Scunthorpe.

Quoted from headingly_mariner

Jolley would be flipping hilarious. Barrow found him out a lot quicker than we did.

Quoted from Poojah

Jolley always struck me as someone who did his research and, having performed a miracle in keeping us up, seemed to be unhealthily aware of the value Town fans of a certain age place on attractive football having grown up in the Buckley years.

His attempts at recreating Buckley brand sexy football were at least vaguely on track for 45 minutes, before one of the greatest Town capitulations I’ve witnessed saw us concede 4 to Forest Green in the second half of our opening game and lose 4-1. I think it was at that point he realised he had neither the budget nor talent to have us play anything other than pragmatic football and that’s what got served up for the rest of that season.

Having been burned by that, he appeared to go into full-on, anti-football, opposite mode, signing 8ft 6” James Hanson and putting all his chips on winning cheap free-kicks and throw-ins in the opposition half in order to stick the ball on his head.

And to be fair, that strategy worked for quite a bit longer than 45 minutes - we were 4th in the league after 6 games and remained in the play-offs after beating Exeter 3-1 away in that Ethan Robson inspired game in our 11th. Not a bad way to react to having our àrse handed to us by Chelsea.

That Exeter victory, on the 28th September, would be his last win in the Town dugout, before he resigned on 15th November. What’s often forgotten though is that we only played 4 games in that time - with two consecutive games called off (international duty and a wind-damaged Plymouth stadium), and his last match as manager was actually less than a month after that Exeter win on 22nd October - a 0-0 draw at Cambridge. We were 16th but only two points shy of 9th.

People seem to recall Holloway coming in over New Year and turning into us some sort of footballing machine, but I think a lot of that is caught up in the excitement of the time. Jolley’s PPG that season was 1.27; Holloway’s 1.5. Better yes, but not massively so.

Jolley did alright here. It wasn’t always exciting but on balance he was comfortably the best part of our 2016 / 2020 Hurst sandwich. And I can’t vouch for what type of bloke he was, but if anyone can tell me that he was more odious than Bignot, Slade or that cúnt Holloway then I will fall off my chair.

I get the tallest dwarf argument and all that, but I do think with the board and budget in place now we’d have seen something much more palatable from Jolley’s teams than he was able to produce under the conditions he had to work under.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

He took over a club 6 points above the relegation zone and managed to steer us to finishing 5 points above the relegation zone by the end of the season. The 2 points in 5 or 6 matches after he was appointed (I can't remember if he took charge of the game at Carlisle the day after his appointment) was the reason we got dragged into a proper relegation battle.

And we had some luck in the final 5 games that season. The penalty given against Chesterfield was the type often not given. And the penalty given at Swindon was neither a foul nor in the penalty area.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

He took over a club 6 points above the relegation zone and managed to steer us to finishing 5 points above the relegation zone by the end of the season. The 2 points in 5 or 6 matches after he was appointed (I can't remember if he took charge of the game at Carlisle the day after his appointment) was the reason we got dragged into a proper relegation battle.

And we had some luck in the final 5 games that season. The penalty given against Chesterfield was the type often not given. And the penalty given at Swindon was neither a foul nor in the penalty area.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

He took over a club 6 points above the relegation zone and managed to steer us to finishing 5 points above the relegation zone by the end of the season. The 2 points in 5 or 6 matches after he was appointed (I can't remember if he took charge of the game at Carlisle the day after his appointment) was the reason we got dragged into a proper relegation battle.

And we had some luck in the final 5 games that season. The penalty given against Chesterfield was the type often not given. And the penalty given at Swindon was neither a foul nor in the penalty area.