"...and you can shove Lindum away up your Colonia!" - Lincoln away (EFL Trophy) Tuesday 14th Jan 2025 7pm

[GhostoftheBok]

We go to the former Roman settlement of Lindum Colonia on Tuesday and with the "fringe" players expected to feature it's a chance for Biggus Viccus to grab some goals.

It's the game everyone is keen to tell you they'd not be seen dead at, but I'll be there hoping for signs of life from Wanderers.

As I'll apparently be alone in the away end I may take a dog, for the look of things.

So we can all enjoy this wonderous cup fixture, before Wanderers ite domum for two home games in the league.

[dave the minion]

You know what....

It'll be reet

We'll shit 'em

[Spartan2]

It would be cool if next to no one turned up in protest.

[BWFC_Insane]

It would be cool if next to no one turned up in protest.

I think next to no one will turn up but that won’t be a protest.

[TANGODANCER]

What are you IMPlying ? Are we not the mighty Whites, that make our foes tremble at the thought of playing against us? Er, well, maybe not then right now, but there has to be a breaking point somewhere because the Unibol is not the happiest of camps right now and the Scoutmaster, big chief Brown Owl, is in danger of losing his woggle. We're away to Lincoln and it's the E.F.L Cup and not the league, so a win is desirable but not at the expense of any mishaps. Actually, nothing less than a win will quieten the ominous rattle of pitchforks. Like somebody once said, "The silence is deafening" except it won't be.

A somewhat hopeful COME ON YOU WHITES, THEN.

[GhostoftheBok]

It would be cool if next to no one turned up in protest.

It would be better if it was announced as pay on the day tomorrow and a load of lads who weren't going to go did so to make a point.

Make the trip, back the lads for 90 minutes and then let their feelings about Evatt be known.

That'd require effort, though. Easier not to go and claim you're boycotting.

[TonyDomingos]

It would be cool if next to no one turned up in protest.

It would be better if it was announced as pay on the day tomorrow and a load of lads who weren't going to go did so to make a point.

Make the trip, back the lads for 90 minutes and then let their feelings about Evatt be known.

That'd require effort, though. Easier not to go and claim you're boycotting.

Indeed. Protests tend to be more effective if someone is there to ... er ... protest.

[Harry Genshaw]

Sold 400 tickets for this. Whether many will stop at home now after Saturday, I dunno. I'd prefer us as fans to boycott the Wigan away game. The manager and players never turn up for that fixture, so why should we?

Any road, I couldn't be less interested in this fixture. Evatt will see a win as some kind of endorsement just as he did when we beat Huddersfield in it. Likewise a loss shouldn't be used to berate him either. Let's just get it out of the way. Southwood, Tutu, Vic to all get some match practice.
1-1 draw. We lose on penalties.

[officer_dibble]

If we’re out of this cup he’s nothing to cling to. ‘I know we shipped 82 goals in our way to 14th but I got us to the papa johns final twice!’.

Wembley would be embarrassing- we’d get battered, have about 10,000 fans there all chanting sideways and backwards, whilst Sharon watches on 4 bottles of wine deep falling out of the royal box when Birmingham are presented with the trophy. Hope we get beat.

[truewhite15]

Aren't both Randall and Morley cup-tied for this?

[boltonboris]

Aren't both Randall and Morley cup-tied for this?

Hopefully

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Aren't both Randall and Morley cup-tied for this?

Randall is (211 minutes for Posh, 2 assists)
Morley is too (79 minutes for Wycombe, 0 assists)

So midfield's gonna be Matete (yay!), Thomo (oh...) and Lolos (hmmm), unless he does something unusual with Arfield/CMG

Dion and Vic up front for old times' sake

Gethin to get a sympathy runout at RCB, Forrester's existence to give a rest to either Santos and Johnston but not both

Southwood in goal of course

[GhostoftheBok]

Tutu and CMG are the interesting ones. If they don't start this one you'd have to imagine Evatt is really worried about breaking them down - which doesn't bode well for their availability for a good while.

[Bertie Wooster]

Tutu and CMG are the interesting ones. If they don't start this one you'd have to imagine Evatt is really worried about breaking them down - which doesn't bode well for their availability for a good while.

Ghost you may or may not know the answer, but I'll ask the question - why have the club allowed Ian Evatt to sign so many known injury hit players ? its not as if we have the best or even close to having the best rehabilitation or recovery record with players.

It's negligence IMO and just sums up the club over the past 12 months.

[GhostoftheBok]

Ghost you may or may not know the answer, but I'll ask the question - why have the club allowed Ian Evatt to sign so many known injury hit players ? its not as if we have the best or even close to having the best rehabilitation or recovery record with players.

It's negligence IMO and just sums up the club over the past 12 months.

I think it's because we overperform our wage budget every single season (which is rare in football) and we can pay these lads less money. So we get 'x' amount of ability for half the usual outlay and over the course of a season it usually adds up to better performance than you'd expect for the money.

They're not judging it on a per player basis. Some lads will miss loads of footy, but others play more than you might think. Take Lee, for example. An absolutely monstrous sicknote at Wednesday, but a phenomenal signing for us.

Now, for me, their ratios are off and as you say it's the "so many" issue. I've made this point directly to people there before.

