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21  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Shrewsbury Saturday 27th January. on: January 28, 2024, 11:21:50 am
I just need anyone, anyone, to come in and free Leonard up to go forward more. And ideally give him someone to play 1-2's with an actually do something that can open the opposition up. We still have not a single forward player in the squad who wins more than a header a game (Bowie is best at 0.8 per game, and average across all our forwards is 0.5 headers a game ; Shrewsbury's lowest Forward is at 1.5 per game and average is 2.7 per game for comparison) So, we're limited to either running at the opposition on the counter or playing a through ball - and the guy who does the latter for us must have had the same heat map as our centre-backs.

Shrewsbury pressed exceptionally well today. Would be interesting to see if they can keep them up for an extended period and how much was needing to make an impression on the manager, if it's the former they'll be absolutely fine. We need a better plan on the counter press (or better players in the midfield to deal with it), because it's not the first time that we just run out of ideas if someone is on us constantly, it felt a lot like Stevanage away.
22  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: January 26, 2024, 14:13:57 pm
I think JB's reply when the play offs were brought up in the post match interview was telling. Also I doubt when he was looking at the fixtures in 5 match blocks he was targeting a points total that would have us troubling the play offs. You could throw money at it to bring in a couple of players but in the unlikely scenario that we made the play offs and were successful another major increase in the budget would be needed for a championship campaign which we would not have and we would quickly come back down.
There are yoyo clubs who get promoted to the championship and within a couple of seasons come back down again who have bigger budgets than us (ie Peterborough, Rotherham). Sheffield Wednesday went up last season and it looks likely they will make a swift return and their budget would dwarf ours.
Do you think it is worth throwing money at it now when we only have the slimmest of chances to progress for what would likely be one season in the championship and could possibly be followed by a second relegation as the money was already spent. Clearly we rightly are not going to pay inflated prices this transfer window so if we cannot get what we want at the right price I for one do not mind that money being held back until the summer. We also have to convince some of our soon to be out of contract players to stay.
Some of the figures we’ve been quoted for players this January are ridiculous and we were certainly trying to bring people in. Have it on good authority we were pushing to do a deal for a couple of Fleetwood players, but covering the wages plus a loan fee is just too much in January.

If we did gamble and pushed the boat out and not make the playoffs (which I don’t think we would either way) we may hamstring ourselves budget wise for next year.
Marriot is the obvious guess here, but who knows who the other one would be.

Marvo, I don't disagree we'll be fighting relegation next year, particularly when we lose Leonard, Bowie, and potentially Sherring and McWilliams. That would be the same if we spend money now or not, the only difference is that if we do, we have to live with a couple of cut back League 2 seasons if it doesnt pay off.

The TV money from the Championship would more than pay the gamble back if we did, but the odds of it paying off a low. If we were in Stevenage's position I could see the gamble being more worth it, but I think its less sticking it all on red and more sticking it all on Red 17. Brady has us better than the sum of our parts, and we're out performing what hes been given, but having seen Portsmouth and Derby, I think we're more than one or two decent players away from being a promotion team.
23  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Charlton Athletic away Tuesday on: January 26, 2024, 08:57:03 am
I think McGowan had a very good first year with us, and then struggled to get into the team after his injury in the second year and was rightly seen as probably surplus to requirements. At the time Lintott stock was high. It took injuries elsewhere and he was lucky enough to get a second chance and he's taken it really well. Same with Simpson, I don't think the assessment that he should be sent back in January was wrong during his October/November performances, but he's turned it around and now it's right to consider him an important player for us.

So if you thought that we could ship out McGowan and get better at the start of the year you were probably right, and if you think it would be insane to do the same thing in January now based on his form you're also probably right.
24  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: January 24, 2024, 20:36:26 pm
If we have the Leonard replacement lined up in the sights for this summer maybe we step up the gas to bring them in ahead of time.
25  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: January 14, 2024, 08:30:24 am
Being surplus for requirements for a team trying to push back into the Premiership is a bit different to our standards I'd have thought.
26  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: January 13, 2024, 16:45:20 pm
I'm pretty certain we got Appere and Hondermarck in January, i'd be spending and budget and getting Sherring and McWilliams, (or even Bowie and Leonards) successors in if you cant convince them to sign to give them the next 6 month free hit to bed them in.

