Darlington v Harrogate Match Thread

[al_quaker]

Is Heaton injured?

[The Golden Hairclip]

Cup tied


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[al_quaker]

Ah right cheers

[Beano]

As Quakers has already said, rebuilding is vital, and a lot of fan’s favourites will go.

Turnbull, Galbraith, Burgess, Marrs, Ed, Gillies, Scott, have all been stellar servants but we need to move them out and move on.

We’ve chronically lacked pace and strength all over the pitch this season. Styche’s second goal is reminiscent of Armstrong in his pomp and brought home how little fight we have in us compared to that season.

Tommy needs the rest of the season to build his squad for next year and I’d imagine there won’t be many left. We may get dragged into the relegation fight, but I’m confident we won’t go down. I only expect 3 points from the next 5 games (Gainsborough) and anything else is a bonus.

[al_quaker]

Gainsborough are 3rd in the 6 game form table. We are 20th. I'm hopeful we can get a win, but it's not an easy fixture when you look at the form of the 2 teams.

[LoidLucan]

I think if we get nothing from the next few tough games the confidence in the squad will be so shot that we will find it extremely difficult to arrest a slide towards relegation. The problem is that it seems like whoever we play at the moment they all find it fairly easy to score against us. Alan White said as much in his interview and unfortunately it was something the Nuneaton fans moaned about during Tommy Wright's time there... that their defence was never properly sorted out and toughened up. They conceded far too easily and that was why they were down with the strugglers. If it's not addressed here, we will be relegated.

[theoriginalfatcat]

I still feel realistically confident.

We need to accept that not too many points will be picked until the end of January, and this could mean us being in the bottom three at that time, however, after this - we will pull away.

This problem was always going to happen, it's just Gray didn't fancy being part of it.

[Yarblockos]

I still feel realistically confident.

We need to accept that not too many points will be picked until the end of January, and this could mean us being in the bottom three at that time, however, after this - we will pull away.

This problem was always going to happen, it's just Gray didn't fancy being part of it.

The awful thing about our fixture list is that we probably won't pick up many points until March!

[theoriginalfatcat]

I disagree, I've had a look through and there seems to be a good number 'normal' games to come, after our hard spell. Not easy I'll grant you but other teams will be having side issues too and by then we should be a tighter unit.

For instance one of the hardest ones on paper, Blyth at home - it's nothing too frightening, is it?

[Yarblockos]

I disagree, I've had a look through and there seems to be a good number 'normal' games to come, after our hard spell. Not easy I'll grant you but other teams will be having side issues too and by then we should be a tighter unit.

For instance one of the hardest ones on paper, Blyth at home - it's nothing too frightening, is it?

Possibly. I'd say looking at the fixtures again that its more than likely that Wright won't win any of his first 12 games in charge. That's going to put a hell of a lot of pressure on him. We haven't had the initial bounce that you expect from a new manager and Wright has come in at a time when fixtures are tough. He has to pull out some results in some of these games. We can't expect many wins, but I think he needs at least one to keep people onside, otherwise we are looking at the worst start a DFC manager has ever had (Paul Futcher would possibly be the worst).

[theoriginalfatcat]

Yes, I see your point.

T.W's taken on a big task so patience is needed. The problems we now face have been brewing for a while so they're not going to be solved in the short term.

Re Darlo, I have plenty of patience at present.

[Darlopartisan]

One thing I will say about Ed he needs to improve his distribution time and time again he ballooned a kick up to Thompson who was crying out for a ball delivered more lateral who then had to check his run, get it sorted goal keeping coach.

[tdk1]

One thing I find very odd at the moment is how powder puff some of our closing down and tackling is. It's very uncharacteristic of this team.

[Darlo_Pete]

Poor performance on Friday evening, we can pass the ball round ok, but no penetration in the final third. Styche didn't get a chance to show what he can do apart from his goal from open play. On this form, relegation is a real threat.

[Darlo-and-Back]

Makes you wonder how many fans played the game. You start with a poor squad, bring in half a new team, new management and expect instant greatness. Time to get real

[HarrytheQuaker]

Makes you wonder how many fans played the game. You start with a poor squad, bring in half a new team, new management and expect instant greatness. Time to get real

We have all played the game and we are all great managers too obviously

[quaker4life]

I still feel realistically confident.

We need to accept that not too many points will be picked until the end of January, and this could mean us being in the bottom three at that time, however, after this - we will pull away.

This problem was always going to happen, it's just Gray didn't fancy being part of it.

I hate to appear blasé here but at this stage I can't see us even dropping into the bottom 3 any time soon (although it is a very real possibility).

The reason being, the teams below us...

We have a 5 point buffer between us and and Nuneaton in third bottom and a slight gap over FC United and Southport hovering just above. Southport have not won a single league game since beating us in September and if you think we have a difficult run in over Xmas/New Year spare a thought for FC United

02/12 Harrogate A
09/12 Brackley H
23/12 Spennymoor A
26/12 Salford H
01/01 Salford A

Nuneaton also have a tough run in after they play NFU next week (who are pretty much down already) they have Harrogate H, Kiddy A, Tamworth H, Tamworth A, Brackley H.

The team with the best run in arguably is Boston after they play York next week they have Southport H, Alfreton A, Gainsborough H, Gainsborough A.

For me the game at Gainsborough on the 23rd is going to be hugely significant in which way we go this season, the way things are going I can't see us getting anything from Salford, Harrogate x2 or York anything other than defeat will be a huge bonus.

