Are we actually that far away from another great team?

[Sarah Star]

I reckon Stephen Hunt is carrying an injury.

[handbags_harris]

No, he's just shit.

HTH.

[Jeffers217]

I agree that the with the right time in this squad we would win the league pretty comfortably but I'm afraid we have a summer of outgoings to sit through if we go down. Bikey and Matejovsky wouldn't sit through another season at this standard and Doyle will want to move on. But if we get rid of S Hunt and pair Marek and Karacan together with a decent left winger the league would be ours. But it shouldve been ours this season and it's down to Coppell who's played the wrong team. Pearce and Bikey should have started the season and Pearce would now be top quality. Same goes for Karacan and Henry.

[Royalee]

except when he did blood pearce of course

For a couple of games over Xmas before dropping him based on Duberry's mistakes?

[Hoop Blah]

Coppell is the man that despite knowing his left back wanted out and was going played the first 4 matches of the season without a left back. There are many points you can look at as to how and why Reading didn't go on and win this pitiful league but that would be a good place to start. Forest and Charlton, two dire sides took points of Reading in the opening couple of games. Why hadn't a left back joined before the season started?

I don't think that's the right place to look, AP. However mysterious SC's dealings in the transfer market can seem, and notwithstanding the slow start, it's hard to argue that he looked to have got it right by mid-September, and it was still hard to argue with that at Christmas. Like the method of dealing with LB or not, the Armstrong signing worked for us. The first half of the season as a package was evidence of his managerial strengths and the reason why people think he's great. The failure has been all about the second half, and all about Coppell's most manifest weakness which is to fail to motivate a team in a slump. It was Coppell's team that dismantled Swansea and Bristol City in September and essentially the same team that weren't at the races against the same opposition this spring.

Smack on.



Did folks read where Copps said he didn't want to make a big deal of it but they'd been covering up a lot of injuries?

He persisted playing Doyle almost 90 minutes every game and KD eventually broke down/burnt out

The 60-30 share for Hunt/Long now looks like he was playing Hunt as much as he could

Stretch had had very long term injuries and was suspect.

How long was Ingi carrying his problems before it all got too much?

I know all players carry niggles, but...

Why did he have to play these players through their injuries (something I think we've dont throughout Coppells tenure)?

Personally I think it's because the squad didn't have enough depth of quality to it. As an example, Coppell left himself with 3 senior forwards to chose from, one of which he didn't appear to want to play that much (Long), one that started the season as a bit of a gamble (Hunt - who didn't play much until Coppell and Lita fell out again), and our prize assett in Doyle.

Yes Lita was around in August and then January or Feb whenever it was he briefly came back into the side, but when your talking about the manager learning from his mistakes he certainly didn't where Lita was concerned.

Bringing Kitson back was a desperate action, one which has had limited success unfortunately as I'm a massive Kitson fan.

[CMRoyal]

except when he did blood pearce of course

For a couple of games over Xmas before dropping him based on Duberry's mistakes?

I don't think that quite tells the full story. I think Pearcee's played in at least a dozen matches this season, and had a run of about 8-10, not a couple. The defence overall was showing signs of creakiness at the time, including mistakes by Doobs, Fed and Alex plus a combination of those players, and SC decided he needed more experience in there. With Ingi injured, that meant Doobs and A N Other. Alex is very unlucky to have lost out to Bikey in that regard. I'm not saying SC is exempt from criticism, but you can see the logic behind the decision. With respect, when you clearly have it in for a manager or player, you need to be a bit more solid in your evidence against them if you don't want people just to dismiss your views as more ill-considered ranting.

[Royal Rother]

Sometimes it does feel that as soon as an inexperienced player has a poor game he is dropped, whereas the experienced ones, as long as they are fit, will play (almost) regardless of form.

Of course Coppell may be right in believing that players' long-term development is best served by sensitive handling and gradual introduction and exposure to the full rigours and pressures of a season's fluctuations in form....

[brendywendy]

except when he did blood pearce of course

For a couple of games over Xmas before dropping him based on Duberry's mistakes?

LOL


LIES!!!!

[Snowball]

except when he did blood pearce of course

For a couple of games over Xmas before dropping him based on Duberry's mistakes?

