Just back

Emotional afternoon. Had been hoping all night that the Handyside news was just a sick joke but arrived in Cleethorpes to find that, alas, it was not. Sad, sad times, and that minute’s applause was a tough one, especially with Kev Rogers choking up as he announced it. It coincided with me getting something in my eye.

Sadly, the game couldn’t have been any less of a tribute to the man. Handyside wasn’t just a great defender, he was a brilliant carrier and passer of the ball. Our back 5 weren’t any of those things. An absolutely shambolic first-half from them, and not that much better in the second, Maher quite literally forgetting the ball at one point. I honestly think that if Stockport had gone at us full tilt for the full 90, they could have had double figures. Thank Christ they stopped throwing punches after they’d bagged the points inside half-an-hour.

I can’t be arsed to unpack the goals. It doesn’t really matter. Like so many of late, they were just so shít and so avoidable, it drives me absolutely fúcking crazy. Ultimately, we’ve changed the personnel but the problems stay the same, and the stats bear that out. Here’s the average goals conceded per game in league games managed by Hurst, Pearson / Davies and Artell respectively.

Hurst - 1.63 (16 games)
Pearson / Davies - 1.67 (3 games)
Artell - 2.09 (11 games)

In effect, under Artell we’ve conceded 28% more goals than the man he replaced; a man who was sacked no less. A man who was sacked despite a huge amount of good will in the bank. Artell doesn’t have that luxury.

It gets worse though, if we take the last 5 in isolation, we’ve conceded 3.2 goals per game on average, and that somehow includes a clean sheet. That’s no coincidence, the common denominator here is the manager, and the system he seemingly wants to persist with. Can you blame it all on Artell? Perhaps not, but he’s inherited a problem, and he’s gone and made it worse.

It’s not rocket science; you can’t be so easy to score goals against and expect to pick up points on a regular basis. If there’s a positive to be found today, it’s that Sutton and Forest Green both lost, the veggies taking an even heavier home beating than we did. But relying on that is not a good model, nor is being marginally better than two sides who look set to pick up the lowest collective points total of any relegated League Two sides in the best part of 20 years.

Ultimately, there’s no disgrace in losing to Stockport. They’re a good, well drilled side, and they’ve got a markedly bigger budget than us. But the budget argument works both ways. There’s no way we have the fourth lowest budget in the division. We are so far below par it’s unreal.

Some big games ahead between now and mid-March. Artell needs to have a long, hard look at the list of managers that have never worked in the EFL again after being sacked by Town. The short-term fixture list holds the potential to both save his bacon and to see him back in the job centre. If he wants to avoid the latter, he needs to find some pragmatism from somewhere - Stockport knew that a quick press would see us completely shít the bed, and they weren’t wrong.

More than anything though, I’m just absolutely gutted that one of my childhood heroes has died. Some of those fúckers out there today don’t deserve to grace the same pitch as Peter Handyside. RIP, Mariner.

So after a 3 hour drive home (you’re welcome Dave) and a bowl of corn flakes for my dinner as I should have gone food shopping today instead of taking my seat to watch that rubbish.


There is nothing I can take from today and recent weeks that tells me the only two things that will stop us getting relegated again are FGR & Sutton.

Stockport didn’t have to get out of 3rd gear today as we gifted them 3 goals and it was men against boys, again!

I won’t dwell on the detail as I’ve worked it over in my mind multiple times on the A1 but the one thing that sticks with me is that it looked like the players are losing heart and no doubt faith in what they’re being asked to do, at times it looked like there was a fair bit of finger pointing going on which is a really bad sign.

On the pitch we look so muddled, when Artell arrived we couldn’t defend we still can’t as he’s failed to deal with the root cause of our poor results - poor defending.

It’s looking bad because it actually is bad. Though I’m completely unimpressed with Artell I’m equally as unimpressed with this set of players, they need to stand up & have some pride.

Finally there was a lot of coppers there today, they all should sacked as none of them spotted the wage stealers disguised as footballers & a football manger inside Blundell Park today.

Quoted from Poojah

Emotional afternoon. Had been hoping all night that the Handyside news was just a sick joke but arrived in Cleethorpes to find that, alas, it was not. Sad, sad times, and that minute’s applause was a tough one, especially with Kev Rogers choking up as he announced it. It coincided with me getting something in my eye.

