Mid-table this season appears to be the consensus. Personally, I think we will be lucky not to be involved in a relegation battle. Not only do we have a small and unbalanced squad once again but the owner doesn't care and is very unlikely to do much about it, even come January if we are in trouble. Lee Bowyer is our best chance of mid-table and he is still a temporary manager who will review his position soon. If Duchatelet doesn't commit money to keep Bowyer in post (a contract) and he walks, we will be in hot water. With all the back-room uncertainty and unrest, it won't take much for confidence to drop and our squad short-comings to turn draws into defeats and wins to draws. Relegation to the basement division for the first--time in our history would really be Duchatelet's lasting legacy, even after the suffering of four years.
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Defensively we seem okay but our midfield offers little.
Creativity and goals is a real concern, but we are missing Fosu, Clarke and Reeves, three that virtually any in our league would take.
There’s a possibility of bottom half only if the escalation of the club destabilising that we have seen this week continues over time. And it then extended to players not caring and going through the motions. But I can’t see that, and worrying about relegation is a complete non starter imo.
Down we go!
Relegation is a very real possibility.
We are mid table at best right now. The two teams I have seen In The flesh so far were better than us. Peterborough on another day would have hammered us and Fleetwood looked better organised yesterday. But the players are getting stuck in. My main worry is that the uncertainty and decay goes on for months and the playing staff gradually or suddenly get fed up too and give up the ghost. That they haven’t done yet is to their credit as professionals but I simply fail to believe that they won’t see or feel what we are all feeling. Another two or three games of yesterday’s quality and there will be no crowd there to watch.
Having been through the last ten years and always feeling that this is the pain before the pleasure, for the first time yesterday I came away feeling almost nothing. It was a surreal game. If I didn’t give a toss any more I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this but I have to say I am struggling.
If he's still here in January expect another fire sale which would finish us off from League One. We flirted with relegation two seasons ago and that was with a bigger squad lined with players that should get in most teams too.
Not to mention pretty much the entire squad is out of contract in the summer. It just doesn't bear thinking about where we could be in 12 month's time.
There is no reason why we would not have to take one step back to move two steps forward, who is to say we may not get relegated once taken over?
It makes it all the more important to get behind Bowyer, Jackson and the team to keep us in this division so we can have a summer rebuild under new ownership hopefully.
I believe that there are 4 worst teams even given the dire situation in which we find ourselves.
Mid table is probably as good as it gets.
Reeves is not going to add much. I'd rather play Morgan or Lapslie. You get 90 minutes from both of them. Fosu is a tremendous asset and Billy Clarke perhaps dependent on how good their recoveries are.
Even so better than mid table is a stretch. We simply cannot create enough goal scoring opportunities.
I kind of feel sorry for Chris Powell at the moment.
It must already be on a big slide. The players interact with staff on a daily basis and negativity will have an effect.
Say Duchatelet starts hitting the first team and those around them with his extreme austerity measures.
He might stop paying for coaches to away games and get the players to make their own way there. He might tell Bowyer he can’t use things like sports nutritionists or opta indexes because they cost too much.
Don’t underestimate how much more capacity for damage this spiteful weasle could inflict.
The longer he stays the more the odds shorten for catastrophe.
There will be at least seven or eight worse teams than us, let alone four worse.
Even full strength sides often take time to gel or get into their stride.
Normally it takes 10 or 15 games before it's worthwhile making an assessment of how the season will go - and managers will often say, "...... let's see where we are after the Christmas games".
Many teams start the season well, before falling away (Peterboro last season won their first 5 games).
Other teams in recent years, Barnsley, Millwall, etc started really poorly before a strong consistant run propelled them into the playoffs late on. Plymouth Argyle last season, were bottom of the table last December - yet missed the playoff positions by just 1 single point, thanks to a series of injuries disrupting a small squad and losing a 6-pointer at The Valley.
All to play for and right now, no one has any idea how the League will finish this season.
We are not, and will not be for the foreseeable future, operating under normal circumstances.
Hence the concern.