Will we stay up ?

[Rosey]

What I did believe is that if/when we went down that we had a manager who would stabilise the club and within a season or two put us in the position to have another go at the Championship. Now, I fear we will go into freefall if we do go down.

I agree.

Do you think he would have stayed ,or after a few good results would he have been handing his CV out

[Wellred]

yawnnnnnnnnnnn

If you're tired go to bed. Old gits like you need their sleep.

You not supporting Forest yet?

[Sheepskin Stu]

yawnnnnnnnnnnn

If you're tired go to bed. Old gits like you need their sleep.

You not supporting Forest yet?

Not until he becomes manager...

[Donnybax]

Its going to be very, very tough and we must get something from the city ground and the ricoh. If it goes down to the last day then i would be happy

[keepmoatman]

yes .dont want it too be too close at the end of the season but it would be nice to send the ippos down last game .

[Wild Rover]

What I did believe is that if/when we went down that we had a manager who would stabilise the club and within a season or two put us in the position to have another go at the Championship. Now, I fear we will go into freefall if we do go down.

I agree.

Firstly i think DRFC will maintain Championship status.

Secondly. Can i ask Madmick a question.

What were the Board at DRFC supposed to do. After 7 games we had a great points total, add that to the Dismal run at end of last season, and knowing SOD ALWAYS has 2 bad spells a season, some fairly short. some protracted. He had a very average win % during his tenure , something just over 1/3, so to coin one of your favourite subjects his Statistics mean DRFC would win about 13 of the remaining games, thats 39 points, add to what DRFC had that = RELEGATION.
So, the board stood to lose 4 million from TV rights, then had a choice of whether to keep current players ( who would by then have proved in effective ), or release / pay off most of them, then have to spend a million or two recruiting what SOD wanted all over again, with little guarentee of success. Thats around 10 million the club would lose.
What did you expect the board to do.

To me they acted correctly. At leastr we have a fighting chance now, with SOD we had not.

[Akinfenwa]

I don't think we'll stay up. We still have a chance like, more than I thought we had in September, but I don't honestly believe that we're good enough. I cannot see them improving to a level where they can start picking enough points up away from home in the near future.

I do think that the board did the right thing though in changing things to try and salvage Championship status for another year. However whilst the team has improved, it has not improved as much as we'd hoped it would to keep us up. It was always going to be a difficult task for anyone after the start we'd made.

[MrFrost]

Relegation will be a complete disaster IMO. And I am with the notion it will put is into freefall.

The amount of money we will lose is unthinkable, especially when you things like the level of rent we are now paying at the KMS. We will probably be left with a shell of a squad, once the big time charlies have departed and our better players sold, and no money for new players. Anyone thinking we would bounce straight back is smoking crack.

I really hope it doesn't happen, but unfortunately as it stands, we have more chance of going down than we have of staying up. As much of a die hard supporter I am, i'm also a realist, and realistically we are not good enough to stay in this division. That is why we are where we are. The table doesn't lie.

[madmick50]

Secondly. Can i ask Madmick a question.

What were the Board at DRFC supposed to do. After 7 games we had a great points total, add that to the Dismal run at end of last season, and knowing SOD ALWAYS has 2 bad spells a season, some fairly short. some protracted. He had a very average win % during his tenure , something just over 1/3, so to coin one of your favourite subjects his Statistics mean DRFC would win about 13 of the remaining games, thats 39 points, add to what DRFC had that = RELEGATION.
So, the board stood to lose 4 million from TV rights, then had a choice of whether to keep current players ( who would by then have proved in effective ), or release / pay off most of them, then have to spend a million or two recruiting what SOD wanted all over again, with little guarentee of success. Thats around 10 million the club would lose.
What did you expect the board to do.

To me they acted correctly. At leastr we have a fighting chance now, with SOD we had not.

What the board should have done is to back SO'D 100% and not stab him in the back. They should have kept a cool head and not panicked. They should have waited for our injury crisis to abate so SO'D had a fair chance of keeping us up. They should have remembered that he had got us out of a situation like this before. They should have realised that had we gone down SO'D would have re-built the side and given us a good chance of getting back into the Championship once again, hopefully fairly quickly.