Sadly, the game couldn’t have been any less of a tribute to the man. Handyside wasn’t just a great defender, he was a brilliant carrier and passer of the ball. Our back 5 weren’t any of those things. An absolutely shambolic first-half from them, and not that much better in the second, Maher quite literally forgetting the ball at one point. I honestly think that if Stockport had gone at us full tilt for the full 90, they could have had double figures. Thank Christ they stopped throwing punches after they’d bagged the points inside half-an-hour.

I can’t be arsed to unpack the goals. It doesn’t really matter. Like so many of late, they were just so shít and so avoidable, it drives me absolutely fúcking crazy. Ultimately, we’ve changed the personnel but the problems stay the same, and the stats bear that out. Here’s the average goals conceded per game in league games managed by Hurst, Pearson / Davies and Artell respectively.

Hurst - 1.63 (16 games)
Pearson / Davies - 1.67 (3 games)
Artell - 2.09 (11 games)

In effect, under Artell we’ve conceded 28% more goals than the man he replaced; a man who was sacked no less. A man who was sacked despite a huge amount of good will in the bank. Artell doesn’t have that luxury.

It gets worse though, if we take the last 5 in isolation, we’ve conceded 3.2 goals per game on average, and that somehow includes a clean sheet. That’s no coincidence, the common denominator here is the manager, and the system he seemingly wants to persist with. Can you blame it all on Artell? Perhaps not, but he’s inherited a problem, and he’s gone and made it worse.

It’s not rocket science; you can’t be so easy to score goals against and expect to pick up points on a regular basis. If there’s a positive to be found today, it’s that Sutton and Forest Green both lost, the veggies taking an even heavier home beating than we did. But relying on that is not a good model, nor is being marginally better than two sides who look set to pick up the lowest collective points total of any relegated League Two sides in the best part of 20 years.

Ultimately, there’s no disgrace in losing to Stockport. They’re a good, well drilled side, and they’ve got a markedly bigger budget than us. But the budget argument works both ways. There’s no way we have the fourth lowest budget in the division. We are so far below par it’s unreal.

Some big games ahead between now and mid-March. Artell needs to have a long, hard look at the list of managers that have never worked in the EFL again after being sacked by Town. The short-term fixture list holds the potential to both save his bacon and to see him back in the job centre. If he wants to avoid the latter, he needs to find some pragmatism from somewhere - Stockport knew that a quick press would see us completely shít the bed, and they weren’t wrong.

More than anything though, I’m just absolutely gutted that one of my childhood heroes has died. Some of those fúckers out there today don’t deserve to grace the same pitch as Peter Handyside. RIP, Mariner.

As usual, right on point. The saddest thing is that some of today’s squad arrived at our club with a lot better pedigree than Pete but we and he fulfilled our potential and much, much more. Some of those useless fornicators today clapped for someone they never knew, perhaps they ought to take a minute to reflect on how to make the best of themselves.

Quoted from Poojah

Emotional afternoon. Had been hoping all night that the Handyside news was just a sick joke but arrived in Cleethorpes to find that, alas, it was not. Sad, sad times, and that minute’s applause was a tough one, especially with Kev Rogers choking up as he announced it. It coincided with me getting something in my eye.

Sadly, the game couldn’t have been any less of a tribute to the man. Handyside wasn’t just a great defender, he was a brilliant carrier and passer of the ball. Our back 5 weren’t any of those things. An absolutely shambolic first-half from them, and not that much better in the second, Maher quite literally forgetting the ball at one point. I honestly think that if Stockport had gone at us full tilt for the full 90, they could have had double figures. Thank Christ they stopped throwing punches after they’d bagged the points inside half-an-hour.

I can’t be arsed to unpack the goals. It doesn’t really matter. Like so many of late, they were just so shít and so avoidable, it drives me absolutely fúcking crazy. Ultimately, we’ve changed the personnel but the problems stay the same, and the stats bear that out. Here’s the average goals conceded per game in league games managed by Hurst, Pearson / Davies and Artell respectively.

Hurst - 1.63 (16 games)
Pearson / Davies - 1.67 (3 games)
Artell - 2.09 (11 games)

In effect, under Artell we’ve conceded 28% more goals than the man he replaced; a man who was sacked no less. A man who was sacked despite a huge amount of good will in the bank. Artell doesn’t have that luxury.

