The Lower League Thread

I was there yesterday Fola. We were shite, refs were worse and it was freezing on that terrace!

Here's the goals, including the worst offside decision in the history of everything.

https://twitter.com/thesilkmen/status/714805827601829892

Well that's upsetting! Although tbf he is getting on a bit and his main asset was his engine.

You brought a sh*tload which made for a good atmosphere. As you saw, we hardly have any fans these days and the fans we do have are very quiet. Not a clue how our second goal stood to be honest but I'm not complaining. Can't believe the useless waste of space that is Jack Sampson managed to find the scoresheet! Reece Styche has been having great great banter with your fans of Twitter- not the best striker in the world but is a complete wind up merchant which makes it interesting to watch.

Ohhh Mark Cullen has found his scoring boots again! Was not expecting to go ahead against Southend, especially after their match midweek!

Still, plenty of time for us to throw this away...

Nobody can condone how Sheffield Wednesday play. I went expecting some decent football. Both sides pretty much cancelled each other out, so they took to flinging themselves to the deck, moaning at the referee, leaving feet in after the ball had gone and generally just being unpleasant.

Forestieri is the biggest cheat in football. He's an absolute disgrace. And he gets away with murder. Two cynical trips, half a dozen dives, kicking the ball away a few times, feigning injury. Not even booked. It's a shame he is such a pathological cheat, because he can light up a game and was probably the best player on the park this afternoon. Unfortunately his copybook is so blotted by being a committed and unreformable cheat that I feel I can't give him credit. Every time he was tackled (and I'll admit he does draw quite a few fouls with his quick feet, but he also loses out through good defending), he rolled around and acted like a petulant child, waving cards every single time he was given a free-kick before spending half an hour in conference with his mate the ref.

In an incident in the second half, he made a pretty innocuous foul into something much worse with his appalling play-acting. Hudson was on a booking and stretching to put the bouncing ball out of play across Forestieri. He looked to get a toe on it, but might not have done. Either way, at worst a free-kick. Forestieri originally went down clutching his face, rolled around a bit, clutched at his ankle, rolled around a bit more, didn't actually wave an imaginary card at the ref, but when he didn't show a second yellow did spend five minutes asking why there wasn't a card. He then proceeded to hobble around, pretending to be injured.

Then he scored with Wednesday's only clear-cut chance. You know, overcoming the appalling agony to burst into the box to get on the end of a loose ball. Clearly awfully injured. Terribly. Life-threateningly so. Being honest, I would have no sympathy if he suffered a broken leg next week because players like him have no place in the game, and I'm someone who wo

We would have been helped had the ref given a blatant penalty for a handball on the line. I thought it looked suspect from the other end and didn't want to call it, but having seen the evidence, it's incontrovertible.



I know I go on about officials (and it's boring and annoying and oh please fuck off), but we have spent 6 months of decisions going against us. We were knocked out of the Cup as a result of poor officiating in both the first game and the replay (slightly indirect as it was, in the replay, as we were 2-0 up at the time of the very contentious red card), and we can point at half a dozen games where the officials have got things wrong in a manner which swung games against us alongside generally not very good refereeing pretty much every week. The joke has been made that our first signing this summer should be a referee, seeing as everyone else has one, and it does feel like it has the ring of truth this season. We're certainly owed a few in the final weeks of the season. Getting a dodgy offside winning goal given in the 90th minute up at Middlesbrough in the week would be a start.

Record against the top 8: P15 0-2-13.

Record against the other 15: P25 12-7-6.

I can bleat about individual results all I like: that's pretty damning of our failure against the top sides in this league. Performances have been encouraging, we've just lacked the quality in personnel.

As soon as I saw Middlesbrough get awarded a penalty last night I thought I could hear you typing another rant about referees; I'm surprised though!

Poor news for us too, Oldham and Fleetwood both winning one of their many games in hand

Where is @One Night In Grimsby, they had a really impressive come back!

Swindon have legit suspended three of their players for smoking a shisha on Periscope. Massive LOLZ and whooooosh coming along their way

Meh. Silly challenge from Lynch on the edge of the box. No complaints there. Had a certain Mr D. Deadman today, though. Think everyone on this board will have winced on seeing that berk's name. As bad as expected. Details on request. He did adversely affect the game, but I'd have taken a point beforehand.