What they should not have done is gamble the future of the club on a long shot. What they have done is the equivalent to betting the house on a 100/1 outsider in the Grand National. At the very least they should have swapped SO'D with a manager with Championship experience. Not someone who took years to get probably the biggest club in the Conference into a promotion position.

I fully expect us to go into free fall once we get relegated. It didn't need to be that way. I pray it doesn't happen but ever since Saunders came on board with the McKay strategy the writing was on the wall. All you rose tinted glasses merchants will no doubt be outraged by what I am saying but I prefer to be a realist not a fantasist.

[MrFrost]

Secondly. Can i ask Madmick a question.

What were the Board at DRFC supposed to do. After 7 games we had a great points total, add that to the Dismal run at end of last season, and knowing SOD ALWAYS has 2 bad spells a season, some fairly short. some protracted. He had a very average win % during his tenure , something just over 1/3, so to coin one of your favourite subjects his Statistics mean DRFC would win about 13 of the remaining games, thats 39 points, add to what DRFC had that = RELEGATION.
So, the board stood to lose 4 million from TV rights, then had a choice of whether to keep current players ( who would by then have proved in effective ), or release / pay off most of them, then have to spend a million or two recruiting what SOD wanted all over again, with little guarentee of success. Thats around 10 million the club would lose.
What did you expect the board to do.

To me they acted correctly. At leastr we have a fighting chance now, with SOD we had not.

What the board should have done is to back SO'D 100% and not stab him in the back. They should have kept a cool head and not panicked. They should have waited for our injury crisis to abate so SO'D had a fair chance of keeping us up. They should have remembered that he had got us out of a situation like this before. They should have realised that had we gone down SO'D would have re-built the side and given us a good chance of getting back into the Championship once again, hopefully fairly quickly.

What they should not have done is gamble the future of the club on a long shot. What they have done is the equivalent to betting the house on a 100/1 outsider in the Grand National. At the very least they should have swapped SO'D with a manager with Championship experience. Not someone who took years to get probably the biggest club in the Conference into a promotion position.

I fully expect us to go into free fall once we get relegated. It didn't need to be that way. I pray it doesn't happen but ever since Saunders came on board with the McKay strategy the writing was on the wall. All you rose tinted glasses merchants will no doubt be outraged by what I am saying but I prefer to be a realist not a fantasist.

Agree with every word there!

[Akinfenwa]

What the board should have done is to back SO'D 100% and not stab him in the back. They should have kept a cool head and not panicked. They should have waited for our injury crisis to abate so SO'D had a fair chance of keeping us up. They should have remembered that he had got us out of a situation like this before. They should have realised that had we gone down SO'D would have re-built the side and given us a good chance of getting back into the Championship once again, hopefully fairly quickly.

Why? In my opinion after 7 games we had almost zero chance of staying up under SO'D. Anyone who thought we would must've been taking some of Nigel Adkins' optimism pills. There's no point going back to the escape of the 08/09 season as the teams were completely different. The team of 08/09 was a solid, well balanced team that had serious firepower and confidence issues. The team this season couldn't score either without BS and the defence was a joke. This was despite claims in the summer that the budget would be increased to allow the assembly of a squad that could deal with injuries this time around. After all you can’t afford to write off 8 months of football due to injuries. If you do then there’s something wrong and how much longer would we have had to wait until we saw a competitive team again?

And even if he would have kept us up, then what? Cut the wage bill and give him an even harder task next year. As for rebuilding the team in League One, is SO'D the only man capable of building a good team there? When he got us promoted we probably had the 3rd biggest budget (behind Forest and Leeds), and we finished 3rd. I'm guessing that such a budget would not be available in upon relegation to a more competitive top half of League One than the one we left.

What they should not have done is gamble the future of the club on a long shot. What they have done is the equivalent to betting the house on a 100/1 outsider in the Grand National. At the very least they should have swapped SO'D with a Conference manager with Championship experience. Not someone who took years to get probably the biggest club in the into a promotion position.

