Good win but he's still failed.

A nice away win but lets not praise Dougie , as he has failed this season.

He's had us buried in the bottom half of the table, for most ''if not all'' of the season.

And let me tell you this, when our loan signings go back, he'll bring us right back round to the start, expect a nightmare first three quarters next season, as he'll be so negative as it won't be his team ''yet again''.

Until we're in the play-off he won't get any praise from me, where we are in the league just isn't good enough, and he needs to start building teams over the summer, not over the winter.

Freedman out!

I agree that what the team has managed this season is not good enough. He picks and trains the team so by extension, he hasn't been good enough.

He's got the first 10 games next season for me, nobody will be saying it's not his team because it will be, or at least it should be. Beating Doncaster and Huddersfield at this stage in the season when neither us nor them have anything to play for is largely irrelevant.

As far as expectations go I'll have to wait to see who he signs in the summer, and who leaves. At this point I don't think we have enough quality to be top 6, but we should have been challenging for it I don't think there's much between our squad and Blackburn's or Middlesborough's.

someone on another thread said that he isn't experimenting with young players because he is trying to get as high up the table as possible to paper over the cracks of a very poor season, which i think is spot on.
 
He has said he has his targets identified and already enquired about and will do business early so as 1874 says he has no excuses next season if we have a bad start again.
 
And as for last night, i missed the first half and only listened to the second on the chatbox stream and it sounded like as usual Dougie was happy to sit back and defend a lead and it sounded like Doncaster were unlucky not to get a point at least. He is far too negative.

bwfc1874 wrote:He's got the first 10 games next season for me, nobody will be saying it's not his team because it will be, or at least it should be. Beating Doncaster and Huddersfield at this stage in the season when neither us nor them have anything to play for is largely irrelevant.

As far as expectations go I'll have to wait to see who he signs in the summer, and who leaves. At this point I don't think we have enough quality to be top 6, but we should have been challenging for it I don't think there's much between our squad and Blackburn's or Middlesborough's.

As far as Dougie's tenure of the job is concerned, the Board will probably expect a good start to next season so I also think he'll be here for at least the first 10 games.
Will it be his team? No, but it should be a lot more like it. Sadly, some players he won't be able to sell as they'll want to see out their (ridiculous) contracts.
Should we have been challenging this season? Only if you judge the squad on reputations as opposed to actual performances. In a season that started with a litany of individual defensive errors that cost us the points that would have seen us up there (Knight, Bogdan, Baptiste etc) added to an impotent strikeforce before DF brought in Beckford and the loanees I find it difficult to look past the players as the reason for our position. Frankly the squad isn't as good as Blackburn's in key areas and if we'd had a striker of the quality of Rhodes from the off, this season would have been a different story IMO. 
Reputations mean nothing as Eagles demonstrated.
The turning point was the hammering at Reading. The squad may lack quality, but that defeat finally put to bed the arrogant, lazy attitude that seemed to have been prevalent amongst the high earners beforehand. Since then they've at least put in the required effort and results have improved significantly since overall.
Summer will be decisive for Dougie - and for BWFC.

wanderlust wrote:

As far as Dougie's tenure of the job is concerned, the Board will probably expect a good start to next season so I also think he'll be here for at least the first 10 games.
Will it be his team? No, but it should be a lot more like it. Sadly, some players he won't be able to sell as they'll want to see out their (ridiculous) contracts.
Should we have been challenging this season? Only if you judge the squad on reputations as opposed to actual performances. In a season that started with a litany of individual defensive errors that cost us the points that would have seen us up there (Knight, Bogdan, Baptiste etc) added to an impotent strikeforce before DF brought in Beckford and the loanees I find it difficult to look past the players as the reason for our position. Frankly the squad isn't as good as Blackburn's in key areas and if we'd had a striker of the quality of Rhodes from the off, this season would have been a different story IMO. 
Reputations mean nothing as Eagles demonstrated.
The turning point was the hammering at Reading. The squad may lack quality, but that defeat finally put to bed the arrogant, lazy attitude that seemed to have been prevalent amongst the high earners beforehand. Since then they've at least put in the required effort and results have improved significantly since overall.
Summer will be decisive for Dougie - and for BWFC.

If you look at the top 11 they've all been in and around the play off positions this season and are only 8 points off us, so do i think we've under performed by around 8 points this season? I think that's a fair estimation to be honest.

Rhodes is the difference between ours and Blackburn's squads no doubt, but take the squads of Bournemouth or Ipswich, they definitely have some talented players but the main reason they're ahead of us is because they're better motivated and hungrier IMO, as you say too many in our squad have an 'arrogant, lazy attitude that seemed to have been prevalent amongst the high earners beforehand.'.

I just reckon that if we had the squad we have now with the attitude they have now from the beginning of the season it would be a completely different story. 

But we started off with Eagles and SKD etc.

Norpig wrote:someone on another thread said that he isn't experimenting with young players because he is trying to get as high up the table as possible to paper over the cracks of a very poor season, which i think is spot on.

I agree that he wants to finish as high up as possible.

To be fair, we might say there's nothing left to lose this season, but if he played a load of kids for the last few games and we kept getting hammered, the fans would be furious. There's certainly one or two young players that should be getting a chance though.