The teams in the play-offs are the guys on 3-4x a budget, I don't see the risk reward of spending money on a very unlikely to happen promotion, might as well just be looking to see if we can get any of the longer term targets early.

Is this Norwich winger a permanent or a loanee?
27  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Wigan Athletic H 13.01.24 on: January 13, 2024, 16:18:37 pm
Too lazy to do it, but would be really interested to see our win percentages with and without Sowerby in the team.
28  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Ivan Toney on: January 07, 2024, 09:00:27 am
Whatever you say about his style of football, Evans is pretty good at identifying talent.
29  The Hotel End / Other Football & Sport / Re: Joey Barton on: January 06, 2024, 11:38:02 am
Like Katie Hopkins, he's just a populist who knows where the cheap money is. He might well think some of these things, but he play acts because he knows the subset of people who get mad about the woke are very entrenched in that view, and that its easy to get their love and their attention by saying provocative things, and more importantly let them to listen to the podcast he's hawking.

Lack of attention's the only way to kill him off.

The obviously nuanced view is that its perfectly acceptable to criticise any presenter if you think their content is s*** regrardless of gender, but if you attribute that s***ness to their gender themselves you're a moron.

Presenting is just saying the same platitudes over and over depending on the storyline, and occasionally drawing a link on a screen. It's not a positon that requires you to be an ex professional to do it, and even if thats a benefit, would there be any special benefit in an international ex-player doing it versus a non-league journeyman? I don't think there is, therefore I don't think there's any real worry about the disparity in quality between the womens league and the premiership either.
30  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Ivan Toney on: January 05, 2024, 17:05:34 pm
He wasn't bought under EPPP, and the transfer from us to Newcastle was the 4th in the current chain now, so there's almost no chance.
31  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Cheltenham Town F C (H) on: January 01, 2024, 14:53:20 pm
A multitude of issues caused by the selection problems. Cheltenham set up to sit back and bypass the midfield so outside the first 15 mins, we had no counterattack opportunities, and make shift McGowan is doing his hardest work, but his headers just arent getting up the pitch and putting us under the pressure.

The only player who can do anything against a team sitting back is Leonard and his passes, and he's sacrificed at defensive mid with Sowerby out.

Crowd are doing my head in as well, why are you screaming to lump the ball in to the box when we have possession in their half for more than 10 minutes, we havent got a single player who doesnt play in defence who wins more than 1 header per 90, just be patient for once.
32  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: December 30, 2023, 09:43:51 am
Well first off, the table had ALL the Cobblers managers that have taken us to this level, it missed no one. You can't compare a manager with another unless they face the same task under the same set of conditions.
I understand, however that in itself cherry picks to mean that he only is really compared against mostly succesful managers in the first place.

Out of 45 managers or so who managed more than a handful of games, the managers being compared are the 8th, 10th, 11th, 16th, 17th and 33rd best managers on win percentage, so even performably averagely amongst those names puts Brady right up there. Not suggesting that you're manipulating data maliciously, just that without context the '1st year in league 1' obviously naturally creates tough comparisions as it requires a succesful year to predate it.

Incidentally, the last managers we've had to manage us in our last two League One spells are 16th, 45th, 39th and 38th, in that list, which suggest that our position at the moment is even more an anomaly, and success in League one is difficult for any Northampton manager. The widening gulf between the Premiership, Championship and League 1 has never been greater because of the way TV money is split, and while I'd agree that Carr and Atkins weren't big spenders say like Calderwood, I doubt they'd be up against a handful of teams in this league who probably have wage bills 3 - 4x ours are. (I wasn't alive during Carr, so happy to be corrected here, but I'd be surprised if the financial different would be so stark in an era where the Championship team in 18th isn't being awarded 8 times what a League one team receives in tv money).

