How many players have we signed form Solihull ?? I can only think of 2 - so hardly a bias really

Marcus Browne is the best and the worst of our club. He can score but he's selfish and won't pass to someone else to score. I'll happily say goodbye and good luck

KD- fair enough- to be honest it’s probably a bit of both. Perhaps it’s just that my starting point is the relegation side - though that season combined our worst ever league manager and our worst ever player recruitment, so it’s tricky to disentangle exactly what is behind the improvement from that nadir.

I’m more inclined to give Jackson the credit TBH. It’s absolutely fucking tedious football, but, in this complete and utter dogshit league, his defensive rigour goes quite far - even if he is absolutely clueless about attacking play.

KD- as I say, it’s all a matter of opinion, and not something that can be proved objectively, but for a start it seems to me that our loans in have improved beyond all recognition. I suppose it comes back to the question; if our improved league position over the last couple of years isn’t down to better player recruitment then to what else do we ascribe it?

Cope’s bias towards Solihull players hasn’t really worked put (sad for me as I was born in Solihull!). Signing a former player in Pigott hasn’t worked out. Keepers are Bayzo’s thing. The jury’s out on ‘fallen stars’ like Marcus Browne. So what is it that’s so marvellous about Craig Cope?

There is a massive range of ability between someone with a “Midas touch” in player recruitment and the standard that we had before CC joined (which was utterly abysmal)- clearly CC falls somewhere within that range and how you describe the extent of improvement is really matter of mindset (ie how enthusiastic you want to appear).

The groupthink is Cope has some sort of Midas touch. I abhor groupthink. That’s not to say Cope hasn’t been an overall plus, but he’s overrated in my view.

KD- if you don’t think that our recruitment is much better now than in the relegation season (when we essentially had no good signings at al, so you couldn’t take your line of line “for every [ insert name of success] there is a [insert name of failure]” as there was nobody in the first category, then I think that we will just have to agree to disagree. The fact is that (at a high level) there are really only 3 things which drive league position (1) relative budget (2) quality of recruitment (3) coaching- as a matter of fact, we have improved our league position in the last couple of years but our budget is no better in relative terms and there doesn’t seem to be a view that JJ is a particularly excellent coach, so I think that, by a process of elimination, it must reflect better recruiting (even if that is just avoiding the Mebude/ Henry Lawrence-style disasters)

Porthcawl the difference is Davison was playing as the goal scorer. These 2 are playing as providers and as I said earlier, we have 10 less goals than our opponents BUT the same attacking stats. We’re creating plenty enough chances from the guys like Bugiel and Kelly but we’re 10 short of finishing them. Those 10 would be automatic promotion.

Smith has improved the last few games but I think for most of the season Hippolyte would have affected games more than him.

I think at the minute we have two Josh Davidson's in Kelly and Bugiel running round a lot with no end result

Sorry - Minute 3 onwards.

For Red Kite - Minute 8 onward - [Link] -

Exiled you did indeed see her with her long lens.

Is Gillingham pay on the day?

Just reading about the forwards. Also many games they are feeding off scraps

I’m not sure it’s all that clear, actually. For every Smith, there’s a Hippolyte. For Stevens, a Pigott.

Kelly and Maycock need the ball passed along the ground, they don’t fit into our kick it high and chase like dervishes style of play

Pretty hard to deny that Kelly hasn’t been a very good signing- on the other hand it’s equally clear that our recruitment has been miles better since we got Mr Cope on board. You are always going to have some signings that don’t work out - the trick is to move the “good vs bad” ratio in our favour and we have clearly done that.

I see The Sultan is having a beer festival next weekend.

Yes, Carsh, that’s why I said there’s so much wrong with it. Clearly he’s been a dud of a record signing but there’s more to it. It’s on everyone - the player, the coaches and the DoF*. We’ve failed.

Fair point but 25 of those 37 were sub appearances most of which as we all know we’re too late to make a difference

Bugiel 7 in 43, hardly anything to shout about either

Josh Kelly has just two league goals in 37 appearances this season. There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t know where to start.