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Quoted from Poojah

I'm 36 years old, have been following Town regularly since I was 5 and based on what I've seen so far, I think this is the best Town side I have seen, pound-for-pound for the level we're playing at. That's not entirely fair on some of the teams I watched in my formative years as we were playing at a much higher level against clubs with far greater resources than our own, however it's worth nothing there are a minimum of four sides in this division with bigger playing budgets than ours and thus far we're comfortably ahead of all of them.

In my 30+ years watching Town I can never remember us really challenging for a league title. The only two sides that would even come close to arguing otherwise were Slade's team in 2005/6 and Scott & Hurst's team of 2012/13. In both cases we were pretty horrible in the new year and ended up some way off the pace in the end.

That's a reminder that this is a long season, but also raises an interesting point. In both of those seasons we did quite a lot of business in January, and in all fairness signed some decent players. We went into 2006, having just beaten Wrexham on NYE in that Glen Downey game, in second place and in touching distance of Wycombe with a game in hand. We then made a number of signings including Ben Futcher, Curtis Woodhouse and Marc Goodfellow - all good players in their own right but I don't think any were totally necessary (Junior Mendes certainly wasn't), and I feel actually detracted from rather than added to what we were as a team.

The window in 2013 was pretty exciting in fairness, as January windows go for Town. With so much focus on whether or not we'd re-sign Ross Hannah, who'd been on fire, from Bradford, we ended up signing Richard Brodie and Jamie Devitt one Friday out of absolutely nowhere. Eventually Hannah did sign, and then if memory serves a couple of hours later we announced the signing of LJL from League One Bury. That one in particular was a strange one, as his manager at Bury at the time was Kevin Blackwell, who days earlier had tried to pull a fast one with his old mates at Luton who thought they'd signed Marcus Marshall, only to then realise they weren't allowed to. Town duly re-signed Marshall.

The other big story of that window is that we lost Nathan Pond, who had been imperious, but regardless I think the big takeaway that sometimes less is more when it comes to adding to a good, or even great squad of players. A few weeks ago I was gagging for us to sign Bogle when it became clear he was finished at Donny. I still think he's a great player at this level, but would I now want him to sign tomorrow? Nope. It's just too big a risk - we seem to have a team that is greater than the sum of its parts, and adding the wrong ingredient to that mix could spoil that.

I think we have a management team that very much get that though, and the fact we've ended up in such a rosey situation is absolutely no accident. We've signed 15 players since the end of that last season. At this level, I'd argue a success rate of 50% is pretty good going. I've now seen 14 of those 15 and I'd grade all of them somewhere from 'good' to 'fùcking dynamite', with several close to the more explosive end of that scale. Grant obviously has something to prove in terms of fitness, but honestly, that kind of success ratio is absolutely off the scale. How does that compare, say, to Manchester United's in recent years, with all their money and resources?

As I said earlier, long way to go this season, but ultimately the most compelling characteristic of this team is that I literally don't want to change anything. There are no boo-boys, just a team of likeable, talented, hard working, professional players who appear to be being very well managed.

In that sense at least, this is pretty much uncharted territory for me as a Town fan.

Quoted from grimsbybrown

Lots of talk on here about Paul Hurst being more relaxed, experienced and having learnt / grown as a manager - and who could disagree?

Keeping up momentum after Christmas is going to be crucial, doubly so in a league with only one automatic promotion spot.  I seem to recall his Shrewsbury team fell away after the new year too, let’s hope he’s learnt from that experience as well.

We are in a great position so we need to do whatever it takes to see this through.  Whatever it takes to keep Hunt and Towler.  Loans are great but they make us vulnerable - remember when Luton ‘stole’ Scott Nielson?  (He only played 8 times for them and was released at the end of the season.)

That’s the kind of ruthlessness needed but it can work in reverse.  Hurst wants another striker, I don’t know if Billy Waters is all that -  not seen him play - might be out of our league fee wise - but if we have resources and he’s a Hurst kind of player weakening one of our promotion rivals as we strengthen ourselves would be a double win.

A few careful additions may not be a bad thing over a long season.  The way Hurst has spoken suggests he doesn’t feel his squad is complete - suspensions, injuries can soon take their toll and change the balance of a team.  Margins are fine, it doesn’t take much for three points to become one.

We are in a great position, times like these don’t come around very often, from top to bottom we need to do whatever it takes - let’s hope Hurst has learnt, so far, the signs are good.

Quoted from Poojah

I’m not sure Billy Waters is the type of striker we need in our preferred system. If we’re looking in this division, I’d be tempted to have a look at Josh Umerah at Wealdstone - big, quick and appears to be able to finish.