I don't think McGowan has ever played left back for us.

Marvo, I thought the question was simple enough in asking if people preferred us winning more games by staying in division 2 or seeing a better standard of football with fewer wins in division 1. You asked  "why choose when you can have both" which to me seems to be saying why can we not have winning football in division 1 but now you say you did not say this. I don't think the standard of football in division 2 is going to improve much so we are not going to get better, winning football in this division.

Marvo - how come you think we can have winning football in division 1 when on another thread you say only the goalkeepers, Lintott and Fox are good enough. Most of next years squad is already signed apart from replacing the loan players and there are very few others out of contract at the end of the season.
As I said in the opening post it is unlikely JB will have a vastly increased budget and a lot of the teams promoted from division 2 return quite quickly.

I wasn't awhere  you had any respect.

It seems that a lot of teams promoted from division 2 only manage to stay in division 1 for up to 3 years before again being relegated as we have on more than 1 occasion. Looking at the bottom 1/3rd of division 1 several teams fall into this category, FGR who were last years runaway leaders for a long time are at the bottom, Morecambe, Cambridge, Cheltenham and Milton Keynes are all down there. The other promoted teams last season all sit in mid table but could get dragged into the relegation battle as they are all in a poor run of form, Exeter and Port Vale both have only 4 points from their last 6 games and Bristol Rovers only 1 (wouldn't it be a shame if they came straight back down). Very few teams do what Luton have done and follow up with another promotion to the Championship. With few exceptions most seasons you can look at division 1 and see which clubs will be in the top or bottom half of the table.

It has been stated on here that our budget is nowhere near the best in the division and if we achieved promotion would probably be one of the lowest in division 1 so we would again be chasing sufficient points to stay up as no substantial budget increase is likely.

So it comes down to do you prefer to see us winning more games in division 2 against the likes of Barrow and Newport County or seeing a better standard of football in division 1 with Posh, Portsmouth, Charlton and Derby coming here but fighting to stay up and going into some home games expecting to be beaten?.

Personally I would prefer the better standard of football and see us pitting our wits against the better teams but could understand some people preferring to see us winning more often in division 2.

Has somebody escaped from St.Andrews?, we have 3 totally irrelevant new threads created by a person (probably back at school tomorrow after half term) who has not a positive thing to say and thinks the management and all of the players are cr@p. He asks a stupid question of another poster, who has supported the club for the best part of 70 years, if he has ever seen a live game when he should know if he reads this forum that said supporter follows the team home and away. If the team that currently sits 4th in the league are as useless as he thinks what does that make the 20 teams that are below us?.
I would suggest that if he wants to see a better standard of football that he watches division 1 football at MK where is likely to see plenty of goals as they have conceded 10 in the last 2 games.

Stoke did not want to let DWP leave until they had a replacement signed who they would not have wanted if they considered him ready for more Championship action than they had previously given him. You don't seem to have an answer for why no other player has scored more than 4 goals other than trying to convince us that we play in a totally different way when he is in the team which is not true. I don't see JB basing his tactics purely to suit a single player.

Marvo is beginning to remind me of the Carpetright advert - "nobody knows more about floors than xxxx"

He seems to be under a misguided opinion that "nobody knows more about the Cobblers than Marvo".

Agreed we need to be aiming for 80 points which will mean winning over half of our remaining 15 games, 8 wins, 4 draws and 3 defeats would get us there. We certainly have 8 winnable games left but Walsall, AFC and Grimsby all were winnable games, we can still do it but a big improvement on current form is rquired.

Having watched their goals again Koiki gets too easily done on both occasions but gets zero assistance from Pinnock for the first and Leonard for the second and when the crosses come in both times Magloire is beaten in the air by the scorer.

Although we are one of the highest scorers in the division I have always had a concern about where our goals would come from and yesterdays line up was no exception. We have been heavily reliant on Hoskin's goals as nobody else has more than 4. Fox has looked the more likely of the others but appears to be out for several games and McWilliams, who has 3, did not start. So we had Sowerby who sits deep and rarely scores (none this season) and Leonard (only 1) in midfield and unlikely either wing backs  would score. We were never going to repeat the goals we got last season from the centre backs and so it has proved and none of them has more than 2. Appere rarely scores so this left the onus on out of form Pinnock and Hoskins. Our experts rabbit on about us winning at Bradford and Stevenage without Hoskins in the side as other players stepped up so maybe they can enlighten us as to why these players rarely step up when he is in the side.

We are badly missing Bowie to lead the line although incorrectly in my view he has often been played wide right. When he got injured it was initially said he would be out for about 8 weeks ( end of Feb.) and later that it may not be so long but now B&S is saying for much of the remaining season so which is it?. Although Appere cannot be faulted for his work rate and is usually good with the ball at his feet he does not score enough goals to lead the line so maybe he would be better in the centre of a 3 behind a striker but who would that be?. At the moment the choice seems to be either Yengi who missed a sitter yesterday or play Eppiah as an out and out striker.

As for DWP I think it a little ingenious to call him a Championship player with the few minutes he has played you may as well call Harrop a Premiership player because he played 1 game for Man Utd, what has happened to him not in the 18 yesterday?. It does not matter a jot what Stoke think as they were not playing DWP and obviously had no plans to as they would not have let him come here. He is still young and may or may not become a Championship player and I hope he does well for us. He had a bright cameo against AFC and in our current form I would not be against giving him a start next week to see what he can do.

