We Love Sammo!

[DustCobb]

Wouldn't be a f***ing suprise would it, we sell anybody that has an ounce of talent.

[auntie]

wednesday has gone to everyone's head. i wish i was 12 again. you've all ruined it for me.

[DustCobb]

I think Sammos current problem is he doesn't know his best team or formation and he is also in love with Ryan Gilligan which is possibly making some of the other players jealous that also fancy some man love.

[Marvo]

Been at work but managed to hear Sammo's pre-match interview, reminded me very much of the Hartlepool one and I had resigned myself to a defeat before the game had even kicked off. He said Shrewsbury were going to be a hard nut to crack, they had good players all over the pitch, a few of our youngsters were going to learn a few lessons, etc, etc. If the manager doesn't rate our chances, what hope have we got, no wonder the players play to the level he expects.

[DustCobb]

Funny you say that Marvo, i said the exact same thing to Wazzacobbler a little earlier, we may aswell have waved the white flags and not bothered sending a team to Shrewsbury.


http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/sport/football/cobblers/northampton_town_shrews_will_be_tough_to_tame_says_sampson_1_1167071

[Fred_NTFC]

More than anything, it seems bizarre that Wedderburn was dropped and then played out of position after being comfortably our best performer in the middle of the park beforehand. I don't consider myself a master tactician, but even I would suggest that he's not a wide player.

I don't think it was the right game to start Harris in anyway, but it seemed strange that he didn't wait to half-time when we were going through a calmer period.

[Power Football]

Was Sammo right?

Well he certainly wasn't right in starting the poor lad....

It seems we are asking the same questions each week, all about Sammo's team selection, tactics and substitutions. I love the fella to bits but how many more times is he going to make these mistakes without serious questions being asked of him.

I had high hopes for yesterday and when i saw the teamsheet i thought we would see Wedders Osman and Thornton in the middle with Mckay and Gilly out wide. Instead he decided to employ some sort of diamond formation which culminated in Wedderburn playing as a left midfielder, total madness against a team top of the table.

The fact we have exctly the same amount of points this season from the same time last year is quite telling. The difference is this year the side isn't any better and without Bayo has regressed. Can anybody see us going on a similar type of run this year as last?

[Winslow Lee]

Bringing Gilligan back to the centre is the biggest mystery to me, I thought Osman and Wedderburn were looking pretty solid with no reason to make a change. Suddenly Gilligan is injured, decides to play through it and Sampson seems obliged to play him. A fully fit Gilligan wasnt worth a place in the middle but an injured, not match fit, out of form Gilligan is?

[HertsCobbler]

It seems that Sammo has a fondness for playing Gilli like Atko had for Dean Peer!

[SteveRiches]

Or Stuart Gray's fondness of Leon Constantine?

[HertsCobbler]

Or Stuart Gray's fondness of Leon Constantine?

I think that was more vanity in the sense that he was hoping to prove he had not dropped a massive ball.  Thinking about it was Atko Peer's brother in law?

[1 for the team]

i think samo was totally out of order doing that to seb harris the poor lad and i was at the game and yes he had a mad 10 min then who did not and harris did start to get into the game and put some good blocks in he even block the shot that lead to the first goal . if i was samo i would not take that game of harris  into  account of what the lad can bring to a team like Northampton.  i guess the moment maybe have got to him a bit ,i do hope the fans get behind harris and support him he was never the worse player on the pitch ( escape goat maybe ) for an all round bad display

come on the cobs

[Insider]

His handling of Harris is one thing, but the public slagging of Thornton in the pages of the Chron is bang out of order.  If he's questioning Thornton's commitment, he should be doing that behind closed doors.  But then perhaps he's paving the way for the ongoing selection of Gilligan and his commitment over the mercurial talent that is Thornton.   

[Grove]

 Escape goat      fantastic, hes just a kid.

[HertsCobbler]

I still think Harris is more suited to being a striker.

[PineWoody]

My personal view on Sammo is starting to change somewhat. He came in last year, when things were going s***e, managed to change our fourtunes completly and nearly pulled off a miracle in getting us to the play offs. But this season has been nothing short of bog-standard at best. If it had not been for us getting a miracle at Reading, I think Sammo may have found himself under a bit moee pressure, but instead the distraction of the Liverpool game, which people have been talking about for weeks appears to have clouded over some serious issues.

