Finally a match day thread for Sunderland / Gas

While that much is true, we are actually in the same division at the moment and we should be able to give anyone a game in this league. I saw us dick them 4-0 at Twerton in what I think was a promotion season for them and I think we may have snuck a draw at Roker that year as well.

I'm pretty sure I saw us draw up there in another game as well, as we were driving out of the ground one of the friendly locals put a brick through the windscreen of the car in front.

Yeah 91-92 season, just after Dennis Rofe took over. The ex wife had family in Darlington so stayed there for the weekend.

I'm not quite as pessimistic as Bambi, but he has a point. The 'Plan' is flawed.
1. To unearth these fantastically talented footballers we are in competition with a host of other Clubs. Over time our facilities have become increasingly unattractive. Why would a young player come here to help pick fox sh*t off of a field we don't even own before commencing training? IMHO the fact that we lack of our own Training Facility is even more damning than our inadequate Stadium, that has long been unfit for purpose.
2. Should we strike it lucky - then the talent is off as soon as we attract a decent bid, or even a crap bid (Bodin). Or they run down their contract and leave for nothing (Lockyer).
I actually like the look of what Ben Garner is trying to achieve given the current situation. All we are short of is two decent full-backs, two players to replace Ginelli and JML when their loan period finishes, and a decent creative mid-fielder. Piece of piss.
Given the over-whelming odds that Ben Garner faces - I'm backing him. Logic dictates the chances of success are slim. But I'm still backing him. UTG & Keep The Faith.

I guess that the thing we don't know is who will own the club when next season starts.

If these owners think they will still be here then Garner can go today, this just isn't working, and obviously his mate that he's drafted in can't work it out either, so we may as well draw a line under this madness now. If on the other hand new owners are a genuine possibility, then getting rid of Ben today is a bit pointless as they'll replace him PDQ anyway.

As a footnote, I think that you watch a lot of football, in different Leagues, so it's interesting that you can't see these 'green shoots' that others keep talking about.

Final thought, and I've mentioned this a couple of times already, I hope that the club are talking to Ben and the rest of the management team and making sure they are OK, they must be feeling the pressure of this and at the end of it all, it's just a job.

The point is, players who fit this 'ball on the floor, one touch' style of play don't ply their trade in L1, unless they aren't very good at it.

And even if you have a team who a pretty darn good at that style of play you still find it difficult to get results 46 times, especially with referees who are totally unpredictable. Just ask Sunderland. Look at the squad they had last season, that had ex PL and internationals in it, and not just journeymen looking for a final pay day, that was a good team. L1 is not the place to tippy tappy, you just get smashed by 6'6'' monsters.

Just watched the game again on ifollow replay, yesterdays stream was very poor, the app dropped out at least a dozen times and seems to be getting worse by the week.

Anyway, Sunderland looked totally uninterested imo and coasted along probably knowing they would get the result, nothing dynamic about the game from either side.

Ref should have given a pen for the Mitchell -Lawson tackle from behind, and Ogogo was at worst a yellow card, Harries came on in Midfield?, did not see or hear anything after he came on?, and Barratt did blaze a 35 yarder 5mtrs over the bar and then started his spinning backward passes, roll on Shrewsbury!....

So what you are saying is it’s possible but under a totally different set of conditions?

Who is the scout at Coventry? What are the training facilities like? How does their budget compare to ours? Is Coventry situated more favourably geographically than we are? Is their manager any good? Etc etc.

Coventry have got us beat on a lot of those points. So whilst it.’s totally fair to use them as an example of how it can be done to my mind it’s the same as pointing at Peterborough and saying “they develop players and sell them for 5 million so we can too”

As has been said above by other posters the training ground seems to be going under the radar here. If we are going to play sexy football primarily with young players then we will need to attract the best that there are. When they see the facilities, or their parent club see the facilities, why would they come here? Maybe because they have more of a chance of actually playing? Perhaps. Certainly the days of Jeff Hughes and his “they pay good wages” comment are over. They will be paid a pittance to train in conditions that would shame a load of local schools.

I just can’t see it. I can’t see us actually competing for the best young players needed to make this work because they will prefer to go to “bigger” clubs that pay more and are in an easier part of the world to adjust to if they get released and have to find another club without up-rooting themselves.

We have traditionally always faced a lot of disadvantages when recruiting at Rovers and we always used to smooth them over with cash. Quite obviously we can’t do that now and imo, I can’t see changing the model to youth players suddenly solving those disadvantages. We will obviously recruit young players as we have done this window, but are the likes of Harries, Daly and Abraham the best or are they the runts of their respective litter? Time will tell on that one but I suspect it’s likely to be the latter given what we have to offer as a club. And that is all, of course, without even discussing the issue of the manager or a club swooping early for the one or two who might come good.

As a plan there is so, so much that could go wrong that it is hard for me to buy into as a viable strategy for a club like Rovers and we should be looking to be progressive but in a different way.

Coventry have had a dreadful time off the pitch,twice having to play home matches at other clubs grounds.short of money,relegated to league 2.
But robins had a plan and stuck to it and has produced a very good league one side that play cracking football.
All this despite having to sell their best players.
I do not know if garner can do what robins has done but it can be done clearly.


Ps the geography thing is a red herring,it applies to any player your signing,not just young players.