What they are doing right now is redressing that. They are buying minutes with transfer fees, but still targeting lads they can fit into the wage budget. It'll be a major reason why the board will be desperate to get Ian through this season intact, because it's next season (once there should be fewer Darren Andertons in the core group) that the real benefit of the spending will be felt - at this stage probably by a new manager.

They can't do it everywhere, though. There's not enough cash. So they are still bringing in some of those "hope we get enough out of them overall" players like Forino and Tutu. Both earning far less than they would if they were reliably fit, but thus far it feels very much like waste.

[dave the minion]

Makes a lot of sense Ghost.

If what you suggest is true - and whether its with or without Evatt at the Helm - but (and bear with me on this one....) if we do see the major benefits of this squad next season, (HMS) piss the league & go up, and make a fist of it in the Championship, would we be hailing SB as a genius rather that vilifying her as some sort of mastermind of a conspiracy to kill off our "massive" club???

[GhostoftheBok]

Makes a lot of sense Ghost.

If what you suggest is true - and whether its with or without Evatt at the Helm - but (and bear with me on this one....) if we do see the major benefits of this squad next season, (HMS) piss the league & go up, and make a fist of it in the Championship, would we be hailing SB as a genius rather that vilifying her as some sort of mastermind of a conspiracy to kill off our "massive" club???

Well, it's worth remembering that I actually think they've been getting it slightly wrong - so I'm just saying what I think THEY are doing.

The benefits next year don't necessarily mean HMS Piss the League, what it should mean is whoever the manager is can go through his preseason and most of the season with the majority of the squad intact. There will still be injuries, as there always are; but a crisis shouldn't be inevitable.

All these proper transfer fees - Randall, Schon, McAtee - are on lads who are almost always fit. That's great. I still think they are getting some of the bosman market wrong, as I was clear about on here in the summer. We could have got Oshilaja in for very little money and had a bulletproof, versatile and proven League One defender/def-mid, for example. More of the club's free transfer work should be based on signing reliably available, versatile players for the level we are at - utility men as Sam used to call them - to try and make sure we can maintain levels whatever happens in the physio room.

Sharon isn't the one designing the transfer policy. The board has listened to some good advice and made cash available, but they did it at a time when so many players were out that there was always going to be a problem this season. As we discussed on here during preseason, before a ball had been kicked, everything was in place for a really dodgy start.

A defence of Evatt in the boardroom will be that he did actually start to recover from that (8 wins from 12 after Huddersfield), until he lost key players to injury. That won't hold much water with many on here, but it will inside the football club.

So people in the club are making explicable decisions, even if I don't think they are making the right ones.

[boltonboris]

It's easy to say if player X played 40 games a season he wouldn't be playing for us...

But then usually it's a case of "well he's not playing for us, either"

If the manager wants to take a risk on getting a very good player on our books who have significant records of injuries, he really should not complain about injury problems

[Worthy4England]

Ghost you may or may not know the answer, but I'll ask the question - why have the club allowed Ian Evatt to sign so many known injury hit players ? its not as if we have the best or even close to having the best rehabilitation or recovery record with players.

It's negligence IMO and just sums up the club over the past 12 months.

I think it's because we overperform our wage budget every single season (which is rare in football) and we can pay these lads less money. So we get 'x' amount of ability for half the usual outlay and over the course of a season it usually adds up to better performance than you'd expect for the money.

They're not judging it on a per player basis. Some lads will miss loads of footy, but others play more than you might think. Take Lee, for example. An absolutely monstrous sicknote at Wednesday, but a phenomenal signing for us.

Now, for me, their ratios are off and as you say it's the "so many" issue. I've made this point directly to people there before.

What they are doing right now is redressing that. They are buying minutes with transfer fees, but still targeting lads they can fit into the wage budget. It'll be a major reason why the board will be desperate to get Ian through this season intact, because it's next season (once there should be fewer Darren Andertons in the core group) that the real benefit of the spending will be felt - at this stage probably by a new manager.

They can't do it everywhere, though. There's not enough cash. So they are still bringing in some of those "hope we get enough out of them overall" players like Forino and Tutu. Both earning far less than they would if they were reliably fit, but thus far it feels very much like waste.

I really don't buy the "overperformance." The last year where there are a full set of available accounts is 22/23.

The wage costs from the accounts (£m) were

1) Plymouth £9.1
2) Ipswich £19.7 lol.
3) Sheff Weds £15.7
4) Barnsley £9.2
5) Bolton £10.1
6) Peterborough £7.7
7) Derby £17m
Pompey £8.2


If it was purely financial you'd have expected Ipswich and Derby to walk it with Sheff Weds, as it happens two got up, with Plymouth overperforming and Derby underperforming. From those numbers we should have expected to go up as play-off winners, given Derby had a shitshow? I think in their case there's some great evidence that it was a shitshow rather than our overperformance, on the grounds they went up last year.

I'd struggle to explain our over performing strategy v Plymouth's budget? I'd call Plymouth an overperformance, us lower than expected (but not seriously)...

Don't get it.

[GhostoftheBok]

Don't get it.

Because you always insist on ignoring everything that gets said around "spending matters."

It's not "just spending" and nobody has ever said it is. It certainly isn't "One season's budget vs that season's performance every time"...

I can't be arsed doing this again.