Artell pre-Wimbledon

Quoted from Poojah

Agree with most of that, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves - there’s still work to do yet. On the one hand, we could be sitting pretty on Saturday evening with a virtually unassailable 12 point cushion, or the gap could be back down to 3 points with Sutton also hot on our heels.

The pressure tonight is substantially lower than it was on Saturday, but it’s an important game regardless and one we could really do with taking something from. 4 points from the next 2 days would do very nicely.

I would take 2 tbh it's weird because 2 points stopping Sutton winning would be better than winning tonight and losing to them .

If Sutton don't beat us it's the final nail for them I think , no way are they turning it around to around 2.1PPG to reach 45 points which I think will just about do it now - if we made it out of these 2 games with 2 points or a win at Sutton I would back us to reach 1PPG probably maximum 1.2PPG for safety . It might even be lower than 45 points for safety with  that nasty run FGR have .

FGR and Sutton play each other in a couple of weeks aswell so  one drops points or they cancel each other out .

If we won both of these 2 we would be pretty close (maybe even enough points ?) and  looking upwards strangely .

Quoted from Poojah

Agree with most of that, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves - there’s still work to do yet. On the one hand, we could be sitting pretty on Saturday evening with a virtually unassailable 12 point cushion, or the gap could be back down to 3 points with Sutton also hot on our heels.

The pressure tonight is substantially lower than it was on Saturday, but it’s an important game regardless and one we could really do with taking something from. 4 points from the next 2 days would do very nicely.

Challenging week for the players TBH, the need to at least avoid defeat in both games and arguably win on Saturday plus a journey down South, back up North and then back down South again to another club 5 miles away from the one they're visiting tonight,

Quoted from HertsGTFC

Challenging week for the players TBH, the need to at least avoid defeat in both games and arguably win on Saturday plus a journey down South, back up North and then back down South again to another club 5 miles away from the one they're visiting tonight,

Agree totally with this. Whoever accepted the change in date didn’t look at the calendar propery. Would even possibly have made more sense to play tomorrow night and stay over for a couple of days. There must be a hell of a fatigue with the journey itself and disruption in training.

Quoted from WOZOFGRIMSBY

Agree totally with this. Whoever accepted the change in date didn’t look at the calendar propery. Would even possibly have made more sense to play tomorrow night and stay over for a couple of days. There must be a hell of a fatigue with the journey itself and disruption in training.

That assumes that we actually had an option as to choose when the games were played. I'd imagine there are regulations regarding this and the League told us when they had to be played.

Quoted from forza ivano

I get the distinct feeling that this change was practically forced upon artell by the players, the staff, 1878 n the fans ( in descending order of importance)
Notice how he tries to downplay the extent of the change and that it's really injuries that forced him to do it.
Had to laugh when he said he wished the players had spoken up 3 or 4 weeks earlier! As tho it was their fault! Hes the manager ffs!
Having said that it's good to see that the scales have finally appeared to fall from his eyes, n he does seem a little more humble and relaxed, as a result

I heard that as more the staff than the players to be honest.

No surprise really that he sounds simply better on the back of two decent results as opposed to after a tonking at home to a relegation rival.  Equally so JT's line of questioning is much easier than Matt Dean's more relentless (especially of late) approach.

I'm at the point where I don't care if it was injuries, the fans, Stockwood, a 3am epiphany from Artell or someone in the set-up hammering home some truths.  The last few performances have seen more of what we need as opposed to trying to see the longer term picture.  But we're still poor, long term that needs addressing.

Quoted from diehardmariner

I heard that as more the staff than the players to be honest.

No surprise really that he sounds simply better on the back of two decent results as opposed to after a tonking at home to a relegation rival.  Equally so JT's line of questioning is much easier than Matt Dean's more relentless (especially of late) approach.

I'm at the point where I don't care if it was injuries, the fans, Stockwood, a 3am epiphany from Artell or someone in the set-up hammering home some truths.  The last few performances have seen more of what we need as opposed to trying to see the longer term picture.  But we're still poor, long term that needs addressing.

That's where recruitment is going to have to be a hell of a lot better (stating the obvious ) which probably won't come cheap in the template Artell favours . I'm interested how Ainley fit's into his plans medium to long term as he played a lot of games in Artell's/Crewe's system so he  is probably one of the few players who is a good fit for it .

Quoted from diehardmariner

I heard that as more the staff than the players to be honest.

No surprise really that he sounds simply better on the back of two decent results as opposed to after a tonking at home to a relegation rival.  Equally so JT's line of questioning is much easier than Matt Dean's more relentless (especially of late) approach.

I'm at the point where I don't care if it was injuries, the fans, Stockwood, a 3am epiphany from Artell or someone in the set-up hammering home some truths.  The last few performances have seen more of what we need as opposed to trying to see the longer term picture.  But we're still poor, long term that needs addressing.

Yet he specifically said that he wished the players had spoken up earlier!

Tonight's game will be interesting:

Wimbledon need the points to keep looking toward the play offs. We need the points for obvious reasons.

Both teams coming off wins at the weekend in emotionally charged situations, big games for both but in very different ways.

Their form is mixed overall, home form better than away but still mixed (w8 d4 l5). They've scored marginally more goals than us but been much better in defence (no surprise there).

It's another test for our grit and our more prosaic style of football.

It has draw written all over it. And I'll take that. See you in the away end.

Currently breathing a huge sigh of relief that Artell appears to have taken on board the views of players and staff - it had begun to look as if we were stampeding towards relegation if we simply carried on with the same kamikaze way of playing.

Fortunately, this fetish for getting whipped every week is no longer considered to be a pleasurable activity, and
I sincerely hope that the team can now resort to more conventional methods of stimulation.

I checked the last few seasons league tables and 45 points is usually about right. One of the relegated teams usually get stranded and one gets a few more points. On this basis. We need four more victories. If I was Artell, I would continue with the attritional approach from Saturday and grind out results in any fashion. We have some tricky games coming , so I would prefer to play Wimbledon and Sutton , we are not out of the scrap by any stretch.FG were toothless but not useless, Sutton are physically tough. We could finish Sutton on Saturday. Four points from the next  two would be fantastic.utm