The Lower League Thread

Montanier? I remember him not willing to continue at Real Sociedad just so he could leave for Rennes, that's quite a move to Nottingham.

Are you coming up for the Huddersfield game, terriersmad?

Ticket was sorted about 15 minutes after they went on sale. Expecting us to lose to a pumped-up Newcastle side, but that we'll give it a real go, and who knows what might happen? You off?

We've also signed another world beater, Eddie Nolan joins. Released by York after their relegation, fans are saying he is garbage and one of their worst players last season. Operation conference in full swing!

Aye, I have a season ticket. Think we should win but you never know. I'll revise my opinion after Friday.

Huddersfield is the official start of the 'Gallowgate Flags' scheme - fans have crowd funded £7-8k worth of flags so the ground should look pretty impressive.

If you fancy a pint before/after give me a shout.

Well we lost the match 3-1, Sheff U were pretty tidy, Billy Sharp had a great game. But you're probably referring to the trouble in Cleethorpes. Seems like a load of their fans came early on trains and got hammered in the bars down the seafront and then it all kicked off. There's a few twats in our fans too who obviously went looking for trouble. All the bars closed under police advice. And then after the game, there was a lot of trouble down the back of the ground on the walk back to the train station. Fans charging at each other etc, until the police finally turned up.

6 arrests, 4 of which were United fans. The Grimsby element I suspect were just a few chavs who are already banned or haven't been to a match in years.

Don't understand what Benitez wants to do with the team. The squad looks dreadful. And he looks to be the prime mover of it.

He picked the wrong teams selection again. He needs to start actually delivering.

Townsend was not going to stay when England offered him the Euro 2016 preliminary place and the incentive to want to go back up to that league above. But a winger is required and pretty sure one of those new arrivals suggested will be If "best CM" is a Sissoko reference, he's still not fit after his post-Euros break AFAIK, while if its Tiote, he's leaving and can be problematic. Better than Colback, mind, whose apparently threw a very petulant strop after being subbed for a shit performance..

Calling our squad "dreadful" after one defeat on a noted bogey ground that could've gone the other way with a referee who can spot handballs is a massive overreaction. But it does underline that the mentality away from home needs to change, given this reminded me of many of the slumbers under Pardew, Carver and McClaren on the road.

That's a perfectly reasonable assessment of the Townsend situation. However the absolute cult around Benitez suggests that everyone is desperate to play for him etc. I also got the impression that Benitez never rated Townsend. ( seemed to be first sub off quite a lot). We're repeadedly told the club has been reinvigorated now. It's a football club again, not a business. Did Benitez offer Townsend a new deal? What did he do to convince him to stay? He was very happy to take two weeks away to make demands, and make Charnley acquiesce to his whims, did he offer Townsend the same courtesy?

It was a reference to Tiote. In Benitez' first four games, he picked Tiote once and Colback onc in central midfield. The team won one point and conceded 8 goals. In his last six games he picked Tiote and Colback in the middle and picked up twelve points and conceded four goals, one of which was a Darlow own goal / keeper error, one was offside from Aguero. The dramatic improvement was picking two functioning central midfielders next to each other. - And a genuine winger who can create and stretch play. His instincts were completely wrong and it took 40% of the games to go against it.

Also worth noting Benitez' record was exactly the same as Joe Kinnear's going into the Spurs' game. It was felt that people had to serenade the one guy who can save the club. Despite having the same record as a guy written off as a complete joke.

Meanwhile the club hasn't seem to have learnt any lessons. I've seen so much slating off Dummett, Colback and Perez (ie this seasons Williamson, Cisse, Gouffran), while praising of Ritchie and Hayden and zero criticism of Gayle. It's this sort of attitude that allows the likes of Remy, Debuchy, Sissoko and Wijnaldum to treat this club with no respect and feel like they're doing us a favour for even being here.

I think it was a dreadful performance, we're bottom of the Championship and deservedly so. I've never seen the team look do badly prepared to start a season. Rolando Aarons is probably the only guy in the squad who can stretch play and he's still unproven - when we know we're going to be up against sides happy to sit in and let us play.

Last time we had guys like Shola and Coloccini to use their class to get us through the early stages of the campaign until we found our feet.

