Sunderland 'Til I Cry: EFL and beyond 19/20

Who was ready last weekend? I mean, Fulham weren't

West Brom looked pretty slick vs Forest. Huddersfield were unfortunate last night.

Obviously looking forward to the Cocu / Rooney coaching team Derby are aiming to line up before the window ends.

lol all three relegated prem teams lost right?

do unfortunately think sunderland will smash l1 this year

I'm ready... it's our fuckwitted backpassing to rookie goalkeeper, english cb that isn't! But despite a mixed performance and still looking toothless/clueless in the last 3rd. Diakhaby's lightning pace and Grant's cool as a cucumber, totally confident penalty strike tells me mid table is doable!

Bradford Park Avenue sack their new management team (appointed in May) after two consecutive 5-0 losses.

Is the first week a new record?

There was famously a same day sacking years back but I can't remember who

Rosenior, brilliant

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2007/may/21/newsstory.sport5

Norwich's climb from the nadir was triggered by the insta-sacking of Gunn after a 7-1 opening day defeat to Colchester

Robins had a nervous breakdown and walked after an opening day 4-0 home drubbing against Bournemouth. The chairman said he was a brilliant technical manager who lacked people skills and cited his refusal to high 5 the jovial Jermaine Beckford on the training ground as an example of this.

You can probably trace a fairly steady decline for Colchester since that 7-1 too.

Beating someone 7-1 and having them immediately nick your manager will generally have a depressive effect, as will having your stadium miles out of town in a weird car park

Our pre-season optimism lasted around 35 minutes into a display of deep ineptitude against a rubbishy Macclesfield; by halfway through the second half my drunk mates were reduced to complaining that the yoof are not as good at singing songs as we all were in the old days (NB not true at all in my estimation but wevs) then we spawned an 87th minute winner and joy was very nearly unconfined.

Ah yes, Macclesfield - dear old Sol is ready

Won't (strike thru) Will always be fooled by an unbeaten preseason, and then feel all optimism drain away in first 20 mins of match 1.

Yeah. After the first game is much too early to be giving it the "gotta grind out points in this league" gubbins also.

Just passing Elland Rd ont bus and have a gigantic bamford head peering right at me at the traffic lights :x

Some lovely old buildings in Holbeck tbf

"Most of my constituency know I am not a football expert but it's my job to take up concerns when they are expressed to me and I have had a confidential briefing.

"I want to be satisfied that the sale was done by the book. The fans deserve to know that the sale of their football club has been done by the rules. I am not making a judgment."

The Examiner understands Mr Sheerman has not been in touch with Huddersfield Town directly to discuss his concerns.

A Huddersfield Town spokesman said: "The sale of the club has been ratified by the FA and the EFL as is part of the process."

lol the legitimate concerns of barry sheerman. just for some clarity our club used to be fully owned by a full on scumbag capitalist who utilised zero hour contracts and outsourcing to ruthlessly destroy his business rivals on the depleted high streets of the UK. And now the club is 3/4 owned by some amoral ambulance chaser who looks like a class a cunt as well. barry sheerman is the first mp to declare himself a professional lobbyist and now admits he doesn't know the difference between the Hudds and S Weds shirts after humiliating himself in a pub a couple of years back.

Did somebody say...'surprise package'?

you've totally cursed it now.

"We'll go for it," he told BBC Radio Suffolk. "Too many people come here and don't try to play but we'll go for it. We're playing rock and roll football."

presumably if other people like it, that's a bonus

https://hastingsflyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/30564_image_45647377_1898502896851441_4403624492505497600_n.jpg

Richards gone. Would have been nicer to have done it during the close season but we said that last year too.

Siewart gone.. never thought this golden era of 1 win in 8 months or whatever the fuck it was would ever come to an end!

You get beat again? 2-1 down last time I looked

yeah finished 2-1, fucking Cavelerio finished us off! lots of talk of the players despising the manager, our chairman was on the verge of sacking him after the league cup defeat the other night. Always had a feeling it would be all downhill after Wagner went. Or at least normalis negotium as pom would say!

just for Bacuna's dopey assist for the Mitrovic opener - I seriously never want to see that cunt play for us again, and him looking like a L2 player and giving the ball away umpteen times a minute. While we were in the prem our recruitment was fucking shocking.

there are reports he was sacked on wednesday, but the chairman told him: seeing as he'd already picked his team for tonight he might as well stick about for another game before getting pumped.

Pușcaș looks like an excellent signing for Reading.

As I say that he misses a one on one under no pressure whatsoever.

damn, you can get a shit hot Romanian international striker for €8m these days. I wish our shitty scouting dept knew this last season.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECW2YhvWsAAH4zO?format=jpg&name=900x900

lool

:D

Looks like dear old Oldham are in a spot of bother, largely flying under the radar AFAICT amid the massive pits of bother that Bury and Bolton find themselves in.