I don't think that quite tells the full story. I think Pearcee's played in at least a dozen matches this season, and had a run of about 8-10, not a couple. The defence overall was showing signs of creakiness at the time, including mistakes by Doobs, Fed and Alex plus a combination of those players, and SC decided he needed more experience in there. With Ingi injured, that meant Doobs and A N Other. Alex is very unlucky to have lost out to Bikey in that regard. I'm not saying SC is exempt from criticism, but you can see the logic behind the decision. With respect, when you clearly have it in for a manager or player, you need to be a bit more solid in your evidence against them if you don't want people just to dismiss your views as more ill-considered ranting.

13 Starts, once as sub, almost a third of the games, 3+1 in cups

That's a fair amount of games when blooding a youngster

[Sun Tzu]

Didn't he lose his place after slicing his head open at Plymouth and then reopeningthe wound in the next game ?

Taking blooding a bit far IMHO.

[Scarface]

II've said this before, but ultimately it's the Copppell's car park protester dickheads that cost us this season.

[brendywendy]

II've said this before, but ultimately it's the Copppell's car park protester dickheads that cost us this season.

why is there no yawn emoticon?

personally i blame the STG ers for it all mate.............

though it does come to something when you need someone to assign blame to for the heinous crime of getting in the playoffs



i roll my eyes at you

[Snowball]

II've said this before, but ultimately it's the Copppell's car park protester dickheads that cost us this season.

though it does come to something when you need someone to assign blame to for the heinous crime of getting in the playoffs

Precisely. We missed auto-promotion by very little in the last game, missed third because of two rebounds.

The team has changed radically from the opening day of the season, and we are ONLY in the play-offs.

It took Wolves three years to put that side together. We started our season with "half the players wanting to leave"
and losing Sonko, Kitson, Shorey... have brought in or brought through Noel Hunt, Armstrong, Pearce, Karacan, Tabb, Kelly


Fourth is not a bad result

[Hoop Blah]

Precisely. We missed auto-promotion by very little in the last game, missed third because of two rebounds.

The team has changed radically from the opening day of the season, and we are ONLY in the play-offs.

It took Wolves three years to put that side together. We started our season with "half the players wanting to leave"
and losing Sonko, Kitson, Shorey... have brought in or brought through Noel Hunt, Armstrong, Pearce, Karacan, Tabb, Kelly


Fourth is not a bad result

Rebounds? Do we play Basketball these days or something?

We missed out on winning the league at a canter, at a time when the other challengers all fell away, by failing to win at home for far too long. We had the chance to walk away with this league if we showed any sort of decent form over the last 3 or 4 months.

It's not the end position that has created the doom, gloom and disappointment with the season it's the abject failure of the team to put together more than 20 minutes of decent football at any time since Christmas.

[handbags_harris]

Precisely. We missed auto-promotion by very little in the last game, missed third because of two rebounds.

The team has changed radically from the opening day of the season, and we are ONLY in the play-offs.

It took Wolves three years to put that side together. We started our season with "half the players wanting to leave"
and losing Sonko, Kitson, Shorey... have brought in or brought through Noel Hunt, Armstrong, Pearce, Karacan, Tabb, Kelly


Fourth is not a bad result

Rebounds? Do we play Basketball these days or something?

We missed out on winning the league at a canter, at a time when the other challengers all fell away, by failing to win at home for far too long. We had the chance to walk away with this league if we showed any sort of decent form over the last 3 or 4 months.

It's not the end position that has created the doom, gloom and disappointment with the season it's the abject failure of the team to put together more than 20 minutes of decent football at any time since Christmas.

In other words, it's not where we finished that matters, it's how we got there...

(c) Dirk Gently

[Muskrat]

In answer to the original question, we quite a way from another great team, as Oxford and Aldershot aren't that great, so probably the nearest would be Arsenal.

[Snowball]

Where we finished is what matters.

And now how we do in the POs



How would you have felt if we had started badly, with most of the defeats and draws in the first half
then we finally come good, go on a winning streak and come seventh.


"Well there's next season..."

[Stranded]

II've said this before, but ultimately it's the Copppell's car park protester dickheads that cost us this season.

If you can offer me one good reason why those of us who chose to show we wanted our manager to stay last summer has cost us this season then I'll gladly strap you to my forehead.

In the end we missed out as we lost the last game of the season to another team that got relegated and kept their manager - the clubs around us have had their manager for a couple of years unless the change was thrust upon them - I will always remain convinced that keeping the status quo was our best bet for promotion (and still is as we can still go up).