He probably did not make any substitutions until they equalised because we had been leading for almost an hour with the game drifting to a 1-0 home win and king had not been seriously troubled. He expected us to go on and see out the win but our game management let us down.

The first half was a poor advert for football, other than Sam's goal we hardly threatened their goal and they did not threaten ours other than a scramble just before half time which we got away for a corner. The ball spent too much time in the air and I was crying out for us to get the ball down to play and when we did this more in the second half we looked better but without working their 'keeper very much.

Grimsby made changes at half time and started the second half brightly with 2 efforts that just cleared the bar and went narrowly wide of the post.
Both Grimsby goals came from crosses from the same player who lost Koiki far too easily on both occasions but I won't comment more on them until I see the replays as to why they got onto the crosses to score. We then had a golden chance to make it 2-2 which we couldn't take.

The day could have turned out worse but Salford and Bradford also lost at home, Bradford fans are probably more upset than ours after losing to out of form Barrow after having 77% possession without a shot on target, Salford's not so much as they don't have many fans.

We hold on to 4th place by a single goal over Mansfield but we will drop to 5th on Tuesday as Stockport only need a point at Rochdale to go above us and may well get all 3 as everybody else seems to go there and win, Gillingham being the latest today but we only salvaged a point with an 89th minute equaliser.

Clearly 2 wins from the last 10 home games is not good enough but more worrying is the lack of openings we are creating. It has been suggested that we need to get more crosses into the box but with plating Appere and Hoskins up front they will not win many headers against big defenders.

Good to see that McWilliams injury was not as bad as we first thought and he was able to come off the bench so hopefully will be back in the starting 11 next week when we badly need a big performance at Colchester - not one of our favourite hunting grounds.

We will be the albatross around the mariners neck.

Grimsby reported to have pre sold 900 so another good attendance likely.

I agree that division 2 defenders are not comfortable with players running at them. I also think we play in front of them too much instead of trying to get in behind, Hoskins did this against Walsall but then chose the wrong option of shooting from an acute angle when he had 2 players at the far post waiting for a tap in.

I think "trying to get the ball in the goal" is maybe too simplistic and the opposition may be expecting us to do that so perhaps we should try a more diverse approach. How about we make a lot of sideways and backwards passes and take them by surprise when we make an attempt on goal, do you think that might work?.

I don't recall at any time suggesting that you were not entitled to post an opinion on the game if you watched it on ifollow, I was suggesting that some who are local try going to the game and experience the day and mix with fellow supporters. We have several supporters who travel many a mile to attend and others, like Everbrite who rarely miss a home game and travel the length of the country to attend most away games and can be called true supporters. As for myself I only miss a home game if it coincides with a holiday that was booked before the fixture list came out or due to illness but I only attend a few away matches as I don't think it fair to abandon my wife every Saturday.

This game and the next 4, Colchester and Hartlepool away and Crawley and Crewe at home need to see us gaining a big haul of points.

18 home games against the mariners with 9 wins, 5 draws and 4 defeats scoring 32 and conceding 16. We have not lost any of our last 12 league encounters (5 wins and 7 draws) but they did beat us in the FA Cup during this time and have drawn 4 of their last 5 visits.

Grimsby league form has been very inconsistent but they are the only 2nd division club left in the FA Cup beating teams from higher divisions in every round. 1st round 5-1 win v Plymouth at home, 2nd round 2-1 win at Cambridge, 3rd round 1-0 win v Burton at home, 4th round 2-2 draw with Luton before beating them 3-0 in the replay.
In their 14 away games they have won 6, drawn 1 and lost 7 but after winning 5 of the first 7 away games and taking 16 points they have lost 6 of the last 7 scoring 7 and conceding 14, this includes defeats at lowly Hartlepool and Harrogate and a 0-5 thumping at Swindon. In 14 league games since 15th October they have taken only 11 points with 3 wins, 2 draws and 9 defeats yet they seem to up their game in the cup.

Simon Mather will be refereeing, we have not had this season but he was at Sixfields in April 2022 for our 1-1 with Exeter. Grimsby had him this season in September for their 1-2 home defeat against Carlisle.

As for our team Fox will be missing against his former club and probably also McWilliams. I would expect an unchanged back 4 although I'm surprised by Magloire's omission and it is possible McGowan could take some part. Midfield 3 of Leonard, Sowerby and Hondermarck ( unless JB goes with Harrop) and Appere to come back in up top with Hoskins and JB will probably keep Pinnock in and bring DWP off the bench later.

According to Grimsby they will be bringing a good following but they only sing when they're fishing and we could see the Harry the haddock inflatables. This is agame to get back to winning ways and restore some confidence to the team to go on another run.

Evers, but you cannot get behind the team you profess to support from your armchair. Get down to the ground and take in the match day experience and mix with fellow supporters.
I did not hear any booing on Tuesday but it was unwarranted for a team that has been in the automatic promotion places nearly all season and only lost 6 of their 30 games. If we manage to get promoted we would lose more games in a higher division against better teams so team would get booed off more frequently.