Fair few interesting bits and bobs from that opening weekend... Forest v Burton looked like a great match, Blackburn look doomed already, Grant Ward had the debut of a lifetime, more people turned up at Blackpool than I thought would (least judging by highlights), and I had no idea Jay Spearing was still at Bolton. Is he still pulling wages over £40k a week?

I'd say the team that got hammered 4-0 on the opening day by Man City in 2013 looked in even less of a season opening match ready condition than Friday's did. But whatever.

Maybe the Benitez hype was too much, but at least it makes a change to be positive about someone after the uninspiring appointments of McClaren, Carver or Pardew. Incidentally, McClaren would've overdone the positives had he been in charge, and its a bit much he's a pundit on Sky going about what he'd do in Bentiez's position when if he'd done his fucking job better last year, we wouldn't have gone down. Its usually the case with Newcastle that anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment, anyway. JFK had more games than RB, so making that comparison is odd.

I don't really think it feeds into that whole idea of letting players walk all over us by saying Ritchie and Hayden did alright in a losing performance (although not everyone agrees about the latter, and both said we should've done better yesterday), or that favourite targets like Anita, Dummett or Colback were shite. Haven't seen any real praise or criticism of Gayle, given he didn't really do anything. Still think we need an extra winger anyway. Or a more muscular presence alongside the lighter Gayle (Diame, maybe?). But in terms of yesterday. it was a slightly different version of our away form over the last 4 years - more possession than usual, but a whole load of nothing. There's work to be done, but hopefully its a sufficient enough slap in the face to those who thought this would be a walkover.

As far as I can remember, Tiote wasn't fully fit for those cited first four games after Benitez took over, plus was the weak link at Norwich, and in any case wanted out in January. Though he may still resurface. As for the departed England winger, how do you know Townsend wasn't asked? We don't know what conversations are held behind closed doors, and if he was that desperate to get back into the England set-up, he may well have already mentally gone. As opposed to that sulky git Sissoko and his meme-bait team photo.

Fair few interesting bits and bobs from that opening weekend... Forest v Burton looked like a great match, Blackburn look doomed already, Grant Ward had the debut of a lifetime, more people turned up at Blackpool than I thought would (least judging by highlights), and I had no idea Jay Spearing was still at Bolton. Is he still pulling wages over £40k a week?

Getting outclassed by a much better team in the new managers first game is sort of one of those things. Getting beat off a team who last season were fighting relegation from the second tier and have allowed their apparent two best players leave is horrendously worse. And more to the point - it would be shocking if Fulham didn't play that way ie - defensive = contain and hope to nick one on the counter or through a set piece. And Newcastle looked totally unprepared for it - We wouldn't have scored in a month of sundays against a team that seemed bad at defending.

An yeah I've seen more criticism over McClaren than Benitez yesterday, which proves my point. McClaren was a bad manager, he's gone now. It's irrelevant he's a pundit. He can't influence the result Benitez can.

JFK had twice as many games as Benitez and had twice as many draws, wins and losses. My point was a 22% win record is deemed hilariously bad for when manager and outrageously good for another. Can you really not appreciatethe absolute hypocrisy of this? And imo Kinnear inherited a far bigger mess.

Official attendance was 3,754. View from the terraces, amongst the away fans:

Show Spoiler

Far too many scabs for my liking. People with piss poor excuses such as "I need my football fix", "I've been a season ticket holder all my life and won't stop now", "I'm taking my son, like my dad did with me", "I take my Gran for the day out" - and more ridiculous points which completely miss the point. Go and watch AFC Blackpool, AFC Fylde, even the Codheads but don't go to Bloomfield and give that horrible family your money. Oyston's were obviously worried about the attendance as they were giving away lots of free tickets. Speaking of tickets, HMRC might be interested to see the tickets that were paid for: https://twitter.com/aidangreen/status/762015592614420480 . To continue the derision of those attending, a member of our Supporters' Trust who in their own words are at the "forefront of the ethical boycott", has renewed her season ticket

Otherwise, I believe we won the game through a deflected shot and an own goal. E I E I O...

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Although that tickets thing is very very dodgy looking. Worst thing for the boycott also may well be Blackpool starting well, given that might start to attract people back even with the fuckwits still running the joint.