It’s a key driver behind the success of football over the last century. The identity of being an XYFC fan is really appealing to these people; “We hate ABFC”, we wear X brand, and these items are acceptable from the club shop. Within this broader cohort there are sub species; Kopites, lads n dads, who identify firstly as XYFC fans and then their often non defined subset “away day lads” / “flask and sandwich loyalists” (part of being in those sub categories is just fitting in to their cohort that is very subtle and difficult to define, unlike the branding easily defined by the Stone Island crew). I’ve digressed. Ultimately they see loyalty to their club as character defining, by extension they’ve applied that to the ownership structure that bought them success. The stronger they display those attributes the better fan they are. The wider life strategy of “Know your place” becomes “proper fans through thick and thin” etc. Nothing will change these people’s opinions because having the rigid loyalty is a badge of honour (however stupid to the rest of us). By definition, fans on a forum, discussing positive and negative aspects of their club in detail aren’t like these people… So what’s seen as “typical Foxestalk” by them is the complement of “free thinking”. Or I’m just part of a cohort, fitting in without my knowledge or approval, just like they do!

Loads of endeavour from Pompey but they really lack quality. Them being above us in the league is truly humiliating

Ever scored an own goal??

Yeah he didn’t have a great game, but trying to stop that cross was necessary because the keeper didn’t tell him it wasn’t … Jacob easily had that covered and a simple shout erases the danger. Nelson was never going to play well after that!

This was entirely the keeper’s fault for me. If the keeper is going to dive at the ball it should have been accompanied by a huge shout, Nelson then simply leaves the ball alone. If he doesn’t shout Nelson has to deal with it, but in doing so can assume the keeper is at his near post… keeper makes easy save should Nelson make a poor contact, as he did. Keeper communicates properly = no goal

It’s a LCFC25/26 template game that’s for sure

Was it not offside? I assumed Nelson’s position was a result of him stepping up and leaving him offside but your view is better than mine!

10th

Looked terrible tonight, I’m not surprised

They looked really good tonight, I think they’ll stay up

We played some really neat football at times today … not sure why Rowettball gets a bad rap, the quick first time passes and rapid counter attacks were a joy to watch!!

Maybe he’s thinking of retirement?

My brother, who sadly passed away just over a year ago, was on the Committee of the ALF. I remember going with him and around 6 others to meet Barrie Pierpoint (I was only about 16 and was a spectator to the meeting, but remember thinking how, despite talking really well, I didn’t believe a word of what he said). We used to chant an A-L-F song in the Kop, I can’t remember the words now, and hand out leaflets before the games (they were so expensive to print back then I think we had about 500 to give out)!

The Mandaric era directly followed the club being in administration, and a transfer embargo. He took over with us circling the relegation zone in the Championship in March 2007, and narrowly kept us up with Nigel Worthington as caretaker. The following year we did get relegated but to criticise him for lack of signings is utterly bizarre - we signed 21? New players under Martin Allen a few months into MM’s reign. He literally took us from being on the verge of extinction and built a solid foundation of progress. It didn’t happen overnight but he certainly threw effort (and money within the constraints of his net worth being less than 5% of Vichai’s) at finding players and managers to make it happen. To compare MM with the lazy incompetence shown by Top and then claim some were old enough to remember Milan, and the lack of criticism for him, suggests that you’re not one of the people that remember that era

Top & Rudkin are completely unaware of this word “optics” they definitely haven’t made a decision based on fan’s opinions either

Yeah played well today, was first to a lot

Good battle. We’d have lost that 3-1 pre-Rowett

Fatawu is ok defensively … but Daka / Mavididi offer next to nothing so there pace on the halfway line would guarantee 3 defenders with them… we then have an extra man in our box. Seems so simple a tactic

That’s the kind of tactic that would really unsettle an opposition… especially if it was rotated, sometimes 2/3/4 with no pattern …. The opposition would often have an extra 1/2/3 players held back. It’s probably looked down on by “pro” coaches as a bit Sunday league

Argh Thanks for that … I completely missed that drama… shame as he and some other posters on those threads have completely disappeared and made some great contributions

Reading those threads bought back some memories of really good posters on FT that you no longer see. Makes you wonder what happened to the likes of Thracian