[Devongone]

Dancing, we are on the same hymn sheet.

It is relatively easy to set yourself up to be hard to beat. San Marino can sometimes avoid a hammering from Italy.

Unfortunately for your defence to work really well your attack has to carry some threat ...... or eventually the whole team becomes overwhelmed. (Equally the attack is not going to work well without some support from behind.) We are poor at best in ALL areas of the field.

Angel makes a mistake for the goal. There will always be individual errors, but they don't always have to mean goals, and they needn't mean defeat. But one goal against is a mountain too high for us. We are lucky to be where we are and should be thankful to Coventry for being so bad.

We currently effectively have no goalie, our centre backs are past it and slow, our full backs have been injured almost all season, in midfield we have inconsistency with Nolan and Gardner whilst Angel might or might not find his game again, up front we have Ched who has failed so far, SEB who is clinically dead, a proven goalscorer in Dennis who now doesn't and perhaps a quick young winger who only occasionally gets on the field. Sprinkling a few random imported youngsters over this lot is about as effective as using Hundreds and Thousands.

A team has to carry an attacking threat. It has to have ways to score. Do we have a big physical centre forward, a tall heading machine, a darting goal poacher, a mazy dribbler, a shoot-on-sight merchant, a flying winger, a tricky one? Do we hit a long ball, a dangerous cross, or a bewildering maze of short passes (and if it is the latter can we actually do that?) or do we press for dead ball kicks and get the defenders up? If you don't know how you expect to score you haven't got a plan to win a game, you're hoping something will turn up, whilst the opposition haven't registered.

Matt's right about next season. Look how Portsmouth are struggling to get up, and they're miles better than us. Accrington, Luton and Wycombe have all whopped us. As Dancing says the basis of our team NOW has to be players who might be at Chesterfield next season, because if Mr Caldwell thinks he'll be allowed to ditch the lot and start again with proven names, Mr Carson needs to start him on a financial re-education programme sharpish.

Earlier in the season I was delighted we seemed to have so many young players in and around the fringes of our squad. We can't play or win for toffee and none of them is even near a game. SHAME ON YOU GARY CALDWELL!

[bluepooch]

Dev,It will be a totally different Chesterfield team next season ,whether it will be better or not is going to be down to the manager and the recruitment.We lost to those division 4 sides because we were managed by Danny Wilson.
Dancing I hear what youre saying about Walsall having nothing to play for but their last 6 home games have been as follows
Sheff U W
Bristol R ,W
Northampton W
Peterboro W
Oldham W
Chesterfield W .

[Dancingwilldoit]

Blue it makes not a jot of difference, they are a bang average Lge 1 team. We lost - again, we didn't score - again. We persist setting up defensively when all has been lost for weeks. Usually when teams are dead and buried it allows them to play some good football. In our case its just more of the same pap.
Do you now finally accept we are down?

[bluepooch]

If we win the next two home games (tall order I know )there might still be a glimmer of hope .come and ask me then and If we havent won both ill agree that we are down .

[Dancingwilldoit]

Blue, I had you down as a realist. We've shot it, were down, no hope, no shit. The odds on us winning 2 on the bounce and then pulling of an even bigger miracle to avoid the drop would be 1,000,000 times what you would have got for a Barca win last night.
We need to be planning for next season now not after we have run out of games.

[Devongone]

Blue, I admire your spirit and loyalty, but Dancing is on the money here. We were hammered by those Division 2 teams with a far better team within a far more stable club than we have now. We're a demolition derby demolishing ourselves from the inside. And we lost those games with a manager whose long career win record puts him in with Allardyce, Redknapp and Warnock. You seem to think he was the one destroying the club in the town in which he has chosen to live and the club at which he was a hero. He wouldn't even be a suspect on Midsomer Murders!

We have no money, or so we are told, but we are paying for seven loanees who have won us only one game by a fluke (and the goal was scored by one of our own players). Meanwhile we exile our own youngsters to Fylde and Matlock. Does that even sound sensible?

