[spireitematt]

I wouldn't write off Barrow they did well against Leyton Orient to get a last minute equaliser.

[Devongone]

I think I'd write Barrow off as league winners, but I think they are an attractive bet against us.

[Dancingwilldoit]

On paper we should win, its a pity but we don't play on paper. I will be happy with a point tonight and another on Sat. If we manage 4 or 6 out of the 2 I will be ecstatic.
It seems its MA's birthday today so lets see if the team give the best present they can.

[Devongone]

I'm not sure about playing on paper. I reckon there's at least three teams to beat us on paper, but I think unusually this season we have a manager who realises the games do mostly take place on grass (though bits of old tyre jazzed up to look like grass, even if they are carcenogenic, seems to do too).

[bluepooch]

I wonder if we had beaten Barnet on the last day of the season whether Evo would be our manager now instead of MA .

[SaltergateBorn]

We`ll never know, Blue, but personally I`m inclined to doubt it. I`ve always been a bit sceptical about the official line that MA was approached about the job at the end of the Barnet game; I suspect that he was, in fact, tapped up some time before that. I`m intrigued by the references he has made a few times in interviews to his being at our place for the Newport game last season and what he was he was doing there. Could he have already been offered the job and was getting the feel of the place before deciding? We all know how these things work in football.

I always thought that Tuesday was a potential banana-skin for us and in some ways these 100% records can be more and more of an albatross the longer they go on. It`s always disappointing to lose, but I`m actually as much encouraged as disappointed this time. I listened to the game on Spireites Digital and got the impression that, but for a moment of stupidity on the part of JBW, we would probably have won it. Even down to 10 men, we still weren`t being over-run. So to judge the respective merits of IE and MA as managers on the basis of that game would be unfair, I think. I happen to think that MA has done a pretty decent job to date; I`m confident that - whether or not he gets us back in the EFL next year - he`s stopped our nose-dive down the leagues, he`s got the supporters back on-side and I get the distinct impression that the morale in the dressing-room is 1,000% better than it was last season. And he`s done that in the space of a few games.

Whether IE could have done that so quickly I personally doubt- for the simple reason that he doesn`t yet have the years of (man-) management experience that MA does. I always had great respect for Evo as a player and I hope he goes on to have a great career as a manager, some of it possibly with us. I just think that MA`s experience makes him the better manager for us right now.

[Devongone]

Evo seems to be the only one whose life might have been changed by that last game. The victory didn't save Barnet, and whether MA would've stayed with them even if it had, is questionable. Most of our players had already unsuccessfully rolled their dice long before that last game.

Had Evo won 3-0 with that dreadful set of players maybe the ground-swell of affection from the fans might have carried him to the job, but he still didn't have much to recommend him as the man who would take the Vanarama by storm. On the other geranium MA has been there and done that.

I think if you polled readers of the Non-League Paper, who comes out top MA and Chesterfield or Barrow and Evo, even after 3-2 it would be pretty much a Putin in favour of MA.