It gets worse though, if we take the last 5 in isolation, we’ve conceded 3.2 goals per game on average, and that somehow includes a clean sheet. That’s no coincidence, the common denominator here is the manager, and the system he seemingly wants to persist with. Can you blame it all on Artell? Perhaps not, but he’s inherited a problem, and he’s gone and made it worse.

It’s not rocket science; you can’t be so easy to score goals against and expect to pick up points on a regular basis. If there’s a positive to be found today, it’s that Sutton and Forest Green both lost, the veggies taking an even heavier home beating than we did. But relying on that is not a good model, nor is being marginally better than two sides who look set to pick up the lowest collective points total of any relegated League Two sides in the best part of 20 years.

Ultimately, there’s no disgrace in losing to Stockport. They’re a good, well drilled side, and they’ve got a markedly bigger budget than us. But the budget argument works both ways. There’s no way we have the fourth lowest budget in the division. We are so far below par it’s unreal.

Some big games ahead between now and mid-March. Artell needs to have a long, hard look at the list of managers that have never worked in the EFL again after being sacked by Town. The short-term fixture list holds the potential to both save his bacon and to see him back in the job centre. If he wants to avoid the latter, he needs to find some pragmatism from somewhere - Stockport knew that a quick press would see us completely shít the bed, and they weren’t wrong.

More than anything though, I’m just absolutely gutted that one of my childhood heroes has died. Some of those fúckers out there today don’t deserve to grace the same pitch as Peter Handyside. RIP, Mariner.

Poojah, you always manage to put things in words much better than I could. I think you're an excellent servant this board and enunciate much better, where as I can only say we're shite.

There's a lot to think about from top to bottom in the club, which is unfortunate reality we see ourselves in.

For me my biggest frustration is that we were beaten by the 29th minute, done, dusted and bring in the bibs. We looked like conference side against this outfit and that's to their credit, their were talented, well disciplined and knew when to game manage,

Quoted from Poojah

Emotional afternoon. Had been hoping all night that the Handyside news was just a sick joke but arrived in Cleethorpes to find that, alas, it was not. Sad, sad times, and that minute’s applause was a tough one, especially with Kev Rogers choking up as he announced it. It coincided with me getting something in my eye.

Sadly, the game couldn’t have been any less of a tribute to the man. Handyside wasn’t just a great defender, he was a brilliant carrier and passer of the ball. Our back 5 weren’t any of those things. An absolutely shambolic first-half from them, and not that much better in the second, Maher quite literally forgetting the ball at one point. I honestly think that if Stockport had gone at us full tilt for the full 90, they could have had double figures. Thank Christ they stopped throwing punches after they’d bagged the points inside half-an-hour.

I can’t be arsed to unpack the goals. It doesn’t really matter. Like so many of late, they were just so shít and so avoidable, it drives me absolutely fúcking crazy. Ultimately, we’ve changed the personnel but the problems stay the same, and the stats bear that out. Here’s the average goals conceded per game in league games managed by Hurst, Pearson / Davies and Artell respectively.

Hurst - 1.63 (16 games)
Pearson / Davies - 1.67 (3 games)
Artell - 2.09 (11 games)

In effect, under Artell we’ve conceded 28% more goals than the man he replaced; a man who was sacked no less. A man who was sacked despite a huge amount of good will in the bank. Artell doesn’t have that luxury.

It gets worse though, if we take the last 5 in isolation, we’ve conceded 3.2 goals per game on average, and that somehow includes a clean sheet. That’s no coincidence, the common denominator here is the manager, and the system he seemingly wants to persist with. Can you blame it all on Artell? Perhaps not, but he’s inherited a problem, and he’s gone and made it worse.

It’s not rocket science; you can’t be so easy to score goals against and expect to pick up points on a regular basis. If there’s a positive to be found today, it’s that Sutton and Forest Green both lost, the veggies taking an even heavier home beating than we did. But relying on that is not a good model, nor is being marginally better than two sides who look set to pick up the lowest collective points total of any relegated League Two sides in the best part of 20 years.

