If City win, will he get the chop!

If we get beaten by City will it be one loss too far even for PG? The pressure of losing at home with the crowd venting their anger. I would expect it will be a decent attendence too. 20,000 shouting for his head put together with being potentially bottom of the league and another loss in a long line of poor results. Surely that will be the end of it.

Kept us up or not in the past we aint good enough and it starts with the manager who has had ample time to get it right. There are some pretty poor teams in the division and we are one of the worst. Our strongest team should be pushhing top 6-7 considering the teams we have played and the quality of the oppo.

I can't see it. The problem we've got is that Gartside and the board are probably quite used to 15-20k people shouting abuse at them... so losing to City and taking a volley of verbal will be water off a duck's back.

I think that Megson will get this month to turn it around, given the potentially 'winnable' fixtures we have coming up.

at mangler and others, is there a group of bolton supporters on facebook? if there is, just let me know it, if it aint, i think we should form one. by the way what are the names u use on facebook

at mangler and others, is there a group of bolton supporters on facebook? if there is, just let me know it, if it aint, i think we should form one. by the way what are the names u use on facebook

No supporters group but I did find this:
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=5384437225

Top 6, Top 7? What? So which team out of 'The Big 4, plus City, Spurs, Villa are we better than? We've played 14 games we so we have played most teams. I'd say I would want us to be midtable, top ten would be super, looking at pushing on in the new year.

As for Megson, I doubt an expected defeat against City will be his downfall. Two home defeats plus a defeat at Wigan could see him reeling though as we would remain on 12 points with 17 games played.

I would not be suprised though if we draw with City, beat West Ham (we always do) and get something at Wigan, thus keeping Meggo safe for the time being! He, or the team, seem to pull it out the bag when he's in the shit.

Big week though with three games. Very big week!

i think you harbour feelings for megson dont you..?

ok -

by pushing 6-7th, i meant pushing them as in on their heels.

We should be at least competing with the likes of Fulham, Birmingham, Blackburn, Stoke, Burnley, Wigan, Everton etc etc...
Not unrealistically dreaming of being that good.

And thats precisely my point, Stoke, Burnley, Hull, Wolves, Brum, Pompy, Blackburn, Wigan should be bread and butter for us, and to a lesser degree we should be expecting results from Sunderland, West Ham, Everton, Fulham. We should not be taking on Wolves hoping that we might somehow catch a bit of luck and steal a point or seeing us played of the park by Stoke etc. The league is full of pretty poor teams this term, but they are nearly all better than we are. Thats sad.

At the moment the most realistic thing I can expect to feel on the way to a game is the hope that we dont get totally embarrassed or that we get a penalty to help us get some points on the board. My only reservation being that if we do scrape some results then nothing will change and we will suffer for longer.

Does my point make more sense now?

Of these: Stoke, Burnley, Hull, Wolves, Brum, Pompy, Blackburn, Wigan, Sunderland, West Ham, Everton, Fulham, I would (in the past) hope that we'd get 1-3 points (3 from most) from all barring Fulham (our bogey team).

We are failing abysmally, hence if we are sitting on 12-18 points at Christmas, our fate could already be decided, depending on how poorly others at the bottom do as far as keeping a close gap or opening one up.

If we persist with Megson we have no chance of escaping relegation. If you take a careful look at the table there are a couple of teams who will do a Spurs and climb away from the relegation zone after Christmas. Also, unlike last season, there is not the plethora (I know Breeze will like that one) of teams struggling for survival, and it will be us and two or three others scrapping it out. Knowing the negativity with which Megson approaches games we will sit back against the likes of Hull, Pompey etc, when they come calling hoping to steal a point. Plus we can't keep a clean sheet so the future ain't looking rosy at all I'm afraid to say.

I disagree, I think there are still plenty of average teams in this division.

I think if we lose badly to City and then again to West ham the pressure will be so great that Megson will be right on the edge. He won't resign of course because he'll lose money doing that so he has to wait to be pushed but as I said all along he will only go when we are adrfit at the bottom of the table and we're still a couple of defeats away from that.

why does it need to get so bad before it happens - can we not make projections like in any other business? We can all see the problems and the issues and we can all see its never really going to change around, even if we do get 1 or 2 results we are still in the same boat. a sinking one.

Because as Gartside said, we don't do the panic thing like other clubs do. Megson has already demonstrated that he can take a team from the bottom and lift it magnificently to the giddy heights of 16th or even 15th place.

If we sack him now we will be without a manager for a few weeks during what is our most important period in terms of fixtures. Out of the frying pan and into the fire is not a situation we should be welcoming.

