For info - from 18 months ago - [Link]

Lurker - you're right that not everything can be blamed on king, but I don't think I'm wrong saying he doesn't inspire confidence. We've seen how having an assertive, solid keeper like Long and Roos can benefit the team

What was the crowd last night?

The benefit of the academy status was in a programme a little while back from when we passed the review.

Good point OI, Brentford are notorious for opening and closing academy every few years. I’m pretty sure they forego certain funding and status elements for that - which we rely on. Not clear if we can go without any U23 side since that is also the reserves.

I thought Brentford had no academy Lurker. Not sure what the rules are.

Do we know how long Hanson is out for?

Steve K 100% correct! Similar abilities and Ardley has no idea of his best eleven !

Good point and shows the downside of expanding the squad so there are more players of a similar level of quality.

Lee has made a good point, virtually all over the pitch Neal doesn't seem to be sure of the best players for the job. McDonnell is probably pushing King harder for a place than he was Long. Sibbick and Watson seem to interchange, as do the centre halfs that partner Oshilaja. All over Midfield is anyone's guess on any given day and Piggot has been tried with both Hanson and Appiah and also left out completely.

Just people...

Sharif how do you blame the keeper for a defender over hitting back passes, getting caught out for pace, losing their man, insisting on keeping a ball in to give it straight to the opposition, midfields constantly having passes intercepted, players being beaten on the outside? Sorry saying they do that because they don’t have faith in the keeper is just a convenient excuse to pass the blame. KD is closer to reality. Last season Deji was the least experienced defender. This season he is the most. And he was flapping like an under 16 in many occasions against Scunthorpe. The team makes basic mistakes and heads into panic stations too easily and that can’t be blamed on just 1 player.

Going off football for a minute; did anyone fellow Raynes Park/New Malden peoples else go to the public exhibition for the new housing development at Tesco last night? Seems that Merton and Kingston are deciding to fix the London housing shortage by turning West Barnes Lane and Burlington Road into one big housing estate

At MTM before the start of the season, NA stated that the management team all agreed that we needed to play a more attacking style as our lack of goals is what cuased our issues last season (ie concede first and fail to win any game until Walsall in April). He did admit that this style of play would take a bit of time and that we should be prepared to concede more goals as well. Unfortunately, we are not taking our chances yet (by and large) and are still conceding goals often through our own carelessness. I still think we will finish around midtable once things settle down. Bedding in a new back line, including young players (both loanees and our own) will take a bit of time and the experience for our own will be invaluable and if successful will save us money with the requirement for buying players or using loans reducing accordingly.

OI I don’t think we’re allowed to scrap all of it.

Lee. He was, but EFLT rules allow you to use your u21 players who are out on loan.

We are lacking consistency. We need Hanson back playing and Neal needs to get a consistent starting 11

And if you don't concede, you don't lose. But, yes, a leaky defence and the same old lack of goals is a toxic combination.

I put a fair bit of the defensive leakiness down to King tbh. Don't rate him and I don't think he inspires much confidence in his back line.

Football is an easy game. You score more than the other team and you win the game. I get we are conceding silly goals but we are not scoring enough. Before Saturday we had scored 4 league goals

We had 33 shots last night?? Fucking hell

We'll have to disagree, Chiggers. Last year we stayed up because we had defensive starch. This season we are leaky.

KD against all 3 we had a lot of chances to score and win or at least draw the games. We have played a decent Fleetwood team and won 1-0, we have played a decent Sunderland team and again should have won that apart from miss firing and the ref. Scoring goals is our main issue, we are creating chances but not putting the ball away

I wonder what we would save. Would the hire of the training ground from KCL be much cheaper? We'd need most of it for the first team. Do we pay the age group coaches anything more than expenses? I presume the two years of scholars are just on expenses as well. Would SB scrap the U23s too? If so what game time would anyone not getting regular minutes in the first team play? We could get rid of a couple of full time employees but the FA/EFL funding of the academy probably pays for them. We could save on coach/minibus hire. Probably we could almost afford to replace Nightingale, Hartigan and Sibbick with older players who'd get slagged off inside a month.

We have conceded three against Burton, Walsall and Scunthorpe. Wait till we play a decent side!