Luckily for the Latics they're playing us this evening and there's nothing we like to do more than donate three dumb points to crisis clubs.

I still can't get past my tribal hatred for Oldham whose fans were very shitty when we were the crisis club and our ex-player Wijnard tormented our dysfunctional defence. Also fuck them for the time they gave a contract to vehicular homicide scumbag Lee Hughes. Hope they go bust!

I've nothing against Oldham but I'd just as soon see them slide ignominiously out of the league as see them go bust in a blaze of Bury-style publicity. (They would be the first team that had been in the Premier League to do so I think?)

I haven't checked but I bet not many clubs have spent as many consecutive seasons in League 1 as Oldham have in the modern era, and if hadn't have been for that meddling amateur Scholesy ....

What is this new Bolton bullshit

they were just calmly preparing to field an XI of children as they normally do and some spoilsport postponed the game!

Squeaky bum time in the most exciting footballing action of the day. I imagine "C&N Sporting Risk, headed by Henry Newman and Rory Campbell" are running round the office printing off bank statements.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49455433

Reminds me of the collapse of Hereford United where the scumbag owner didn't turn up for refinancing in court as he was "stuck in traffic" and the company was immediately dissolved.

Bury FC Crisis: Company which bought £7m debt for £70,000 and now wants £1.75m for it, reportedly owned by partner of daughter of club owner Steve Dale. Jaw-dropping detail in the wreckage of this football club. https://t.co/IGVPxYAddp

— David Conn (@david_conn) August 23, 2019

EFL did some cracking fit and proper testing on this Dale fellow.

Steve Dale has been telling some media that a deal has been done. The potential buyers have told James Frith MP that's not the case. Yet. #BuryFC

— Chris Hall (@chrishallitv) August 23, 2019

we've had quite a few momentously big scoring win lose draws against Bury in my lifetime - including 0-6, 6-0, 4-4, 3-3 in the last couple of decades. I love Gigg Lane as well despite only going there twice. Good luck Bury.

we are going through the longest period of terrible football and sustained losing since that 70's period that some older fans with a slight touch of grandiloquence refer to as The Great Decline. When the designated disabled area is abandoned by the contemptible prem daytrippers that took over it like a fucking disease - i'll be happy to get a season ticket again, because half empty stands is the only environment that works with the kid. At least yesterday our useless caretaker manager realised Elphick is an old slow liability that is finished at this level, probably finished at L1 level (where we are headed) as well so a complete waste of a wage. It reminds me of when we signed Unsworth when he was an old knackered useless bastard as well.

I've often complained to stewards that there should be an autism friendly section of the ground, and they agreed. But shite football is the only real solution for empty banks of seats.

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/17751427.middlesbrough-continue-investigate-transfers-garry-monks-time-charge/

he always looked like face from crimewatch did this cunt, never trust anyone who spells Gary with 2 R's and wears wooly cardigans in the summer.

BREAKING: Bury FC Crisis: The proposed purchase by C & N Sporting Risk is OFF; owner Steve Dale was given until 5pm today for it to complete or the club would be expelled from the Football League, so this really could be the end.

— David Conn (@david_conn) August 27, 2019

it looks like Bury will be gone within the hour.

Ugh, I feel very bad for the Bury fans suffering at the hands of a bunch of stuff outside their control.

Having said that, there's a piece of me that would be irritated by their being saved at the last minute, rewarding them for massively overspending to buy promotion last year (my lot finished one point outside the play-off places, remember). I try to keep that piece of me under control because ultimately it's the Bury FC community that loses its club, and it's hardly their fault they enjoyed last season on the never-never.

Presumably the ground will be disposed of as part of an insolvency process? That's quite an important factor in any phoenix club starting up.

all teams that play in white are cunts, yeah you heard me London ilx!

ok well it's over now

wariotifo shd have waited until this finished 5-0 lol

i think this might be the last ever competitive game at Griffin Park.

isn't that competitive

Perhaps Pontus Jansson has the secret of the classic choke.

XP LOLS!

a classical choker puts the tory white shite back in the game!

the mighty Warito abides

how lovely for west london

you can't deny their transfer policy has been pretty impressive and canny, lots of champo clubs have spent their way into mediocrity. Including my lot (when they were a pretend prem club!)

matthew benham is tbf in actual fact a moneyball genius and he kind of deserves this

yes he is a complete stain, but they have either been incredibly fortuitous in the transfer market or someone knows wtf they are doing! Saying that, we've been fucking pony this season and still took 4 pts off them.

we were even ponier and were 15 minutes from taking 6 off them

Hoping effing Fulham get through because I can’t face wanting Cardiff to win. Don’t care what happens really, just desperate for Watkins to be sold. Desperate!

back in pre Rona times you could have have afforded yourself the luxury of a bit more patience and gamble on him being a success in the prem and yielding a better sell on cut, but them days are gone:( Rough times for league 1/2 clubs right now

Apparently we're OK, survival-wise, we had put away some money from the last couple of lucrative sales, but this spell has blown through the savings; we released al our out-of-contract payers (seven from a not-huge squad) and it would be really nice to see a couple of replacements come in. Rough times mean it'd be a brilliant time to have a few quid of disposable income to spend on a few really good players.