We're limping over the line a bit, but we'll get there. Effectively 10 points clear (with goal difference) with 5 to play - we could yet get bitten on the arse, but I think we'd have to lose all our last 5 for MK to have any chance of catching us at this point and playing like we did today that won't happen. In truth, from about 10th to 21st is unbelievably even in this league and there's nothing between the teams. A bad run sees you plummet (see Nottingham Forest and Brentford up to a couple of weeks back), a couple of good results and you're top half material. QPR are 11th, the same number of points ahead of us as we are ahead of MK. Think that sums this league up.

Positives from today - Van La Parra was superb and looked like the sort of player we'll need to push up into the top half next year. Huws was also superb, and it's a shame we probably can't afford to keep him. The defence looked remarkably solid under pressure (you know, other than the goals...). We got a slightly unexpected point, though the manner of dropping two points after looking like we'd got all three was frustrating. It showed we're not as far off the top sides as some might suggest, and with a few additions we're more than capable of surprising a few next season.

Damn, this fight for the last relegation in League 1 is tight. Currently occupied by us, and I think we will likely hold it come the season end. The local derby away against Fleetwood will probably decide it either way. Operation Conference by our wonderful owners is on course. Fair play to Colchester though today, they battered us and deserved their win. They're still going down, mind!

Congrats to Northampton on their promotion from League 2, they outplayed us when we visited them in the cup earlier in the season!

Sad to see Bolton get relegated, hopefully with the new owners in they'll get back on track financially and begin to rebuild. Hope we do enough to stay up for a dervy game with them next year!

If it wasn't for Leon Clarke we would have been relegated twice by now. Unreal how much shit you can get away with if you just have prolific goalscorer.

Doncaster,probably the better of two very sheet sides. Got around 300 corners and had more possession aswell. Good thing for us they had that donkey Ashley Williams upfront and he was dogshite am telling ye. Their defence was quite dodgy too, so so's that and Leon took advantage of that. Great piece of business getting him last summer.

Good to see Notlob going down. Derby day at the Gigg so probably a full house and those cheats deserve it a bit you feel.

Didn't expect anything from the game today, and wasn't disappointed. One of our many ex-players popped up to open the scoring, Ashley Eastham, who we never really gave a chance too but also came through our youth system at a time when we were competing at a much higher level - so I guess I begrudgingly can't fully blame the board for his release.

We need Fleetwood to lose every remaining game they have this season, especially next week against us! However, I think we're as good as down, along with those teams below us.

There is a changing of the guard on the Fylde coast, and it has been happening over the past few seasons now. Fleetwood, with SAF opening their new state of the art training ground, are on the up along with AFC Fylde who move in to their new 6,000 seater stadium next season. Our roller coaster ride is turning into a disaster, with a plummet comparable to that of Oblivion.

Oh hullo, chekky 1-0 away win at Swindon!

Story of the game is quickly told. They were shit, we were shit, but less shit than them. None of Swindon's players actually looked arsed though. Literally didn't move and about 99% of our crosses came through. You could feel how uncomfortable their players must have felt, as they were running around like headless chicken. After we scored through Mayor, they started to do something, hit the woodwork twice and our goalie saved one in the dying minutes but that was about it.

Got the three points, so mathematically safe now aswell

Had my best away day ever yesterday; Portsmouth away, two big atmospheres, a massive game in the play-offs/automatic promotion race and we fucking won!

It wasn't a particularly pretty game from either side and they went 1-0 up from a good header but we defended badly for it. They had numerous chances to score again but midway through the second half we made two substitutions and went 2 up front with a pacey winger and absolutely destroyed them in the space of 5 minutes, right at the end!

Pompey fans are so entitled and bitter though.

So, Ched Evans' case will now have a second trial after the appeal process ruled as such.

If there's sufficient grounds for a re-trial, fine, but its a fucking ugly state of affairs that people are already using it to spout misogyny, victim blaming and presumptively declaring him innocent in their thousands.

Looks like Burton will be in the Championship next season. Six points clear of Millwall with two games left.

Do the simple things well in this league and you'll do OK. That's why Rotherham have done well of late - it's why Burnley are up there at the top. And it's why Derby are fucking it up again and won't go up and why MK Dons are going down. We've played two limited sides this week who do the simple things well, both draws, both leaving a very different impression. Rotherham fought tooth and nail and although we were the better side they also deserved a point because they'd got organised and did the basics. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, it was effective. Can't see Warnock's style with this Rotherham side working for next season because sides will suss them out, but if they add a bit of quality and another dimension they'll probably be OK for another year.

