Romared Match Thoughts Exeter City v Barnsley

[animallittle3]

Anyone making the near 600 mile round trip to Devon has clearly had this trip planned for some months or has the heart of a lion in the current climate .

The good news is that Exeter is a fine city for a weekend break although in the month of December it might not be at it's finest with the beer gardens overlooking the River Exe not in operation .

With Roberts and Earl missing through injury for a good number of weeks the already suspect defence is set to become even more suspect unless McCarthy is a better player than he's proved so far and fooled the last three HC's .

If Pines pulls up with yet another knock which given his history since he joined us is highly likely then Clarke is going to be really stuffed .

Recent weeks don't make much of a case for out scoring our way out of this either .

This is very much a rolling up of the sleeves job , sticking together and toughing it out .

Let's see who the big characters are in the weeks ahead .

[Shadrack the Red]

Anyone making the near 600 mile round trip to Devon has clearly had this trip planned for some months or has the heart of a lion in the current climate .

The good news is that Exeter is a fine city for a weekend break although in the month of December it might not be at it's finest with the beer gardens overlooking the River Exe not in operation .

With Roberts and Earl missing through injury for a good number of weeks the already suspect defence is set to become even more suspect unless McCarthy is a better player than he's proved so far and fooled the last three HC's .

If Pines pulls up with yet another knock which given his history since he joined us is highly likely then Clarke is going to be really stuffed .

Recent weeks don't make much of a case for out scoring our way out of this either .

This is very much a rolling up of the sleeves job , sticking together and toughing it out .

Let's see who the big characters are in the weeks ahead .

Well done Animal you have just cheered me up, not !! but hey ho what you say is true, hopefully we can limp through to january which is not that far away and address the problem asap , the loan market in january has worked for us in the past especially two years ago when we signed Thomas and Isted who both played a big part in getting us to wembley , therefore I hope the think tank down at Grove st have already drawn up a list of targets and are busy making the calls as we speak . Regarding tomorrow I would take a point now , we will see .

[SBRed48]

The good news is away tickets can be purchased on the day for just 2 parnd extra to the Adult 27 parnd and Senior 24 parnd.

No excuses really. Steady journey time with stops abart six hours.

[animallittle3]

Well done Animal you have just cheered me up, not !! but hey ho what you say is true, hopefully we can limp through to january which is not that far away and address the problem asap , the loan market in january has worked for us in the past especially two years ago when we signed Thomas and Isted who both played a big part in getting us to wembley , therefore I hope the think tank down at Grove st have already drawn up a list of targets and are busy making the calls as we speak . Regarding tomorrow I would take a point now , we will see .

Well the good news is we are away from home Shad and visit a team below us in the table , not by much but none the less below us .

The strategy regarding the January window will be interesting , presuming there is a strategy .

Any thoughts of adding defensive players to the squad asks some questions , Roberts and Earl will return and we have players on loan who could return , I'm not entirely sure the nature of their loans with regards to coming back in January but if so you would reckon that would be in play , if not you've got to ask the question why are they here if they can't be relied on to be of the standard required , this is league one and not the championship and they've been here 18 months now .

Secondly we aren't short of midfield players , you can add Craig and Benson to the list and it's well covered .

I'd personally send Craig back to Spurs and see if we can get rid of Benson although it's highly likely he'll stick it out on the money he's on until the summer and bag himself free agent status in the summer .

Amongst the forwards who are we saying is surplus to requirements , Marsh most definitely but again under contract , Cosgrove comes in to the equation but nobody above us and likely to pay him more money would to be interested in my opinion , we could be stuck with him too .

Humphreys and Watters aren't going anywhere and neither is Keillor-Dunn .

Unless four or five can be moved on I don't see the window changing too much in all honesty .

[Shadrack the Red]

Well the good news is we are away from home Shad and visit a team below us in the table , not by much but none the less below us .

The strategy regarding the January window will be interesting , presuming there is a strategy .

