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Quote from: Saughall Robin on June 08, 2022, 11:20:11 AM

For what it's worth, I think Parky will undoubtedly stay for a good while yet. He pushed very hard for us to go full time and he's got a freeish hand at the Club.
If we don't improve in the next year or so, he might be tempted but I doubt it.

Sadly I don't think he realises how good he has it here. No other manager in English football would stand by a 20-game winless streak without it ended sourly.

Of course he knows, and the 20 game streak, whilst bad, was something most were confident  he’d get us out of. He came out of it with more credit if anything. He’s built this club back up in the last 5 years so I doubt there were any thoughts at all of him being sacked and I’d also hazard a guess that most other clubs in England would act the same in those circumstances.

As for the Notts County job, it’s extremely concerning and I’d genuinely  fear for us this year if he did go. You couldn’t begrudge him for it, though. They might be in our division but they’re streets ahead of us (and most of the rest of the national league) in nearly every other way.

Someone below mentioned it comes down to loyalty V ambition. Well, I don’t think we’d be where we are if Phil wasn’t highly ambitious. It’s just a question of whether we are the club where he can fulfil that or if he thinks Notts County offers the more appealing opportunity. I’m praying it’s the former.

We’ve almost completely sold out our allocation according to the Wrexham forum. Very good effort

Now the backslapping from beating the leagues whipping boys on Saturday has died down, nows the chance to give everyone a real sense of perspective - if we lose on Saturday Weymouth will be 6 points behind us with a game in hand. But at least we’ve now won 1 in about 30 games 👍

We showed some fight tonight which is a significant improvement on recent performances. Boreham Wood are one of the top sides in the division. We did well to stay in it tonight. Perspective is important

We're nowhere near clubs like Stockport or Wrexham. I agree, a loss to Kings Lynn would be cause for concern. Losing to Stockport and Wrexham is par for the course for us. Phil after Stockport was talking about us sticking with them and we should. We'll be fine by the end of the season I'm confident of that but we shouldn't turn on the players and management after one set of poor results.

I'll be interested to see how we do against sides around us as we've had a long run of seemingly playing sides top of the league, in great form or around the play offs. The last time we did so was against Weymouth who we ended up dismantling away from home. Maybe that's our place at the moment and if it is the case then we're doing extremely well. I'd have taken an improvement on last season's position at the start of the year and we're still on for that as we speak despite this poor run.

Poor results against Kings Lynn, Torquay and Woking at home and I will be concerned but for now we're doing well enough that this bad run isn't the difference in survival or relegation for us like it might have been in previous years.

I'd forgotten about Southend. That's a game we definitely should've won something from.

Quote from: GolfRoader on December 15, 2021, 04:56:09 PM

Quote from: HashtagAlty on December 15, 2021, 09:14:39 AM

Quote from: Alty Bri on December 15, 2021, 08:43:40 AM

He hasn't lost the players. They gave absolutely everything v Bromley.

I think what PP needs to start doing, is shedding a few of the players who simply are not performing. Last night was a good opportunity to see who those players are.

Then we need the miracle of finding a goalscoring striker who can take advantage of the brilliant service provided by Kosy, Mooney and Colclough. There must be one. Jeez, they could fill their boots with those 3 players around them.

We will raise our game v Stockport and Wrexham and get points.

You don't consistently under perform for so long if there's not an issue somewhere. The fact we turn up 2nd Half suggested things must be said at HT that aren't be adhered to first half.

But we're not consistently underperforming, we're going through a rough patch. It's christmas, we're 12th in the National League and you're questioning the manager? I'm not sure what you're looking for but I think he's getting absolutely everything from this squad he can. The fact you're questioning it just shows how much we've come on in the last few years.

Let's not lose sight of the aim for Altrincham in this division at the moment, which is to avoid being dragged into a relegation battle and to try and establish ourselves in this league. We're definitely doing that at this moment. I agree we're on a poor run and it needs to pick up but watch any "Philtrincham" team and you know that we're in every game and results will eventually come.

Find me a single manager with a 1 in 12 record that wasn't questioned.

Find a manager immune from critisim where it included failing to beat lower division sides 3 times in a month.

Phil's players are underperforming, that's as much on him as it is the players.

How many games without a upturn would you give him? 1 win in 16? 20?

I’m looking at the bigger picture. Focusing on a certain run of games can lead to rash reactions and emotional decision making. I’ll question Phil and his methods when we’re in danger of being relegated. As far as I’m concerned if we’re 12th in the division at Christmas he is immune to criticism. A poor run of results doesn’t change that.

A couple of factors have contributed to this I believe including the covid outbreak meaning we lost some key players which, in turn, meant we lost some momentum.

After that I'm not so sure we are in a worse place than last season. Actually, at this stage last year we'd gained 1 less point than we have now. On the scoring issues I'm also not entirely convinced a centre forward is where our problem lies either. We're actually the 5th highest scorers in the division this season with 33 goals..We'd only scored around 21 at this stage last year.

In contrast we've conceded 29 which puts us right where we currently are, which is mid table..we'd only conceded 22 at this stage last year

What's happening seems indicative of Phil's sides as Andrew says. He says it himself and seems to know it's coming where we tend to go on fantastic runs winning game after game followed by a barren spell for another 6-7 games, or whichever it is. It's hard to pinpoint the reason but perhaps part time status, squad depth quality and external factors like covid are partly to blame.  I also think our tactics can be "high risk high reward" at times. We'll play some great football going for the win but might risk sacrificing a comfortable draw for that even when we aren't playing that well. So, when we don't play well and it doesn't click we end up losing games we may otherwise get a point in. On the other side of that our ambitious play does tend to yield results we ordinarily wouldn't have a chance in so it balances out in my opinion. Unfortunately it looks worse when it doesn't come off

This brings me to the striker issue. What is the role of a striker in this team? To me it isn't necessarily that of a goalscorer as we don't have an issue scoring this year. What I do think is that our striker needs to work hard pressuring defences, they need to be strong on the ball and be great at holding it up for our attacking midfielders. They also need to be able to see a pass and be prepared to be part of the creation of a goal scoring opportunity as much as wanting to be the player finishing it. For me, the only real archetypal thing a striker needs to be able to do in this team is have the vision to get on the end of the multiple drilled crosses into the 6 yard box we end up having. 
I'm still not sure we have that player yet but I think it's such a specialist's role in this side it's hard to find one at non league level that can fit the bill.

Superb result away from home in the conference league. Put Weymouth to the sword after the red which is brilliant to have done in any conference national match. Especially good after the FA Cup defeat on Tuesday. I feared a Colchester-type scenario