I've said it before but it's worth saying again - the only point to loanees is if they win you some points. We have a shit keeper x 2, a centre back who is joined by an umbilical cord to Burnley, and four kids who are going to need the intervention of the human genome project and Dolly the sheep to make a Premiership player between them. Stir in a manager who seems to have come equipped with blinkers .......

This is a team with a record of 8 wins from 36 games, most of which were accumulated by better players and at least a couple of which were down to Jay O'Shea's very occasional match-winning talents. Now we need this weakened scrag-end of a team to win at least 6 but ideally 7 of their last 10 games. We might win the lottery. Princess Di might materialise in the centre circle before our next game. George Clooney, Emma Stone and Casey Affleck might put on a short nativity play in the Parish Church.

O'Shea and Raglan don't play these days at all. So let's have them back for at least a couple of months. Maguire and Morrison can't learn league football in non-league, let's have them back. Seven loanees all go back (unless any of them has expressed a desire to come to us next season when their own club's manager calls them in for that final interview).

Let the team Mr Caldwell has to create, play and perhaps even lose (could they do worse?) so he is in a position to identify discards, potential and developers BECAUSE it looks as though any new talent he finds is going to have to be cheap. It won't all be good news from this process and we will all probably disagree with some of Mr Caldwell's assessments, but at least he won't have done it with his eyes shut. We don't deserve the ridiculous start he gave us to his Chesterfield career - in which he had two weeks to get his players together before the next game AND on the last day of that period he brought in four players with neither background nor experience. That is crap management that showed a complete disregard for the fans.

If Mr Caldwell wants to build something I'd offer him every chance, but if he just wants to run down the season in the hope that a better job with mates from earlier in his career might swallow him up ......... then I've no interest in the man. There could be a light at the end of the tunnel, but Mr Caldwell isn't even looking for the tunnel.

[spireitematt]

With 10 games to go and virtually relegated (Blue you have to accept it like a lot of other fans are) we should play the youth players and give them a taste of first team football and see how they adapt because if they can adapt quickly they could be in the squad for next season in League 2 yes I said it Leagueeeeeeee 2.

Next season is not going to be a walk in the park and I think we will end up with players who are free transfers and youth players and wouldn't surprise me if we end up in another relegation dogfight next season and before anyone says oh we are too big to go down into the National League look at Tranmere Rovers, Lincoln City, York, Torquay etc and in the past other clubs our size have fallen even further look at Stockport, Darlington, Hereford, Boston United.

I agree Devon I don't think Caldwell will be around long he will leave when another jobs comes up. We need stability as a club though and it has to happen sooner or later, since Cook left we've had 3 managers in the space of 2 seasons.

[Devongone]

Matt, I felt very negative about my last post, so I started quickly looking at players we might grab from non-league. Fleetwood have been quick movers in this field and look where they are ...... and take a look at Stevenage, how they are on the up with Matt Godden's goals - who they plucked from Ebbsfleet.

I don't think we'll be in the running for Ricky Miller from Dover, but there are other centre forwards available. Kristian Dennis might not quite have made it for us but he was a good gamble from Danny. Peterborough have sent Lee Angol on loan to Lincoln (1 game, scored 3), if he's going to be free I'd take him. Oliver Hawkins has been around non-league, leads his line, and he'd be available if Dagenham miss out on going up. And I reckon Gozie Ugwu at Woking could do a job in League 2. They are all 25 or under.

A wide man? Ricky Korboa at Carshalton? Apparently they call him the Ryman Neymar. Only 19. Midfield, Fabio Saraiva at Woking would do in League 2, Portuguese, stars most weeks and scores a few too, then there's Corey Whitely at Dagenham, he's 25 so he'd have to seize the day, but he's one of the reasons for their success, and I like the sound of Byron Lawrence who is only 20, failed at Ipswich and Colchester but was once billed as a boy wonder and is showing it for Leiston. Defenders get less publicity so need more research.

Unfortunately to grab the best non-league talent you either have to have money, or be quick off the mark and I've a feeling we've a manager who doesn't want to stay, we're poor and we're traditionally left in the blocks.