Any thoughts of adding defensive players to the squad asks some questions , Roberts and Earl will return and we have players on loan who could return , I'm not entirely sure the nature of their loans with regards to coming back in January but if so you would reckon that would be in play , if not you've got to ask the question why are they here if they can't be relied on to be of the standard required , this is league one and not the championship and they've been here 18 months now .

Secondly we aren't short of midfield players , you can add Craig and Benson to the list and it's well covered .

I'd personally send Craig back to Spurs and see if we can get rid of Benson although it's highly likely he'll stick it out on the money he's on until the summer and bag himself free agent status in the summer .

Amongst the forwards who are we saying is surplus to requirements , Marsh most definitely but again under contract , Cosgrove comes in to the equation but nobody above us and likely to pay him more money would to be interested in my opinion , we could be stuck with him too .

Humphreys and Watters aren't going anywhere and neither is Keillor-Dunn .

Unless four or five can be moved on I don't see the window changing too much in all honesty .

All good points to which I think our two loan players Craig and the goalkeeper might return to their parent clubs , plus Yoga and Marsh might be two go out on loan or in Marsh"s case maybe permanent , with Shepherd returning and a loan striker or maybe two coming in on loan . I would try to keep Benson as I think he is a very good player and if I am right that Craig might go back and Yoga out on loan then it might be worth holding on to Benson , lets be fair we have lost money on him through his bad luck with injuries so another few months will make no difference and I also think I could see Cosgrove going north of the border , who knows ? I certainly think there will be some chopping and changing although january is traditionally slow in the transfer window, interesting times , we will see .

[perkytyke]

Reading News Now it appears that Spurs are considering recalling Craig to loan out to Millwall or Wednesday due to lack of playing time! They are also suggesting we may recall Shepherd due to the injuries to Earl and Roberts, personally I think we should have done that already?
As for Benson holding out till he is out of contract, do you really think there would be any takers better than us, given that he wasn’t much when fit and the amount of injuries he’s had? I can’t see any teams higher than league one taking a chance on him!
Think we need to replace Cosgrove in January at the very least, with a big strong lad who knows where the goal is, someone like Jatta at Notts County, right age, a division below and is scoring goals.

[Shadrack the Red]

All good points Perky but regarding Shepherd the club can only recall him during a transfer window , so in this case there is nothing they can do until January apart from making sure the recall is immediate when the clock turns midnight on the 1st of january .

[Young_Nudger]

Is that the same Shepherd that was being slagged off last season because he was signed from a non league club !?!?!

You know who you are.

[animallittle3]

Is that the same Shepherd that was being slagged off last season because he was signed from a non league club !?!?!

You know who you are.

Well firstly if you are going to post such provocative statements it's best I find to at least provide some modicum of facts to support it .

I think you'll find that nobody slagged off Shepherd , Lopata or even Dallas because they came from non league , the club was slagged off for expecting them to replace Andersen and Kitching without any harm to our defensive capabilities .

The club in fact have done the work for us and it played out exactly how many of us predicted it would .

All three were found wanting in league one and had to be sent out on loan in the hope they would come back as better players , something 18 months on we still don't know given they are currently playing at a lower level than ourselves .

The club then underlined their failure to indeed replace Andersen and Kitching by having to recruit Pines , Earl and then Roberts so the facts are that the club themselves didn't think they were up to it either .

In future communication on this board it would be wise for you to refrain from attacking posters personally when you don't agree with them , stop swallowing the bullshyte sound bites that come out of fans forum meetings and actually acknowledge the facts that have played out as predicted by a number of us on this board .

Although that I suspect would challenge your huge ego and play havoc with the chip on your shoulder .

[pass_and_move]

Our options arent great are they. Lopata wasn't good enough last season

Shepperd was also not good enough, hence the loan which was ironically to Cheltenham where DC was managing at the time, so he'll know all about shepperds ability.

I thought our defence was good at Wrexham. We looked assured and organised. I didn't see the Birmingham game although their winning goal was very poor from our point of view.

As for today's game, I've watched Exeter twice this season and they are an average side and from what I saw. They were certainly not a side that were fond of passing football although that could be down to their opponents on the day.

A bloody win would be nice. It seems like we ent edda win since Boer War