Time for us all to unite and support!

[Fox92]

I usually agree with you mate as you know, but the opposite to what you've said could also be true to be fair. When people are claiming we are going to do really well this year when very few of us have seen any of the new signings play or indeed, who is actually going to play.

I just say give it a few league games and then we'll all be able to give a better prediction of the season to come.

Blind optimism, or negativity, neither really does us any good. You only have to look at the forum at the start of last season to know that.

What I do like is that Nige seems to be building a team, not buying one. Whether its gonna be any good or not remains to be seen.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Have to agree really, and your last line sums it up for me.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

Ok.

Ho1 Ho. Ho!

Here's an even bigger laugh! lol lol

[Thracian]

Hey fellow foxes, reading through this forum of late is getting somewhat depressing again and its needs to stop!

I appreciate this forum is all about opinions so im not going to openly criticise people but please can we just be positive and support the guys.

Not everyone will be happy, either because we are 2/3 players short or we've sold the wrong players or we're not ready or we lost to Shrewsbury etc etc but give the manager some support and backing. Again, i appreciate he's not everyone's cup of tea but he's a very knowledgable man and will try his damned hardest to get this group of players to perform. He has as good a chance as anyone else would to be fair but already people writing off certain signings he's made and players he's sold/selling.

Guys, the season is still just under 3 weeks away so let him do what he needs to do.

Its great that we all care but some realism is needed as a ball hasnt been kicked yet in the new campaign. I really dread to think what this forum will be like if we have a bad start (prob be NP to be sacked, Dyer is league 1 at best, Gally is poor, Beckford lazy, Vardy not good enough, King overrated, Wellens just poor, Morgan not a leader et etc) It gets boring doesnt it!!

I've tried to make this sound like im not having a dig at everyone but its not easy. I just want us to back the players/manager for whats going to be a huge season once again

You sound like Babs' twin brother. But, while the sentiment is fine the reality is that football is an emotional game. I support the club that represents my home city, and have done for 55 years. People like Pearson and the players are just well-paid people passing through - there to be praised when they do well and to risk criticism if they don't.

What worries me most about our club these days is the lack of atmosphere in every phase. It's as if the stimuli has been systematically and cynically drained away since the 50s and 60s.

With some of the players we have this season I see no reason not to be excited. But to remain that way will require us committing ourselves to scoring goals and winning with style rather than begging a lead and hanging on to it cos there's only 30 minutes to go.

There are other factors that dilute the atmosphere - seven subs and all the timewasting that'll go with it, the fact that you're sitting down all the time like visitors to a library, the pre-occupation with family football and the invasion of the stands by the sort of parents, with their accompanying children, who round on anyone emitting more emotion that you get at the Tigers ground with their one song and silence while the opposition score a penalty.

Once the area behind the goals was abuzz with emotive reaction but nowadays there's more life in a cemetery so it's little wonder people get pissed off if there are no goals, no chances, no shots and nobody looking like they give more than a token toss on the pitch.

On the pitch it's all in Pearson and his players' hands. They can either put a show on and make it worth putting up with all the other shit or they'll be the butt of some people's frustration.

As I've emphasised at the start of so many seasons - negative football has got us nowhere for more than a decade, apart from relegation to Division One when we pissed about trying to run the game down against Charlton and cost ourselves the points that would have kept us up.

I'll support Pearson win or lose if he has a go and if his players deliver 90 minutes effort towards creating as many chances and scoring as many goals as possible.

But we showed our philosophical outlook on the first day of the season at Coventry last year when we went into such a negative mindset that players were having to turn back to find a colleague they could pass the ball too. And that against a team you knew were certainties for relegation.

Even with 10 men I was ashamed and knew we didn't have the sort of atitude which would ever win us anything.

More of that this season - home or away - and the team will deserve anything they get in response.

It really is up to them. When I work a 10-hour day, whatever my mood, I give my all and so does my wife. My son does the same for 85 hours a week preparing food in a steaming hot kitchen.

Is it too much to ask our footballers to do the same for 90 minutes? They could sitll lose - we all have bad that go wrong whatever we do - but that's no excuse for a lack of commitment and the only commitment that matters for success in football is trying get the ball as often as possible with the aim of scoring goals.

[marty78]

Well written Thracian but we must allow this, almost new, team to show us what they can do before we pass judgement on them or NP. I think that is what the OP was getting at.

[Craig]

Yes, using three substitutes from seven wastes far more time than using three substitues from five.

[Thracian]

Well written Thracian but we must allow this, almost new, team to show us what they can do before we pass judgement on them or NP. I think that is what the OP was getting at.

I'm as optimistic about the new team as anyone and accept what others have said about a team being "built" rather than bought which is something I've always approved of anyway.

My concerns are not with Pearson assembling a squad but with whether he can get the best out of their abilities and whether the coaches we have can negate our glaringly obvious shortcomings. Some of these include absolute basics like free-kicks and corners but year after year we are more disappointing than some non league clubs.

My other concern, throughout both his managerial spells here, concerns his philosophy and whether he really has the courage to do the sustained attacking necessary to win success. I think he'd like to but I'm not convinced its in him. Getting all the players in a team to gel as one attacking and defensive unit is not easy but it has to happen. And it's at places like Shrewsbury that the groundwork should be done.

[Mark_w]

My concerns are not with Pearson assembling a squad but with whether he can get the best out of their abilities and whether the coaches we have can negate our glaringly obvious shortcomings.

They and he have done before. Why do you think they aren't going to be able to this time?

[Guest MattP]

Agree with everything said above, I still struggle to watch that Wycombe game.

The biggest turning point I've seen in our history, the FA was there and the Champions League was actually a small possibility. Incredible to think about that now.