I would also have preferred a more proven manager and we might have been better off right now if we’d got someone in with more experience. I do however think that Saunders deserves credit for the job he's done at Wrexham. Wrexham have had limited finances for years so them getting promoted is probably a more difficult task than you think. Luton and Oxford are far bigger clubs and look how long it's taking/taken them to get promoted out of that league. Add Mansfield, York, Grimsby and Cambridge to the list of decent sized clubs that have found the Conference a difficult league to get out of.

I fully expect us to go into free fall once we get relegated. It didn't need to be that way. I pray it doesn't happen but ever since Saunders came on board with the McKay strategy the writing was on the wall. All you rose tinted glasses merchants will no doubt be outraged by what I am saying but I prefer to be a realist not a fantasist.

Based on what? The standard of the bottom teams in League One isn’t great based on what I’ve seen. Another relegation could happen but we’d have to be absolutely terrible. Even Yeovil on a complete shoestring have had to bring in a totally new team and are still in with a chance of staying up. I’m confident that upon relegation we’d be at least a lower mid-table team.

Also I don’t see how the McKay strategy has made us worse off. He’s brought in some good players that have improved the team since they’ve arrived.

[Wild Rover]

Secondly. Can i ask Madmick a question.

What were the Board at DRFC supposed to do. After 7 games we had a great points total, add that to the Dismal run at end of last season, and knowing SOD ALWAYS has 2 bad spells a season, some fairly short. some protracted. He had a very average win % during his tenure , something just over 1/3, so to coin one of your favourite subjects his Statistics mean DRFC would win about 13 of the remaining games, thats 39 points, add to what DRFC had that = RELEGATION.
So, the board stood to lose 4 million from TV rights, then had a choice of whether to keep current players ( who would by then have proved in effective ), or release / pay off most of them, then have to spend a million or two recruiting what SOD wanted all over again, with little guarentee of success. Thats around 10 million the club would lose.
What did you expect the board to do.

To me they acted correctly. At leastr we have a fighting chance now, with SOD we had not.

What the board should have done is to back SO'D 100% and not stab him in the back. They should have kept a cool head and not panicked. They should have waited for our injury crisis to abate so SO'D had a fair chance of keeping us up. They should have remembered that he had got us out of a situation like this before. They should have realised that had we gone down SO'D would have re-built the side and given us a good chance of getting back into the Championship once again, hopefully fairly quickly.

What the Board should have done is got rid of SOD a lot sooner than they did, he had ample time to turn things round. The board did not panic, SOD did. Why did he tell the board the best they could hope for was relegation and maybe rebuild for an assault on the championship in the future. Why should the board back hm on a \"maybe\".
What they should not have done is gamble the future of the club on a long shot. What they have done is the equivalent to betting the house on a 100/1 outsider in the Grand National. At the very least they should have swapped SO'D with a manager with Championship experience. Not someone who took years to get probably the biggest club in the Conference into a promotion position.

Did it not take Dave Penney an equally long time to get DRFC out of the conference, was he that bad a manager. Managers have to start somewhere. People in the know rate Saunders, older and wiser folk than you or i tip him to be a great manager.  

I fully expect us to go into free fall once we get relegated. It didn't need to be that way. I pray it doesn't happen but ever since Saunders came on board with the McKay strategy the writing was on the wall. All you rose tinted glasses merchants will no doubt be outraged by what I am saying but I prefer to be a realist not a fantasist.

The Mckay strategy was one of the few options available, i for one see nothing wrong with it. It has brought in players who the average DRFC fan could only dream about, at very little financial burden to the club.
I dont see relegation as a faite accomplie for DRFC, in fact by end of season i see DRFC in a comfort zone of as high as 15th in the league. So in essence i think maybe its you who fantacise.

The end of the season we will all know who is right and wrong.

In the last 3 full seasons SOD won something like 45 games, lost around 60,and drew 30 odd, and you call him such a good manager. Of course adding on the start of this season makes those figures even worse.