Birmingham today were also not pretty, but they also had a ruthless and unpleasant streak. Three awful tackles on Van La Parra in the first few minutes of the second half summed them up, really. Mind you, VLP was guilty of an awful dive in the first half and should be taken to task by the manager as I hate to see it - it has no place in the game. He should have been booked. Hope he learns to stop doing that bloody soon. Birmingham, to say they had nothing to play for, didn't bother trying to play football. They scored with pretty much their only shot and sat deep, hoofed it, and were generally very ugly. I'd hoped that two teams with nothing to play for would put on an entertaining show, but I was disappointed. Their right-back was probably the most odious player I've seen this season - if Vardy gets a ban for his dissent last week, he did enough today to get about a 6-match man. His abuse of the officials was appalling, and they did nothing about it.

Fucking cunts.

I have a feeling Plymouth didn't do very well today.

Biggest bunch of fucking bottle jobs I've ever seen. Fancy beating Portsmouth away, Leyton Orient away and then losing to already relegated and bottom of the league Dagenham and Redbridge and in the process going 3-fucking-nil down in the first half. Un-fucking-believable - except it's entirely believable because it's what we've always done. Not looking forward to getting beat twice live on Sky in the play offs to either Portsmouth, so the media can wank all over how big of a club they are, or to Wimbledon whose ground is so small it'll be ridiculous even getting a ticket regardless of the fact I have a season ticket.

I really thought this would be our year, serves me right for putting my faith in Plymouth Argyle.

Well, we were lucky to escape with a 0-0 from our nearest rivals. They hit the woodwork and made us clear off the line during the second half, outplayed us pretty much throughout. It'll come down to the final day, as next week we both play teams at the top and should both lose. They have the better final fixture though, with already relegated Crewe visiting them whilst we play now managerless Peterborough. We seem to play them a lot on the final day of the season when we're in the same division, this time it actually means something though!




Looking at the stats and you absolutely dominated them, guess that was largely the second half though.

Is our young Matty from the FM scene still on your books down there? Miss his posts!

Yeah Matt's still here, he's a video analyst I think! He used to do all the FM stats too but I'm not sure if he still does.

We are desperately poor (feel like I say that every time I post in this thread!) but we need Lambert to be backed in summer, we have no other option. If he left because he wasn't backed then no proper manager would come near us (it's a miracle Lambert did really as everyone knows what Venky's are like - clueless and ignorant).

A word on Accy Stanley in League Two, with them being so close to me I've been keeping an eye on them and what they're doing really is remarkable. Wasn't long ago we were top 6 Premiership and they were in the Conference, next season hopefully they'll be a division below us and to be honest if things had have panned out slightly differently we could have been facing them next season

Strange goings on at Forest Green, sack their manager with one game left of their season and the play-offs upcoming. Gave them their highest ever league finish regardless, too!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36154525

Lambert gone at the end of the season it seems. *cough* Celtic *cough*

Not sure about Celtic, he may end up there or he may not but if he was backed with funds in summer and the chance to rebuild then he'd still be here. He's just, like everybody else, sick of the situation at the club.

The same situation that us fans protested about 5 years ago and were slagged off for.

In a couple of weeks time we'll have no manager, no chairman, no MD (i.e. nobody running things in this country, who on earth is going to be choosing the next 'manager'?). As of June we'll barely have any contracted players either, half of them are on loan and there's a fair few (deadwood to be fair) whose contracts are up in summer.

Blackpool or Bolton all over again it's looking like next season.

Well, fuck.

Wigan are a team we have usually done well against, even as underdogs. So going into half time goalless I was hopeful of a cheeky smash and grab win to carry on our unexpected results against them. No, though, our team crumbled and they hit us for four in the second half. Fuck this team, fuck the manager and most of all fuck the owners. They're on course to achieve their aim of dragging us down to the conference just to spite us.

Need a favour from Walsall today to take it to the final day, or we'll be relegated come full time on the three o clock kick offs.

Feels like just six months ago Blackpool won 4-0 at Wigan on the opening day of the 2010-11 Premier League season, not (almost) six years.

Time really has not been kind on the Tangerines, huh.

That whole season was just unbelievable. I spent my life never thinking we'd get out of League 1, that Keigan Parker goal in the play off final still gives me goosebumps, the Championship itself was a pipe-dream. The football club has been run as nothing more than a money making machine though, there was never any ambition from the board to get those promotions - we just got incredibly lucky with managers and players. Now we're free falling as the club gets even more neglected, its only use in the owners eyes is to funnel money out of it into other failing business projects they own. We're dead as an actual football club until these people leave.

I remember seeing Blackpool almost win at White Hart lane just 5 years ago, crazy to think that club could be about to go into League 2.