There's no point even depressing ourselves with the run in afterwards, on paper very tough but in our situation they're all very tough right now. If we can keep our heads above water through Xmas/New year and get some points on the board against the likes of Leamington, Alfreton, Chorley et al we'll give ourselves a fighting chance with a very favourable run of games towards the end of March/beginning of April.

[LoidLucan]

Who'd have thought there would be a relegation discussion like this on here after we won our first three games of the season, including outplaying Salford on their own turf. Or even after Brown and Turnbull steered us to a decent point and a good win during their three games in charge.

[theoriginalfatcat]

Good win?

FC UTD imploded and for some reason decided to press the self destruct button - if I'd had been their manager that night I would have gone mental.

We've played better since then but not had much to show for it.

[en passant]

If memory serves me correctly the game that Brown and Turnbull won was against Bradford but it wasn't a particularly comfortable win.

[theoriginalfatcat]

If memory serves me correctly the game that Brown and Turnbull won was against Bradford but it wasn't a particularly comfortable win.

Yes, I'm getting muddled up, ignore me.

[LoidLucan]

I don't think you could look at the Bradford result as anything other than a good win, especially so when you consider they have since beaten Brackley and Blyth and are in the play-off places. We also had our reshuffled defence on duty with no Brown and Scott at full-back. It was a good win with caretaker managers, doesn't matter that there were one or two hairy moments near the end. 2-1 is the only stat that counts.

[don'tbuythesun]

Looking at the comments on here I thought we must be bottom of the table, on checking I see we're 15th. Doom and gloom, a new striker who can actually score, onwards and hopefully upwards or at least mid-table!

[quaker4life]

Looking at the comments on here I thought we must be bottom of the table

League:

P4 W0 D1 L3 GF4 GA10 Pts 1 GD-6

We're not there yet but Tommy is working on it.

[Beano]

Looking at the comments on here I thought we must be bottom of the table

League:

P4 W0 D1 L3 GF4 GA10 Pts 1 GD-6

We're not there yet but Tommy is working on it.

Blaming Tommy Wright for this run is ridiculous.

And, it will get worse before it gets better. The last thing the club needs is the fanbase wetting their beds, apportioning blame and creating a toxic atmosphere.

Once we've got these next 5 games out of the way, we've changed a few more of the squad, we will start picking up points.

[QUAKERMAN2]

Looking at the comments on here I thought we must be bottom of the table

League:

P4 W0 D1 L3 GF4 GA10 Pts 1 GD-6

We're not there yet but Tommy is working on it.

Blaming Tommy Wright for this run is ridiculous.

And, it will get worse before it gets better. The last thing the club needs is the fanbase wetting their beds, apportioning blame and creating a toxic atmosphere.

Once we've got these next 5 games out of the way, we've changed a few more of the squad, we will start picking up points.

Spot on

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[Darlogramps]

Looking at the comments on here I thought we must be bottom of the table

League:

P4 W0 D1 L3 GF4 GA10 Pts 1 GD-6

We're not there yet but Tommy is working on it.

Blaming Tommy Wright for this run is ridiculous.

And, it will get worse before it gets better. The last thing the club needs is the fanbase wetting their beds, apportioning blame and creating a toxic atmosphere.

Once we've got these next 5 games out of the way, we've changed a few more of the squad, we will start picking up points.

While quaker4life was a little glib, I do think it's fair to be concerned about Wright's ability to turn this around.

You're correct in that he had a terrible hand to start with - a weak striking department, a blatantly inadequate defensive unit, combined with plenty of injuries. And more generally, Gray's behaviour had left a negative atmosphere around the club. And given our rapid rise, the fanbase is used to winning. If Wright goes on a bad run, fans are going to get twitchy because we've not been used to it for a while.

However his record at Nuneaton was poor, and Corby went down as quickly as he took them back up. On top of that, four defeats and a draw from his opening five games is a poor start. As a manager, he's been patchy at best to date.

Given our problems, he deserves time to try and turn it around. Whether he has the ability to do so, that's for him to prove and I sincerely hope he does so. But for me, at the very least we need to see signs of progress on the pitch. There have been flashes of that (the Kidderminster comeback and Styche's debut), but also the same problems keep cropping, most notably our brittle defence.

And sooner rather than later, any progress will have to be translated into results. All well and good him being a nice guy, and attempting to play a better brand of football. But it means nothing if we're not winning.

[quaker4life]

And sooner rather than later, any progress will have to be translated into results. All well and good him being a nice guy, and attempting to play a better brand of football. But it means nothing if we're not winning.

This ^

However lets not forget our problems started under MG after we lost to Telford at home in August, the only difference being (Chorley aside) we were not conceding nearly as many goals.

However we have now shipped 13 in our last 5 in all competitions the fact we fell behind so soon after taking the lead on Friday night was alarming - regardless of the fact we were playing the team second in our league.

We conceded copious goals last season but made up for this with a potent attack at the other end. This season we were seeing the exact opposite, haemorrhaging goals at the other end and were toothless up front.

Reece Styche got off to the best possible start on his debut with two goals but I fear unless we improve significantly at the back he could end up being another Tadgh Purcell.

[quakerste]

Where was Wheatley on Friday night not in the squad?

[micra3]

Where was Wheatley on Friday night not in the squad?

Sickness