[Dancingwilldoit]

First of all I didnt go, I felt crap and if I had gone I would probably have committed suicide so maybe staying away was a good idea.

Yet again Sheridan pulls a rabbit out of the hat with his team selection. Problem was he didnt notice the rabbit was dead. Lets ignore the team and players that have given us points on the board and instead lets shuffle the pack around and put players where they cant play and give poor old Chorley a chance. They havent had an away win so far this season so lets gift them one by picking a team that didnt even look good on paper.

In an interview JS says we were poor and talks about the team not stepping up to the plate. No mention of his team selection and tactics which is where the problem lies. He even suggests he has to stick with it (it would be the first time this season he's stuck with anything).

I could be real big headed and say I told you so but there is no pleasure whatsoever in being right about this one. When Ian Evatt sits at the top of the league with a part time squad the missed opportunity is there for all to see.

For gods sake Sheridan just do the honorable thing and walk. This is a mess of your own making, nobody else was involved. Give us the chance to get some passion back.

[spireitematt]

First of all I didnt go, I felt crap and if I had gone I would probably have committed suicide so maybe staying away was a good idea.

Yet again Sheridan pulls a rabbit out of the hat with his team selection. Problem was he didnt notice the rabbit was dead. Lets ignore the team and players that have given us points on the board and instead lets shuffle the pack around and put players where they cant play and give poor old Chorley a chance. They havent had an away win so far this season so lets gift them one by picking a team that didnt even look good on paper.

In an interview JS says we were poor and talks about the team not stepping up to the plate. No mention of his team selection and tactics which is where the problem lies. He even suggests he has to stick with it (it would be the first time this season he's stuck with anything).

I could be real big headed and say I told you so but there is no pleasure whatsoever in being right about this one. When Ian Evatt sits at the top of the league with a part time squad the missed opportunity is there for all to see.

For gods sake Sheridan just do the honorable thing and walk. This is a mess of your own making, nobody else was involved. Give us the chance to get some passion back.

That was Chorley's 2nd win of the season. How the hell can we get it so so wrong? Last Wednesday we played Glossop in the Derbyshire Senior Cup and we set out a mixed eleven, now I know it's the Derbyshire Senior Cup but surely we could have sent out a strong starting eleven or experimented with the team instead. That starting eleven yesterday isn't good enough on paper in my opinion and we should have kept the team which was unbeaten for 3-4 games. There is that old adage that you don't change a winning team but we did just that and look what the result was.

What I will say is look at Barrow. What a job that Ian Evatt has done at Barrow, he's got them playing attractive, attacking football and playing together as a team for one another. When he applied for the Chesterfield when we went down from L2 we should have given him a chance, I was in favour and I think a few fans were of giving him a chance as manager. Yet we went for Martin Allen.

This division is not easy and anyone can beat anyone else but to lose to Chorley is just very very worrying and no disrespect to Chorley but if a team of full time professionals can't beat a team of part-timers who have drawn 10 and lost 9 and won 1 before we played them then is there any hope? We are 11pts off the playoffs and we could reach the playoffs if went on some magical unbeaten run till about March/April but I can't see it myself.

[Devongone]

Hope you are feeling better Dancing. By all accounts Evans was also way off it on Saturday. As he is the mainstay of our defence that probably made the result inevitable irrespective of Sheridan 's latest random team selection.

What Saturday painted in bold colours was that Sheridan keeps harking back to a team that might have been decent seven years ago, but is now largely in its dotage. Jalal has had it, Weir never much had it to lose, Buchanan was past it at Sixfields, Smith and Weston can still do a job but they are both at the fag end of their careers and we've got McGlashan because he'd nowhere else to go, Gerrard wasn't there because he is no longer anywhere and even though Denton may not be weighed down by years but he looks my age ……….. The young up and coming twenty somethings other teams field alongside the occasional oldie must be aching to play us!

We might line up

Coddington

Yarney
Evans
Hollis
Sheridan

Mandeville
Maguire
Rowley

Boden
Fondop-Talom
Amantchi

and at least we'd look as though we might last ninety minutes.

In reality of course you'd probably draft in an older head to excellent effect but the point is we don't need to be so geriatric. As Matt says mathematically the play-offs, like relegation, remain in sight, but if we look at other clubs who are doing well, like Solihull we find that they are still looking to bring players in, whilst we do what ………….. resurrect the desolate Weir ……… For several years we have passed up the opportunity to scout and recruit talent within easy reach. Meppen-Walter gets highly rated every week and bags plenty of goals from the back - two years ago he was getting similar ratings and doing the same for Glossop. Where were we? At the moment Ilkeston are doing well, are we running a rule of their talent? Are we asking if there might be a new Lee Gregory at Staveley getting them to the top of their league.

