What the club needs to get back in the league

Quoted from Sir Matt Tease

So what you are saying is, because we are 92nd we will only ever be able to buy excrement players ?

Yep....no player who's half decent wants to be in a relegation scrap does he?...
On the other foot, if we're scrapping for promotion out of non league you've more chance of signing half decent players

Quoted from Quagmire

If we have a better squad now than pre Christmas, how come the results & PPG are worse?

Any other manager with that record would have been shown the door.  

I'd say thsts a definitive yes the squad we have now is better than the one Holloway assembled.

That ppg comparison that has been  spat out includes half a dozen games before Hurst managed to get the new players through the door and excludes the interim games under Ben Davies.

Quoted from forza ivano

urrrh, i think you are being plain stupid.
it's obvious that the players available in January is a miniscule amount compared to the size of the summer market. So the supply is hugely diminished, but the demand is still the same - all 92 clubs will be looking to make 1 or 2 signings at least. Therefore when supply outstrips demand the available players will obviously have a lot more choice, and a side bottom of the 92 is going to be at the bottom of their list of options. Therefore it's highly unlikely that the players Hurst brought in will have been at the top of his wish list. Those at the top were no doubt not available, and then others will have chosen to move elsewhere. He is therefore reduced to making the most of a bad job

Sometimes Forza you write a load of crap. my opinion, but you've nailed it on the button. Those who disagree should read what the Exeter manager said ' no players available in the January transfer window'

Quoted from DB

Sometimes Forza you write a load of crap. my opinion, but you've nailed it on the button. Those who disagree should read what the Exeter manager said ' no players available in the January transfer window'

I think that's a big indicator. A club like Exeter who are doing well and chomping at the play-offs, struggled to get players in, where did that leave Grimsby?
Which brings us back to before the season started, what the hell were we doing?

Quoted from Plankton

I think that's a big indicator. A club like Exeter who are doing well and chomping at the play-offs, struggled to get players in, where did that leave Grimsby?
Which brings us back to before the season started, what the hell were we doing?

Totally agree with the final line, we were dead in the water before we kicked a ball, as our one trick one track approach was to get loads of cheap bodies in to the building based on the smug assertion that the season would either not start or be cancelled within weeks if it did due to Covid, and then Fenty and Holloway could claim what a financial masterstroke we had pulled off
Once it became obvious that the League was going to carry on we were so far of the pace in terms of ability and fitness we couldn’t compete seriously  

Quoted from lee65

Totally agree with the final line, we were dead in the water before we kicked a ball, as our one trick one track approach was to get loads of cheap bodies in to the building based on the smug assertion that the season would either not start or be cancelled within weeks if it did due to Covid, and then Fenty and Holloway could claim what a financial masterstroke we had pulled off
Once it became obvious that the League was going to carry on we were so far of the pace in terms of ability and fitness we couldn’t compete seriously  

I'm struggling to understand Fenty & co's mindset. Why would they think the season wouldn't continue, football was the only populist thing that the government was keen to keep going, it'd be extremely foolish to think it wouldn't continue.

Quoted from Azimuth

An excellent summary of Paul Hurst' mentality and is the reason we have thrown so many single goal leads away in the final minutes of games costing us a valuable two points every time.

A total myth that. Put up some stats a while ago that showed we very rarely let a lead slip in his first spell. This time there’s been a few but we also rescued a late point at Mansfield and I don’t remember anyone suggesting that was down to our tactics

Quoted from Vance Warner

A total myth that. Put up some stats a while ago that showed we very rarely let a lead slip in his first spell. This time there’s been a few but we also rescued a late point at Mansfield and I don’t remember anyone suggesting that was down to our tactics

I'm really bored and boring so looked through the league results from our promotion winning season and if anything the reverse is more true and we gained more draws from losing positions than we got from winning positions. There were 10 score draws in the league that season and in 4 of them we were winning first, in 6 we were losing first. Of the games where we winning first only one of them (Kidderminster away) was a late equaliser.

Of the games where we were losing and fought back to get a point, Chester away we got a very late equaliser, Lincoln away we did it with 10 men and should have won, Torquay at home we were losing by two  and Guiseley away we were losing twice but still got a draw.

Hurst has his faults but it's a myth to claim he regularly gives away late equalisers. This season it's happened a couple of times but I would argue some of that can be attributed to the squad getting a revamp in January and most of those players weren't fully up to speed as they hadn't been playing regularly.