Ultimately, there’s no disgrace in losing to Stockport. They’re a good, well drilled side, and they’ve got a markedly bigger budget than us. But the budget argument works both ways. There’s no way we have the fourth lowest budget in the division. We are so far below par it’s unreal.

Some big games ahead between now and mid-March. Artell needs to have a long, hard look at the list of managers that have never worked in the EFL again after being sacked by Town. The short-term fixture list holds the potential to both save his bacon and to see him back in the job centre. If he wants to avoid the latter, he needs to find some pragmatism from somewhere - Stockport knew that a quick press would see us completely shít the bed, and they weren’t wrong.

More than anything though, I’m just absolutely gutted that one of my childhood heroes has died. Some of those fúckers out there today don’t deserve to grace the same pitch as Peter Handyside. RIP, Mariner.

I felt really sorry for Kev today, he’s had to call some awful things before kick off this season, absolutely lovely fella as  well.

You have to ask why was Artell out of work for 18 months & it took a massively strategic programme of coaching pod casts, print articles & extensive PR to get him back in a job.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

I felt really sorry for Kev today, he’s had to call some awful things before kick off this season, absolutely lovely fella as  well.

You have to ask why was Artell out of work for 18 months & it took a massively strategic programme of coaching pod casts, print articles & extensive PR to get him back in a job.

I look at our team sheet and watch how we’re trying to play and I can’t actually work out how some players get starts and some don’t even get on the bench. Baffling.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

I felt really sorry for Kev today, he’s had to call some awful things before kick off this season, absolutely lovely fella as  well.

You have to ask why was Artell out of work for 18 months & it took a massively strategic programme of coaching pod casts, print articles & extensive PR to get him back in a job.

I'm also asking myself why he hasn't signed a couple of players he's worked with previously. I'm not sure that he can trust anyone, his coaching staff were forced upon him and all of our signings appear to have been players the Head of Recruitment had been monitoring for a while.

Jack Lester wanted Alan Buckley to come be his assistant at Chesterfield. Buckley turned it down but told him that his assistant manager had to be somebody that he could trust implicitly as many assistant managers want the managers job.

Quoted from jamesgtfc

I'm also asking myself why he hasn't signed a couple of players he's worked with previously. I'm not sure that he can trust anyone, his coaching staff were forced upon him and all of our signings appear to have been players the Head of Recruitment had been monitoring for a while.

Jack Lester wanted Alan Buckley to come be his assistant at Chesterfield. Buckley turned it down but told him that his assistant manager had to be somebody that he could trust implicitly as many assistant managers want the managers job.

I suspect he’s not signed players he’s worked with before is due to the fact we’re in a relegation battle, he said as much on Thursday when asked about Kirk.

As a manager he’s only managed 1 club so I wouldn’t expect him to have that big a network of players to fall back on, a lot of his Crewe side are playing at a higher level aren’t they?

I don’t get your point about trust to be honest, the only context where you could use trust as a factor is that the players don’t trust what he’s asking them to do is the right thing.

Quoted from headingly_mariner

Oh and the mindless booing of short pass and the shouts to launch it are a pure embarrassment. They players are struggling, that sort of nonsense just makes it worse.

Had some absolute bore sat near me today and could hear him loudly proclaiming how hoofing it forward is always the best way to play. Genuinely heard him say that John Beck's Cambridge team would beat Man City 6-0 and Pep wouldn't know what hit him. I think we should be  more direct and not so stubbornly playing it out from the back but fook me, if anyone actually believes that then they're watching the wrong sport.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

I suspect he’s not signed players he’s worked with before is due to the fact we’re in a relegation battle, he said as much on Thursday when asked about Kirk.

As a manager he’s only managed 1 club so I wouldn’t expect him to have that big a network of players to fall back on, a lot of his Crewe side are playing at a higher level aren’t they?

I don’t get your point about trust to be honest, the only context where you could use trust as a factor is that the players don’t trust what he’s asking them to do is the right thing.

I don't understand his appointment at all if he can't bring in players through his network, that's surely the boon of having a certain manager, their well established network with players?

I think the owners have been incredibly naive at what going down means and have taken this bloke on a chance. I'd rather us have spent on the cowleys for example as they have a pedigree on making successful teams, aka Lincoln. Lincoln are thriving, new stadium expansion, community buy in, etc...