(Last lucrative sale = Watkins to Brentford, funnily enough, which was £1.75m if I recall correctly - the sums involved in L2 are laughably small compared to even the Champo. )

I can remember when we were a L2 club being run by an asset stripping chairman. Just coming out of administration and with a squad of seven players. Then followed a massive transfer splurge with a net spend of fuck all. Then we sold Stead for 1.2m which seemed a huge sum then and probably was huge for the club at the time.

Since more or less all the clubs in the lower leagues are loss-making enterprises, and most are owned by "local businessmen" of one kind or another, there is going to be quite a difference this season between those clubs whose owners' businesses are likely to do OK and those whose businesses are tanking.

Mansfield (insurance?), Forest Green (green energy), Salford (you know who) all seem to be spending rather freely so far so I guess they're all doing alright.

Our local bête noire former chairman Ken Davy is considered a total villain in the town. I even saw him getting accosted on John William St once and some bloke was yelling: give us our stadium back you robbing cunt! In the local rag there was constantly stories about how his crooked loan company was breaking laws and illegally misselling loans and involved in all sorts of sharp practise etc. Anyway the Conservative Party missed a trick by running him against the universally despised safe-seat wasteman Barry Sheerman in the last election. That would have been the easiest red wall seat to take if they had even run a Shetland pony with a get brexit done blue rosette, anyone but Ken Davy.

Oh look, calzino has another league club to go and watch if he gets bored of Huddersfield

I've been there before for preseason friendlies, there must have been some dramatic improvements made since I last went because that wasn't close to being a FL standard ground - although this was about 16-17 years ago. They are that posh you get to meet BBC producers and crime fiction authors in their local boozers, but they are no Bradford Park Avenue.

getting there is not that "local" either, you are talking a fair journey on a clunking pacer train from Leeds!

nothing is weird these days but Harrogate Town in the football league? hmm truly the age of Toryism!

Dover let all their players go. Sounds terminal.

That was clever!

Not from Raya, obvs.

Aw. Even watching the text commentary has been a chore

It has been a poor match. Fulham have been slightly better but there’s not much in it.

Remarkable from Joe Bryan. One goal since 2018, two tonight.

Feel for Brentford as they’ve been so good this season and I can’t imagine the front three will still be there when the next starts.

I guess having choked twice in the run-in Brentford shd've expected this

Won't be the first time they've had to rebuild tho

Poor old Brentford, losing playoffs sucks. I hope they make an absolute mint selling Ollie W.

Brentford won't win the playoffs (aeternum)

In all seriousness, I hope Reading FC go out of business for this pic.twitter.com/kS967KWN6p

— Chris Scull (@cjscull) August 22, 2020

Defending the glory of Reading.

fucking tory club to the core

I guess "tbey call us the biscuitmen" didn't scan as well

https://www.buryfc.co.uk/news/latest-statement-07-08-2020/august/club-update/

This is quite the update.

Incredible sign-off to that Bury statement pic.twitter.com/Ic9qaqxmLy

— Steven Chicken (@StevenChicken) August 27, 2020

i hope Bury FC are eradicated from the face of the earth and never play a game of football again

Me too, though obviously I'd be happy with an AFC Bury making their way back to Gigg Lane in the fullness.

aye i always feel for fans when owners are douchebags, but then that's almost all owners at some point

It is, and I very much hope they all go bust.

in only slightly related news I Danny "arse carbuncle" Boyle goes bust as well! But I do have a soft spot for Gigg Lane.

Highlight of the night so far goes to the lad that walked passed these ketchup bottles and thought it was hand santiser 😂🤦🏼‍♂️
He played it pretty cool to be fair and sneaked off to wash his hands 😂@CambridgeUtdFC #cufc #camutd #EFLTrophy #cufc #SocialDistancing #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/RabuYFuLpm

— Tom Cody (@tomcody11cufc) September 8, 2020

Macclesfield bustness confirmed this morning. Odd since they've been signing players all week, including stealing Jason Cowley - who we've had as a trialist for about a month - by offering him loads of cash.

yeah, it's a grim start to the season, and worse to come probably

it's a shambles that they were still signing players with £500k of short term bills they couldn't pay and nearly £5m worth of debt hanging over them. I once said to my brother I hope this tinpot pub-team goes bust after they did us 4-0, but honest, I didn't mean it!

for my freebet treble I've got Blackburn who are 3-0 up and Reading who are 0-0 but a Barnsley player has seen red and then I've got Town ...sigh