The Lower League Thread

Yeah along the lines as I thought, cheers mate, I always have had a soft spot for him after his goals for Blackburn!

We've signed Radosław Majewski on a season-long loan from Nottingham Forest. Good signing, I reckon, gives us someone who can unlock a defence and takes the pressure off young Lolley and Holmes. Though we do still need a commanding centre-half, a nasty midfield bastard and a striker who can cover for Vaughan's inevitable injury absences. I think we should do all right this season, though. Still need experience bringing in, given the youth of the squad, and a bit more physical presence, but we're comfortably better than at least eight teams in this league for me.

Majewski on loan is a top signing

The long-running transfer saga of the summer looks set to be completed today or tomorrow, with Adam Clayton moving to Middlesbrough for £1.5m plus Danny Butterfield. I'll be sad to see him go, but that's a cracking deal for Town for a player who's only got one year left on his contract and who cost us only £300,000 two years ago.

Sean St Ledger is also trying to prove his fitness at the club and earn a contract. He'd be a decent free transfer for a year or two if he's over his injuries.

But we still need a striker with Vaughan being so injury prone. Stead played well last night, and might be able to fill in if he shows his ability better than last year, but I'd prefer a new striker with a bit of experience and presence.

Majewski scored a cracking goal last night against us.

There were a couple of great goals in the game, tbf.

We've signed Conor Coady from Liverpool on a 3-year deal. The Examiner reports the fee as an initial £375,000. If Butterfield and St Ledger also sign, we'll suddenly be looking much more like it. If in need of a striker.

So since I last posted we've signed Jon Paul Pittman, Nathan Arnold, Craig Clay and Andrew Boyce. Three good additions and Clay, who looks awful!

Two more additions for our squad.

Joe Widdowson signs after being released from Northampton. He will be LB cover for Hussey and is probably in it because Flickers knows him from his time at Rochdayul.
Joe Thompson signs after being released from Tranmere. And yes, he is the guy who was diagnosed with cancer just a year ago. Astonishing how quick he came back.

The Clayton saga drags on. He suddenly wants to go to Brighton rather than Middlesbrough. It all sounds fair enough, but a) we haven't agreed a fee with Brighton and we had with Middlesbrough and b) I have no doubt that his head will have been turned by someone at Brighton saying they'll offer him more than Boro.

Town will be pissed off because we need that deal to go through to make another couple of signings and Boro will be pissed off because they thought they had their man.

Sold Michail Antonio to Forest, got a good fee for someone who probably wouldn't have been a starter this season, look like signing Stevie May from St Johnstone and possibly bringing Ben Marshall back, decent transfers if they all go through!

Edit
We've signed Stevie, incredible hair and a lovely beard, delighted!!

Decent point against Cardiff we should have won the game as we domainted the second half possession wise but we couldn't create any real chances. We should have had a penalty early on as well as Hudson was clearly inside the area when he handled. Overall it's a decent draw. Cracking goal by Cairney too!

You know it's going to be one of those days when an offside goal stands after 24 seconds in which you haven't touched the ball.

Thing is, we were shite. No bones about it. We deserved to get pumped and we were. But the goals themselves... First was so far offside he was in a different postcode. The second was as clear a push as you'll see in your life about a yard in front of the linesman from which he ran through and scored. The third was a further country mile offside (yes, linesman, if a shot comes in and is saved and falls to a man who was offside when the initial shot came in you should stick your flag up, it's not seen as a different phase you useless prick). And the fourth was a double deflection three yards out which wrongfooted Alex.

But we were crap. And we deserved that. No power up front - Wells toiled all afternoon and Ward had a day where he couldn't trap a bag of cement. The wing-backs got murdered by men in behind. Crooks had a debut to, if not forget, certainly not put in the scrapbook - certainly can't blame him for any of the goals, but he doesn't look like a centre-back and kept getting pulled too far wide and getting isolated when his wing-back went wandering. The midfield was powder-puff, with Norwood spending the game hiding yet again, Majewski getting in the wrong areas and Hogg not having the on-the-ball quality to create something.

Bournemouth created problems and took chances. An orthodox 4-4-2 did for us because they had two strikers who bullied a back three who lacked (this thing again) power and strength. They ran the channels and controlled the midfield. And it's embarrassing because they're not that good, despite the money they've spent. They've got so many average players who were made to look like world-beaters. Simon Francis - Simon fucking Francis - was made to look good.