If I selected the following team of Chesterfield players (which I did quickly in my head):-

Allinson

El-Fitouri
Maguire
Evatt
Jones

Hird

Gardner
Angel
Nolan

German
Evans

1. Would that be any worse than what we send out now?
2. Which of the loanees is immeasurably better than the players selected?
3. But my team above leaves out Raglan, O'Shea, Morrison, Mitchell, Donohue, Beesley, Simons, Ofoegbu, Ebanks-Blake, Wakefield, Dennis, Parkin, Humphreys ............ several of whom could make a case for inclusion, especially as results no longer matter.

Apologies to any players I forgot off the top of my head. The list leaves me shaking my head that we are shelling out wages for such as Thorsten Stuckmann or the kid from Birmingham who warms the bench.

[spireitematt]

Matt, I felt very negative about my last post, so I started quickly looking at players we might grab from non-league. Fleetwood have been quick movers in this field and look where they are ...... and take a look at Stevenage, how they are on the up with Matt Godden's goals - who they plucked from Ebbsfleet.

I don't think we'll be in the running for Ricky Miller from Dover, but there are other centre forwards available. Kristian Dennis might not quite have made it for us but he was a good gamble from Danny. Peterborough have sent Lee Angol on loan to Lincoln (1 game, scored 3), if he's going to be free I'd take him. Oliver Hawkins has been around non-league, leads his line, and he'd be available if Dagenham miss out on going up. And I reckon Gozie Ugwu at Woking could do a job in League 2. They are all 25 or under.

A wide man? Ricky Korboa at Carshalton? Apparently they call him the Ryman Neymar. Only 19. Midfield, Fabio Saraiva at Woking would do in League 2, Portuguese, stars most weeks and scores a few too, then there's Corey Whitely at Dagenham, he's 25 so he'd have to seize the day, but he's one of the reasons for their success, and I like the sound of Byron Lawrence who is only 20, failed at Ipswich and Colchester but was once billed as a boy wonder and is showing it for Leiston. Defenders get less publicity so need more research.

Unfortunately to grab the best non-league talent you either have to have money, or be quick off the mark and I've a feeling we've a manager who doesn't want to stay, we're poor and we're traditionally left in the blocks.

If I selected the following team of Chesterfield players (which I did quickly in my head):-

Allinson

El-Fitouri
Maguire
Evatt
Jones

Hird

Gardner
Angel
Nolan

German
Evans

1. Would that be any worse than what we send out now?
2. Which of the loanees is immeasurably better than the players selected?
3. But my team above leaves out Raglan, O'Shea, Morrison, Mitchell, Donohue, Beesley, Simons, Ofoegbu, Ebanks-Blake, Wakefield, Dennis, Parkin, Humphreys ............ several of whom could make a case for inclusion, especially as results no longer matter.

Apologies to any players I forgot off the top of my head. The list leaves me shaking my head that we are shelling out wages for such as Thorsten Stuckmann or the kid from Birmingham who warms the bench.

I didn't think your last post was negative I thought you told it as it is.

That team you have selected probably can't do any worse than someone of the line ups we have played over this season.

Look at this line-up from 2014-2015

Tommy Lee
Dan Jones
Georg Margreitter
Ian Evatt
Tendayi Darikwa
Daniel Johnson
Sam Morsy
Jay O'Shea
Gary Roberts
Jimmy Ryan
Eoin Doyle

Myles Wright
Charlie Raglan
Ollie Banks
Sam Clucas
Rommy Boco
Dan Gardner
Armand Gnandulliet

Now look at the line up we sent out against Walsall the other night.

Stuckmann
Anderson
Evatt
Donohue
Kakay
Martinez
Hird
Grimshaw
Jones
Ebanks-Blake
Dennis

Gardner
Mitchell
Fulton
Faupala
Simons
Humphreys
El-Fitouri

It's hard to believe how quickly the team has changed from 2 seasons ago. If that team from 2014-15 played the team we sent out against Walsall the 2014-15 team would just run away with it.

[bluepooch]

That 14/15 team lost 1-0 at Walsall I was there,just saying we shouldn't get too carried away with our rose coloured specs but obviously that team was better because we paid them more in wages id guess.Too much for a club or our size id guess.I am only guessing though.