We won't be gaining ground on the play-offs because we only think we are trying. Other clubs make the most of tiny budgets recruiting and refreshing their playing resources. We are some kinda dinosaur dropped in amongst them. They are quicker and brighter than us and all the tinkering in the world will do no more than keep us in the relegation zone.

[Dancingwilldoit]

Dev,
We got the best results with Wedgebury on the field. He is fit but JS hates being proved wrong. He must start. Him and Maguire would make a good pairing. Rowley really is a waste of a shirt atm. We need players who will make positive runs and not get pressured off the ball repeatedly giving it away. Whatever he had, he has lost and needs to be dropped then he can show he really wants it. At the moment he just cant be bothered.

[Devongone]

Isn't Wedgers injured? Otherwise I'd play him ……

Has Stokey Mandeville stopped buying a round or what? How can he be worse than Weir?

But this stale team needs freshening up. Gevaro might be a bit of pep ……. but we've got to get some lads who want to get somewhere.

[Dancingwilldoit]

As far as I know the only injury doubt was Yarney. I read on another thread that Wedgebury wasn't injured but as the club dont ever say anything on the website CFC related - who knows.

[Devongone]

I think I just assumed Wedgbury was injured as he'd have to be not to make the current team or bench.

It is bizarrely true that there is very little about football on the CFC website, and that does seem to illustrate the problem - as a club we aren't interested. We don't find new and better players because we don't want them. We can't recruit improving players because we have nowhere to put them and we can't develop our own young players unless they are capable of first team football by the age of eighteen. So we end up looking in the paper on Sunday to find out Solihull's best player was Jake Beesley on loan from Salford. There was really nowhere for him and Manni to be with us when they were released as we won't finance a reserve/ development/ U23 squad …….. and similarly if we signed maybe Ilkeston's best young player, unless he was immediately one of our best 16 players he'd be useless to us. Therefore we don't have to through the turmoil of scouting even local games and acquiring an in-depth knowledge of non-league football because to us it doesn't much matter. We might decide to grab a dodgy reject when the transfer window throws up unwanted EFL failures at the end of short contracts, but otherwise hey who cares. Let's sit home on a bleak Tuesday night, who wants to watch Mickleover in the rain or Glossop when you think you might have a cold coming on?

Mr Sheridan knows how to manage a team. He could even get us to succeed but I'm afraid his first success saw him scampering down the me me me rabbit hole where he learnt that every success was down to his own genius and every failure was his players' fault. And now he's turned into Gollum blind to what he has become, destined to repeat the same old same old. His job should be to CHANGE THE CLUB but he is obsessed tinkering and re-forming the few toy soldiers he himself has lined up. He can't get beyond it.

[Dancingwilldoit]

I honestly dont think Sheridan does know how to manage a team. He managed to hit the spot 1 season. That was due to the inheritance of some good players plus the addition of some decent loanees.
The following season the wheels well and truly fell off the bus. The Allott / Whitaker combo lost its spark, Niven lost his legs, he signed Trottman and Ford as a defensive pair, he ended the career of Jamie Lowry, there was the big spat with Mattiss and we will all remember Soderberg as long as we all shall live. Lester spent most of the season injured. He even put Crossley in goal ahead of Tommy Lee.
We were shocking, even Leon Clarke couldnt save us. All we got from Sheridan was the old "They are not listening" he just didnt have a clue.
Roll forward 8 or 9 years and nothing has changed, he's still a miserable looking scruffy git. There's a rumour that he's stopped drinking. If thats right his brain must still be pickled because there isnt an ounce of common sense left in there.

[Devongone]

He knows how football works and he has some ideas on how you can set a team up. He didn't get us promoted by luck. Ford and Mattis were excellent players, but he fell out with Mattis who immediately got injured and was never the same. As the team was weakened in Div One Whitts couldn't get forward to have the same goal scoring impact and we'd let Davies and Smalley go. Tommy Lee being injured till almost Christmas set the tone. And the background was the same as this season - Sheridan sat on his limpet arse all summer and didn't recruit. He thought the promoted team would be good enough, but he'd allowed the goals to go and once there were three wheels on his wagon other bits started to fall off. He should have learnt from that, but he's proving he hasn't, because arrogance stopped him being top-notch as a player and it is keeping him several notches below the top in management too. He doesn't need to dress up, the inner man is perfect ……. and slightly delusional.

As a player he had vision. It should transfer to management. But he's spent years blurring it through the bottom of a glass.

DRINK SALCOMBE GIN - IT IS DELICIOUS.

[Dancingwilldoit]

6 changes Saturday and 6 changes last night. Once again I didnt go - thank god.
Have made an agreement with myself that I wont be going again until Sheridan is gone.
In his after match interview he says he is going nowhere (how true) and will turn things around. The man is so inept its just laughable.
By the time he turns us around we will be a Sunday League team.

Looks like my Saturdays will be free for the foreseeable future. On the other hand Staveley MW are looking good. If Sheridan is still CFC manager in 2 years, they might be playing each other.