I can't remember a time when there seemed such a gulf between the players and the fans. The constant rotation of players and poor performances seem to have not allowed a bond to develop.
We've had plenty of average players in the past that I've felt an affinity with regardless of their shortcomings but now it just seems to be indifference. All a bit sad.
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None of them have a touch of flair or quality on the ball about them.
The 'long serving' players are just the average players left over from previous seasons (see Watson, Purrington, Gilbey, Pearce.)
Gone are the days of people like Wiggins, Solly, even Sarr where you knew 'on their day' they were unbeatable.
We start winning games, we’ll start building rapport for those responsible for winning those games.
edit; posted this on the post-match thread but this one seems more appropriate.
The current form ain't gonna help matters
I think CBT could become a fan favourite though, a direct exciting player who can make things happen.
I think the fact they were getting booed at the end obviously makes them not want to hang about, but a little acknowledgement before the game or something? I could well just be being precious, but our decent following just doesn't feel appreciated to me.
The fact the lad paid for his accommodation and travel himself to trial for us and then put in a performance like he did last night has giving him a big boost in the fan favourites stakes.
I also think negativity spreads more quickly when more people watch more games but positivey doesn't.
In the old days only a couple of 100 people would ever watch some of our away games and a dreadful away match wouldn't spill over to the next home game as much.
Maybe the current squad could do something similar.
Might even be worth trying to get him on the rating of Christmas Dinners on here
He's been giving his opinion on people's roast dinners after some tweeting something about them recently.
It was Clare's birthday Saturday.
He should of been told you're not playing today, get yourself down the hour glass for a beer.
For both of those names we had squads at times which we had no affinity towards and players who were from the same camp as most of the current crop i.e. journeymen, loans or general nothing boats that wash up here as a lower league stop-off. The link between fan/first team was always kept strong by the familiar and loved faces in charge - right now we have neither the playing squad continuity or highly regarded manager in place.
Ultimately, Adkins is the same as Gobbo, Slade etc. Even if we were destroying the division this year it wouldn't feel quite as special to the fans as when Bowyer or Powell was doing it I feel. Perhaps we were spoilt by the hero player becoming a hero manager and we grew to like that when the reality is this is a very rare situation. Being a lower league team now (which face it is exactly what we are), you naturally get the regular churn of players as they will either be on the rise or decline and unlikely to hang around long term. We were spoilt by the Prem years to have familiarity with players being here for 3/4+ years and our fall from grace since has set the tone for huge number of ins/outs.
Doesn't make things any better, but football has changed now. We will rarely have players here for more than 2 seasons. However, we could have a very obvious way of getting the connection back with the manager if a former playing hero takes up the hotseat. We can't assume that will equal success on the pitch, but that formula definitely keeps the fans rooting for the guy which right now, I'm not sure many are