Edit: Ok, the get back on topic here again, I'm going to stick my neck out and say Hoskin won't be sold, because he's worth more to us than any club would be willing to striker up for a 30 year old. We were in for a Muskwe and lost out last day of the window and never got a replacement, so we'll almost certainly be out for a striker of some sort as we weren't satisfied in September, let alone now. And that given the choice, Brady would probably opt to spend any cash on keeping McWilliams and Sherring than recruiting 3 or 4 players, so wouldn't be surprised if there are 1 or 2 incomings at the most unless we lose a few first. I don't know any rumours, so I can only really add speculation.
33  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: January 2024 Transfer Window on: December 30, 2023, 08:20:01 am
I think that leaves out important context though. Out of your table Bowen is obviously the greatest manager in our history, which is fair company. Other than Wilson who is about to drop like a stone, the other comparable names on that list are arguably two of three of our best managers out of the 34 managers since Bowen. How many of those had such a financially gulf between the top and the bottom of League one at the time? How many led into their league one first year campaigns after two successive seasons in League 1 with points totals that would have given you promotion most years?

When you design a table that excludes the majority of our managers because they never did well enough to leave league two to begin with, and are only really left with comparisions with the top 10% of Northampton managers in the last 60 years, the records looks fair less run of the mill.

I think up until the now, the lack of league experience would have put other teams sniffing around Brady with too much determination, but if we end up top half coming into January then I think we're entering the first period were we will really come under some pressure to keep him if other managers get the January heave ho.
34  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Stevenage away on Boxing Day on: December 26, 2023, 15:29:14 pm
Struggle against those teams right at the top, don't we.
35  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Stevenage away on Boxing Day on: December 26, 2023, 14:54:35 pm
Could be 3 or 4 nil. Despite that, both goals we've conceded are individual errors which Brady would be tearing his hair out about.
36  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Oxalona@ home on: December 23, 2023, 17:20:26 pm
Will Tim O stop going on about the playoffs. Walk before you run mate.
Caught my favourite little Tim quote for a while in the post match interviews, "You could call this a truism, but it's something that tends to be true"...

We're on negative GD, lost more than we've won, and even the players are playing it down as impossible. Good form or not, the top 10 will have two to three times our budget, Brady has got us comfortably hitting above our weight, and long may it continue.
37  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: The Rise of Sam Hoskins on: December 23, 2023, 12:58:52 pm
Well, there is zero chance of us spending £800k unless we're selling Hoskins for £2m, and even then I think it'd be better just using that money to get better quality free agents and spread it out on 3 or 4 options.

A League One club with the ability to spend almost 6 figures that isn't going for promotion narrows it down a lot. Reading and Wigan might be obvious shouts, maybe Carlisle if they takeover leaves them with a lot of money.
38  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Oxalona@ home on: December 23, 2023, 12:55:29 pm
I know I'm an outlier, but I really only care about Peterborough. Everybody else is pretty much the same, in as far that I'm sad when we don't beat them, but I don't really care that much.
39  The Hotel End / Cobblers Corner / Re: Oxalona@ home on: December 19, 2023, 09:46:50 am
The appleton hangover reminds me of a time a Torquay fan got VERY annoyed because a fan on here suggested we should be beating teams like torquay, and used to rant around 'San Sixfields' everytime our name came up.
40  General Category / General Chat / Re: Politics on: December 15, 2023, 15:26:56 pm
Loads of actually interesting polling data here; https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

Long and short of it is that Manworks view is the minority held by around a third of the population and not the majority (if you take out those who don't know either way, it's more negative than positive for those aged 45+). It is still a significant minority, so it's not like nobody holds these views.

British values is such a dumb phrase, I'm assuming that both Manwork and Peter are white British, but do not share a lot of universal values here.
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