"By crying ‘streetwise’ Robins is coding it as a foreign swear word that everyone can go away and translate as ‘cheating, scheming bastards’ – a patently false excuse. We aren’t the poor little choir boys who are getting bark stuffed down our trousers and our balls yanked by the big bad older boys – Accrington weren’t particularly physical or rough (were they DKE?), they were a good footballing side and making ludicrous cliched excuses isn’t going to help us."
Far from being a Robbins hater but have to say, spot on Sir.
"By crying ‘streetwise’ Robins is coding it as a foreign swear word that everyone can go away and translate as ‘cheating, scheming bastards’ – a patently false excuse. We aren’t the poor little choir boys who are getting bark stuffed down our trousers and our balls yanked by the big bad older boys – Accrington weren’t particularly physical or rough (were they DKE?), they were a good footballing side and making ludicrous cliched excuses isn’t going to help us."
Far from being a Robbins hater but have to say, spot on Sir.
Amen. I like Mark Robins. Just thought his post-match avoided most of the main questions (e.g. Our style of play, why we were awful etc) and focused on some irrelevant cobblers.
I liked the piece overall, as usual, but I didn't like the implied criticism of annoying kids at games. Yes, it can be frustrating but all kids have to start turning up sometime, otherwise we won't have a fanbase in years to come. The whole point of the day was to get loads of kids into the ground with their families and hope that some of them come back repeatedly. The annoyance you suffered is the price we pay for that.
I liked the piece overall, as usual, but I didn't like the implied criticism of annoying kids at games. Yes, it can be frustrating but all kids have to start turning up sometime, otherwise we won't have a fanbase in years to come. The whole point of the day was to get loads of kids into the ground with their families and hope that some of them come back repeatedly. The annoyance you suffered is the price we pay for that.
I don't think it was implied: it was explicit, and of course was tongue in cheek. Those of us that don't find children to be user friendly love a good old moan about having to sit closer than five yards away from one. That's not to say we don't also get depressed when we see a kid in a chelsea shirt in the town centre.
We do nearly always seem to bottle it with a big crowd at the Ricoh, though, even if we did win at Man Utd away, Wembley and the 4-1 against Gillingham with under 16,000 there.
The Gillingham 1-0 is the best counter-example but it was hardly a performance to ignite passions in fairweather fans. We did alright when the stadium first opened but those days are long gone.
We do nearly always seem to bottle it with a big crowd at the Ricoh, though, even if we did win at Man Utd away, Wembley and the 4-1 against Gillingham with under 16,000 there.
The Gillingham 1-0 is the best counter-example but it was hardly a performance to ignite passions in fairweather fans. We did alright when the stadium first opened but those days are long gone.
I was going to mention the Gillingham 1-0 too. It was a great night with 27k in the ground (should have been more but for ticketing issues!) but the next week we had 10k for a bog standard home game against Yeovil.
We do nearly always seem to bottle it with a big crowd at the Ricoh, though, even if we did win at Man Utd away, Wembley and the 4-1 against Gillingham with under 16,000 there.
The Gillingham 1-0 is the best counter-example but it was hardly a performance to ignite passions in fairweather fans. We did alright when the stadium first opened but those days are long gone.