I find myself disagreeing with his team selection every single week. I'm not a football manager, only a fan, but I can never say I have disagreed with a team so many times and so constantly, even when we were doing s*** under previous managers I've thought, yeah thats proberly our best team. How on earth he is not playing a midfield 4/5 with Jacobs, Thornton, Osman (now injured) and Wedderburn, every game when all of these players are fit is beyond me.

Equally, in my opinion, Sammo had a poor transfer window. I understand there were budget cuts which limited him significantly and made his already difficult job much harder in terms of trying to build a squad. But we left ourselves woefully short of cover in central defence, as I do not beleive that Sammo would not have known to some sort of degree the extent of Hinton's injury, and lacking completely in any sort of strikeforce having let our best striker by a countrymile go, without replacing him, until recently with Mckenzie.

I still beleive we can turn this season around, just, but to do it, Sammo is going to need the players who can win games, such as Jacobs, Thornton and Davis on his side and his handling of the player so far seems to have been a bit wayward, but equally I do understand you can't just let players walk over you as a manager.

[Tyro]

Terry Angus said on the radio that early on Holt put his hands on Harris' shoulders & gave him a pep talk. The opposition players & management would've seen this & would've been able to exploit the weakness so through those actions maybe Sammo had little choice than to replace Harris

[Welly Cobb]

Harris, while untested, looked very solid in the pre-season in the centre of defence, so I can see why we focussed on getting the Bayo replacement everyone and their dog was clamouring for, as he appeared to be back-up in an injury crisis. Yesterday he did not seem mentally prepared for the game, and he obviously needs working on. Taking him off has probably hurt him a bit, but he'll just have to take it for the team and learn from it. I've also thought that Osman has been as often poor as he is decent, though I wasn't sure about dropping Wedderburn last week.

But as has been said, picking the team is more than just writing down the best names on paper. You have to consider a lot of behind-door issues. Football players are people with lives as opposed to abstract illusions that suddenly arrive on the pitch come the start of a football match, and its hard to really judge the correctness of a team selection without the full knowledge of everything that is going on behind the scenes, other than by results, which have been average so far. With the budget we were given (Was it something along the lines of a squad of about 18 if we have kept Bayo's wages), Sammo has done what he can. I think he hasn't helped himself too much with that rediculous streak we went on last year, as everyones expectations of a manager who has only had one year in charge seem to be far too high.

We played the team who are top of the league away from home. Shrewsbury have spent a lot of money these last years to try and get up, and this is finally paying off (though who knows what they'll do when they got to league 1 again. Probably the same as us and hundreds of other lower league teams and f*** around for a bit and then come back down with a larger debt). Last year we lost 3-0 to them. Last year, we got hammered by Notts County 5-1, who also had spent more money that they should realistically have, and we lost at home to Barnet when they went top of the league. We have average attendances for this league, and we shouldn't be expecting to be walking it because we've spent more time in league 1 than league 2. We're still mid-table, and Sammo will be fine aslong as we don't end up too periously close to bottom of the table come January. If he doesn't make the play-offs at the end of the year though, I'll imagine he'll be gone, so he has his target to aim for and a large majority of the year to get there.

[auntie]

Last year, we got hammered by Notts County 5-1

You missed the holty goal as well then  I think that the frustrating thing is, is that, injuries aside, we never seem to play the same XI two games running. Some of the changes are mystifying. Bringing gilly back last week at the expense of Wedders for example. The reasoning for this was that Gilly had scored 11 goals last season and he would give us attacking options. Yet in reality Gilly was played so deep he had a seat in the North stand. Why was Jacobs dropped for an out of position Wedders yesterday. The Davis / jacobs combination on the left has been proved to work.

I appreciate we have been hit by an injury crisis but that should have accounted for just one change yesterday. The common theme amongst all the top clubs in our division is that the same players are playing week in week out.

[Marvo]

We're still mid-table, and Sammo will be fine aslong as we don't end up too periously close to bottom of the table come January. If he doesn't make the play-offs at the end of the year though, I'll imagine he'll be gone, so he has his target to aim for and a large majority of the year to get there.

We might as well say goodbye now then because the play-offs in my opinion are beyond this team (and manager). Last season we went on an incredible run that left us just short of the play-offs. It has been said time and time again that we had too much to make up after a bad start. Well my friend, this start is just as bad and the odds of us replicating that run from last season have to be long to say the least.

We're up against simliar sized clubs with similar sized crowds and similar sized budgets. The ONLY real difference for any of the teams in this division is the ability of the manager to put together a squad, select the right line-up and tactics and instill a belief and desire in his players. Sammo is failing on all fronts!