Stoke

And then for fletcher to come on and miss probably the best chance of the game.
Magennis looked awful in L1 him and Shinnie but as soon as they moved up in class it showed they can hold their own.

You have to question why ?, why can every fan see Fletchers out his depth but the manager/s can’t ??. This to me points to us having to pay an appearance penalty if not played and the other reason I’m leaning towards as well is, Fletcher trains really well giving any manager no option bar play him.

Now on that second point (I hope I’m wrong) I remember a certain Paul McGrath who after 7 years at Utd and a 163 appearances for Utd they got rid of him thinking he was coming to the end of the line with his knees (hardly ever trained) and the odd shandy. From there he did a further 7 years at Villa making over 250 appearances.
My point to that is, not all players look red hot in training some don’t even like it so I hope Fletcher hasn’t been kept in because of that.
I thought last night we looked far more balanced without him, there was abit more about us and we had a few good chances to put the game to bed earlier. Let’s not forget, Stoke were utter “don’t care seasons over” dog sh1t.

I just wish I knew the truth why Fletchers started so many games after so many utter drivel performances it beggars belief and has frustrated not only me but 1000,’s of Latics fans who are all of the same opinion.

Let’s hope he picks the same’ish side this Saturday. Millwall had their wings clipped last night after dominating large parts of the game.
There’s a fair few teams still in the play off reckoning so I’m sure Millwall come to the DW with their backs up and their mob of “Living in the 80’s” 60 year old flat cap barrow boy, pearly king & queen, Chaz no Dave hoolies

Grow up

Yep an awful stat that, that’s 5 months and 24 games we’ve not scored more than 1 goal in a game but in 16 of the 25 we did score 1 goal.

In 9 of those 25 games since we last scored 2 we drew 1-1 or 0-0. If we had scored only 1 more goal in 3 of those 9 matches we’d be sat on 43 points in a group of 6 teams with 3 points between the lot.

As a whole defending has never really been our problem. Ok so there been a few who’ve scored 3 or 4 against us but the vast majority of the time we’ve defended stoutly. Because in those 25 games in only 7 of those games we lost by a single goal.

Now stats like that prove one thing, we defend as whole pretty good but scoring has massively let us down as highlighted at Stoke not been able to kill the game off against a poor don’t care Stoke.

I was waiting for the sucker punch which never came.

There’s for me 3 key reasons were going down and it’s in this order of merit:-

1) Brannigan and his huge overspend in L1 leaving nothing left to invest in the Championship pushing us into the red then having to payoff 2 managers full contracts,

2) The lack of firepower and pace. Sticking with a forward who couldn’t hit a garage door with a Space hopper and the total lack of any pace or width, the slowest side I can ever remember and that’s since the late 1970’s,

3) 3 points deducted that could have easily been avoided had the club borrowed the money. As in the words of the owners “We know the money is coming”, then if they knew this then like myself you take a short cover loan till it does arrive, I still find it strange they let it happen. Or they should have set up the holding account that the EFL specifically told us to do.

Now some people might say, “Well the 3 points didn’t matter in the end”, and that we might go down by 7-8-9 points anyway so it didnt matter true, but the not paying the players on time for a 4th time on time and then the 3 points when there fighting like hell was like a punch to the stomach then a kick in the balls straight after just to make sure.

It totally deflated the squad and the heart and fight had gone for me.

Seriously though, I cannot thank our owners enough for pulling us out the fire and saving us from the brink of extinction and for that I think most Latics fans will be ever so grateful but without investment to rectify their mistakes I’ve a feeling me might just freefall to L2.

It’s like when you are doing a refurb job on a house. You rip the guts out then the true realization of the task at hand hits home and the cost of it all and funding the huge mistakes puts a massive strain on the job well you know what happens then?,

The FOR SALE sign goes up