I think he's very aware that the better we can finish this season, the slower the fans will turn on him next season.

Hip Priest wrote:

Norpig wrote:someone on another thread said that he isn't experimenting with young players because he is trying to get as high up the table as possible to paper over the cracks of a very poor season, which i think is spot on.

I agree that he wants to finish as high up as possible.

To be fair, we might say there's nothing left to lose this season, but if he played a load of kids for the last few games and we kept getting hammered, the fans would be furious. There's certainly one or two young players that should be getting a chance though.

I think he's very aware that the better we can finish this season, the slower the fans will turn on him next season.

Apologies.

I penned this, not HP.

Dad...!!

He's looking at porn under your log-on again !!

So that's why they're never in the room at the same time. And I thought it was just coincidence.
No wonder the "majority of posters" are so anti-Freedman. It's all one person.

The fact we have been rubbish all season and are just 12 points off the play-offs just shows how poor this league is, and how much we have under-performed.

We've started winning when the pressure is off, and let's face it, the fans have written this season off so no one is exactly fussed where or how we finish.

There's no doubt that Dougie has the makings of a team that should challenge for the play-offs next season, the purchases of Danns & Juke would certainly help. The problem is, regardless of the personnel on the pitch, I just don't believe Freedman has it in him to really "go for it". He'd rather draw two games than win one and lose one. And as I keep saying, how many negative teams get promoted? Not many.

Just on last night anyone listening to Jack Dearden on GMR in the first half, could not accuse the team of showing any negativity. Both he and SKD said it was the most attack minded game they have seen anywhere in the championship this season. So Dougie can play attacking football if he chooses to?

wessy wrote:Just on last night anyone listening to Jack Dearden on GMR in the first half, could not accuse the team of showing any negativity. Both he and SKD said it was the most attack minded game they have seen anywhere in the championship this season. So Dougie can play attacking football if he chooses to?

I'm pretty sure that Jack Dearden wasn't one of the miserable bastards doing the commentary we had to endure - suspect it was Tower FM. 
Great to get any commentary when you're stuck in deepest Naaaaaaafuk but the constant drivel from Tower was depressing.
Footie was attacking but when Donny overran our midfield Dougie tightened up and went for counterattack rather than committing too many men forward all the time and getting whupped.

The audio commentary was from Tower FM.

wessy wrote:Just on last night anyone listening to Jack Dearden on GMR in the first half, could not accuse the team of showing any negativity. Both he and SKD said it was the most attack minded game they have seen anywhere in the championship this season. So Dougie can play attacking football if he chooses to?

That's what they said about the first half.

They said the second half was very disappointing. That we were caught in two minds over whether to defend or attack, and didn't look much chop in either respect.

The Mason>Trotter substitution said a lot for me. I know it didn't lose us the points but it's still one of those Megsonesque traits that generally costs more than it saves.

I agree with Nat about the negativity. It's as if attacking football makes him dizzy and there's only so much of it he can handle at once. Megson was the same. If we had a manager with a football soul, who was willing to take risks, we might be a real force in this league.

Natasha Whittam wrote:The fact we have been rubbish all season and are just 12 points off the play-offs just shows how poor this league is, and how much we have under-performed.

We've started winning when the pressure is off, and let's face it, the fans have written this season off so no one is exactly fussed where or how we finish.

There's no doubt that Dougie has the makings of a team that should challenge for the play-offs next season, the purchases of Danns & Juke would certainly help. The problem is, regardless of the personnel on the pitch, I just don't believe Freedman has it in him to really "go for it". He'd rather draw two games than win one and lose one. And as I keep saying, how many negative teams get promoted? Not many.

Yes 4 extra wins and we could have been in that top six ...... a goal or two in various earlier season games.  Playing a good part of the early season with one striker up from at home for example.  If only a tad more positve play and look at where we would be now.
At the end of season it will be interesting to see just how many points we missed that 6th spot by.

terenceanne wrote:
At the end of season it will be interesting to see just how many points we missed that 6th spot by.

I reckon we'll be 9 or 10 points off, maybe less as the pressure gets to the play-off contenders.

We had very winnable home draws with Reading, Derby, Yeovil, Sheffield Weds, Ipswich, Charlton, Forest, and Bournemouth. There's 16 dropped points right there before we even start on the points dropped away from home.

Natasha Whittam wrote:The fact we have been rubbish all season and are just 12 points off the play-offs just shows how poor this league is, and how much we have under-performed.

Poor or competitive? 
I think there have been enough unlikely results over the season to prove that on their day, any team can beat any other team in this league.

I also think we've been error-prone and inconsistent rather than rubbish all season. There were at least 5 or 6 games earlier in the season where we've lost by the odd goal or conceded an equaliser when set for 3 points due to Boggers mishandling, Knight standing on the ball or Baptiste being left on his ass etc. 
Just as bad has been the passing on occasions (Spearing especially) which handed over possession when things were looking promising and could have led to a lot more goals. 

The margins between defeat and victory are pretty fine in this league, whereas in the premiership there are distinct gulfs in class - possibly 3 leagues within the league.