Dyches to Watch Out For - The Football League and Beyond, 2012-13

now remind me not to look at any fan comments for another 12 months or at least until i'm less vulnerable to despair

Mixed emotions I guess?

i feel bad for the guy, i'm not sure he was given enough of a chance, he blatantly fucked up with the chance he was given. just looking at the number of signings he's made who've been perma-crocked is bizarre, but on the other hand he inherited one of the worst groups of players ever to appear together in the Premier League.

it's a rough old business tho and unfortunately if you get 6 months and don't show any sign of improving things then the odds are this will happen.

wd really like O'Driscoll to get a shot, but i'm very afraid this chalice is pretty much pure poison under Jez Moxey.

feel weirdly satisfied that a clownish cup exit can still carry enough charge to be the final straw in this day and age

still though worry not, plenty of okay candidates and not the end of the wor... wait what dean saunders?? ulp

Meanwhile, Intercity McLeish charges along unabated

so much low tragedy in midlands football right now

pat murphy insinuating saunders appointment is down to steve morgan scouse mafia

donny fans seem to be p gutted if its any consolation

oh jesus fuck no D:

my old man told me tonight that Solbakken was allegedly recommended to Morgan by Jan Molby. i've long suspected the bloke's a fucking idiot but tonight just about proves it.

It'd be so good if the Forest board took resolve from Moxey's decisiveness here. Is Powell now at risk d'you reckon?

Pat Murphy ‏@patmurphybbc
New Wolves manager set to be Dean Saunders of Doncaster.Compensation issues being discussed tonight. Believe SS was toast whatever 1/2

Pat Murphy ‏@patmurphybbc
2/2 happened at Luton.Never found the dressing-room to lose.Why Sean O'D never got the gig amazes.Mind you,he never played for Liverpool

Is who at risk, Ismael Klata?

you know

ffs is it that obvious

think i read something the other week that forest players were refusing to train after the sacking

not that mcleish needs the excuses to fail but he's fucked from day one p much

xp lol fooled me fwiw

tsk ffs thought we were gushing with vital new blood for a sec there

sorry, I meant Hope Powell

keep it on the DL folks, the Yankees must not know

good luck imago

can we not at least get some belated vintage hyperbole for the danny haynes golazo

ah imago's emergence from his chrysalis has turned my despair into lulz

Saunders might be alright i suppose, but i don't think Paul Daniels cd do anything with our squad right now and i've never seen Saunders waving a wand

it were a hit alright

our ilf hero is bradley pritchard, signed from non-league football at 24, has a degree and all, also been our best performer this season other than the inevitable solly

completely singular style he has too, which is to have the highest workrate in british football (covered 9k at wolves, the most anyone's done in the top 3 leagues since 2009) and to sprint - *sprint* - after absolutely everything, both attacking and defensive

add this to being small, likeable and not unskillful and you have the very model of a cult hero

not going to say anything about today's game except that I only spent £30 on tickets which is a relief

god's own wikipeda says he is 6'1 and mentions nothing about a degree although it does say he was a 'performance analyst' which sounds like the sort of title corporate gym employees with sports science degrees might be called

maybe 'slight' would have been more accurate - he's very slender of build which means that every time he comes off worse in a 50/50 the idiots behind me mutter 'not physical enough for this league' or suchlike

our results with/without pritchard starting this season would make interesting viewing for these people

he's definitely not 6'1 though, that's straight-up incorrect

and yeah he has something of the gym employee about him - he was signed because he was training at the valley during the off-season while on work experience - but he's not got yer reptile sportsciencebro vibe about him at all - he's humble and appears to value his fitness as a means to its own end rather than a territorial mating-display function

i think you should amend his wiki page based upon who you would like bradley pritchard to be, so its essential truth compensates for any merely prosaic truth-deficiencies

that would set a glorious precedent, maybe we should start a thread, 'the essential truth of footballers'

there's already a "Terry is a racist cunt" thread iirc

seems like pritchard went to loughborough, as if he were trying to fulfill the sports science bro archetype i was adumbrating on ilx some time ago

bros in Bench t-shirts at decent provincial uni sort of thing = this was the sportssciencebro thing we were riffing on a while back

that description makes me think LOUGHBOROUGH btw -- the only ppl i know who went there are all kind of athletic, sportsbro doing business studies types

definitely a lot of LADs in that contingent, but then some of those ppl are quite serious cuz they want to become brokers after all

― navihchkan (nakhchivan), Friday, 18 May 2012 23:01 (7 months ago)

Loughborough was the spiritual home of Sports Science when i were a lad, assume that hasn't changed

lol noodle i actually typed and then deleted 'what might the conservapedia entry for john terry be' in that last post

i bet pritchard went to all his lectures and never drank more than three units a night

lol loughborough uni students shd refer to their alma mater as 'lowbrow university' right

no alcohol but entire gastrointestinal canal glows orange in darkened rooms due to >3000ml/ day lucozade intake

http://truelad.com/Banter/389271

that banter moved me

head the size of a tennis ball, pathos like a roddick serve

how can you be so disrespectful of that TrueLAD

it's almost like you want him to fail

Any advice you’d give to Loughborough footballers still looking for a route in the professional game?

All I would say keep it simple. Focus on what you can do and nothing else. I’ve seen players change because they hear they have had interest from other clubs, or that scouts are at their games. I had that two seasons before while I was at Tamworth FC. I didn’t react well, subsequently my performances were way below my standard I hoped for. With all that, unfortunately luck and timing still have a huge part to play in becoming a professional footballer.

Another thing that helped me was that I worked on many of the weaknesses that I knew others felt I had. For example countless managers thought I was too small and lightweight. So I spent a long time on my jumping and ways to protect the ball. These slight improvements just helped my all round game, and although I doubt I’m no bigger than I was when I was 16 years old, I have more confidence to compete.

pritchard regards the agency of luck as misfortune

only self-determinism and graft for our bradley

surprised i haven't read a fawning broadsheet article about this dude already

traditionally i will rep for fitba players from strange backgrounds or those who make a circuitous route to the top

when he gets a zimbabwe call-up, people will notice

unless he's already been approached and turned it down on humanitarian grounds, would be just like him

a lot of successful brazilian players have pretty humble bluecollar type stories, gilberto silva was a factory worker and i think grafite was a door to door salesman

rep for ian wright, your time starts now

andres iniesta was a chimneysweep from the ages of seven to fifteen

Pritchard's an ex-BBC Sport columnist (during his time at Tamworth). Think was a year or two after Gavin Strachan Blog.

I can fully imagine Chris Powell as the lead character in a football version of Borgen.

Saunders might not be a bad choice - writing off what happened at Doncaster last season (which I don't think anyone could really have dealt with), he's got Rovers pushing to come straight back up, and he did a very solid job at Wrexham too. Putting aside the whole Sean-o Finally Gets His Shot At The Big Time dream, Wolves could probably do a lot worse.

So this week started with us finding out that Chester were expelled from the league, which means that the six points we earned will be wiped out. It does leave a bitter taste in your mouth when you think that another team's problems have had such a significant impact on us.

man's inhumanity to man

Trying to fill out the rest of the cast of Borgen: Football Edition has now led to me inventing the idea of Manish/Claridge slashfic. I am a horrible person.