If Robins can't see we need a big central defender and a big striker with some power and presence we're in serious trouble. The players we have need some more support because although we're technically good enough we're physically a very small team and we will get bullied. We're also too nice - three dodgy goals against and only one protest, we just resigned ourselves to it when we should have been prepared to show a bit of fight because if we don't we will get steamrollered by big, strong teams.

Final note to Town fans: get a braincell or two. Smithies might have done better with the fourth, but when he brought down their lad for the penalty there's no need to be chanting 'off, off, off'. Fucking morons. And there's a lad on Twitter who's giving me stick for saying Crooks did OK (which he did, in fairness) and that he wasn't part of the back three. Yeah, how dare I say a kid on his professional debut did OK in the position he played, considering the circumstances. Lynch, on the other hand, had a nightmare.

We managed to put a team out!

I'll take that as a result given where we were midweek. These first 5 games are our pre-season now. Making it difficult for ourselves!

Is that seriously Blackburn's home kit now? Why is it so light? Looks crap.

Huddersfield confirm Mark Robins "has left the club" (i.e. been fired).

That is amazingly early in the season for such a move.

Went to Huish Park to watch Yeovil yesterday, expecting a good game against fellow relegated side last season Doncaster and wow was I shocked, Yeovil were poor all over the pitch, Chris Weale had a nightmare between the sticks, the defence just didn't show up! A three nil defeat and bottom of League one after the opening game, oh dear!

Its guna be a long season

yeah.....

Fantastic Bournemouth destroys Huddesfield 4-0 at away.

Didn't look good on the football league show. How many of the players from last season are still with you?

I had no idea Fulham had got rid of 26 players in the off season. Thought they still had a core squad of players from last season still there.

Lost 0-1 against Cheltenham. Quite a disappointment to be honest. Thought we were good enough to beat them, not trash them. but I expected a 1 or 2-0 win

Yeah I did too. I was shocked when I saw there starting 11

I'm not sure who the Bristol City fan on here is but, whats your take on the game this weekend? I went and thought the referee had one of the worst games a referee could have, thought we played well at times and any of us could have nicked it, we were very unlucky at times, especially when we had the ball cleared off the line (3 times), i don't think we'll play anyone with the same quality at Bristol City this season but i don't think Bristol were any better than those that were promoted last season, i still reckon both of us will be in or around the automatic promotion spots

I think you'll struggle to keep a hold of Baldock.

Loved your away kit too btw, gorgeous it is.

I made a rare appearance at Gigg Lane for this. Bury were pretty shit going forward but could still easily have scored a couple - Pablo Mills had a header stopped on the line - and were generally the better team. Cheltenham weren't exactly very ambitious though.

Nardiello and Lowe didn't really work as a partnership.

It's very different yeah with the light blue, but it's alright you know. I wasn't keen at all on first glance but I like it now, even got myself one.

And plus the last time we had a kit with the blue so light was 1991/92 - and that ended in promotion

Many people raised their concerns about the Nardiello-Lowe partnership but we have no real plan B. Clive Platt won't be good enough, loan deals for Danny Rose and Hallam Hope seem to be dead in the water and James Poole has only been back for 3 days, so he's not gonna blend in straight away.

Our lack of bite was a concern towards the end of last season aswell but it was just the 1st game of the season and we're not as deep in the shit as other teams are *cough* Huddersfield *cough* Notlob

Resigned, that's why. The board didn't stop him, but he walked.

Seems to be so many clubs at the bottom of the Championship stuck in a cycle of;

sack manager > Improve under new guy, stay up > sack manager

At the very least, Amorabieta and Ruiz are still there so I thought they might appear and actually play well in this tier but nope.

I hadn't heard of a lot of their starting 11... maybe I need to research outside England more.

Fair enough. Still seems incredibly early for such a move.

I've seen the fact "Norwich sacked Bryan Gunn after 1 game in 2010 and look how that turned out" but are Huddersfield realistically anywhere near promotion?

No. We played them pre-season, they beat us 1-0 but they wasn't brilliant even then.

Nope. But he felt he'd lost the fans and the players. And after a run of 6 wins in 23, going back to last season, the board accepted his resignation. It's clear there's still a lot of respect between the club and Robins, though. And if he finds the right balance between technical, passing football and the physicality which we didn't have, he'll still be successful. He's a better manager than many who'll be touted for jobs in this division, even with his shortcomings.