Blimey Breeze, reading your last post makes it sound like you are still behind Megson!!

Not really, I'm just very much against Dowie. Been saying this for two years but sacking a manager is easy, replacing him with someone better is the hard part and no-one has yet determined who is the right replacement. Have you got one?

your spot on Breeze.... my biggest worry is who will come in for him... and there is that fact that megson does have the attributes to get us out of this mess as he's proved before...!
I had high hopes when sammy lee took over.. and look what mess he made...!

last season if any one of us had been in charge do you think we would have finished in the bottom three or done any worse than megson tactic, performance or results wise?

i dont think so?

i think anyone could have kept bolton up so its only just to his credit that he did so, not much of an attribute to keep a team up that could have stayed up even if they managed themselves and probably done a better job.

Plus, we only staryed up lastseason because of the run of results other teams suffered towards the end, not because megson pulled anything out of the back to garuntee our survival.

Do you remember the drab, useless, uninspired performances we put in at the end of last season? If we had needed a win or 2 we would have never stayed up!

Breeze, the one I wanted is going nowhere I'm afraid. If pushed I'd say Curbishley is the best bet I can think of. Would have to agree about the Dowies, Souness or Southgates of the world, I really think we'd be swapping one bad manager for another.

Curbs is a decent bloke but after the ego of Sam, the disappointment of Little Sam and the non-personality of Megson we seem to be craving someone with charisma, some likeable trait that is endearing. In terms of personality Curbs is just Megson with the latest firmware update.

jayjay23 wrote:i think you harbour feelings for megson dont you..?

Why would you say that?

But you would hope that Curbs would have the added attraction of results which would make up for any perceived lack of charisma.

In theory yes, but our results will always be few and far between whilst the top 8 clubs have got so much money to spend on the top players. Even with Curbs in charge we couldn't expect more than mid-table at best and I think any run of bad form and the fans would be all over him and Gartside and we'd be back to square one or maybe square one and a bit, but definitely not as far as square 2.

However, bring in a manager with some pazzazz and the whole mood of the club would be more optimistic and forgiving even when dips occured.

Can you think of such a manager.

I'd like to think, although the supporters have gone down a lot in my estimation recently, that if we were midtable under Curbishley, playing some bareable football and perhaps and odd cup run, that they fans would be satisfied and would not be baying for blood at the first opportunity like they were with megson, who was hardly a popular choice. Plus, hopefully, when comparing the results under our new manager, they wouldn't harp back to the Big Sam days, they think about the Megson era which may give them some perspective.

We could always get Ian Holloway though. His post match comments are just hillarious according to Soccer AM. That ought to keep the fans onside during a bad run.

How about Sparkly Joe Fantastic, the current manager of Amazing FC in Austria?

Curbs is definitely better than Megson...no question. But he's still not BSA and there are too many fans who still haven;t got over him leaving and are looking for an ego as big as he had to return to the Reebok.

True, but those types of fans are not the one's we need to pander to. They'll never be satisfied no matter who we bring in. They're the types of moron who would suggest Scolari as manager and have to resort to a make believe life on a football forum.

Sadly, you'll never please those fans no matter how charismatic the manager. If we brrought in Mourinho, they'd complain it wasn't Wenger and vice versa.

I still think that the majority of fans would get behind a new manager if they could believe that there was a chance to dream of Europe at the start of the season, like Charlton, even if those dreams are never quite realised, like Charlton.

I agree though that if we do brining in a new manager, this manager has to be one where the fans can believe that his aims, and realistic aims, will be to take the team higher and not just aim to survive each season.

If we bring someone in purely to keep us up this season, like Iain Dowie, not only might it fail, but, even if we suceed, we'll only be in the same position two years down the line.

We have to bring in a manager who we like and that is, for the most part, down to personality. However, thinking about it, I quite like Dowie...he always seems to be articulate and erudite and he's engaging and sometimes witty...but he plays shocking football, I mean proper 4-5-1 everyone behind the ball at all times kind of football.

So I think I may have cancelled out my own argument there.

Fair point about the fans by the way, I do think that an awful lot of the internet brigade simply don't go to matches and haven't done for some time and so I agree they're not the ones we have to satisfy. Fuck 'em I say. Yeah, that's right...I said it. Fuck 'em...I'd rather put up with watching Megson's football than listening to Tony Cottee's inane guff all afternoon.

Dowie concerns me as he is the type of manager that I could see us going for as he's cheap, available and, probably, desperate for work, despite his Sky TV job. Suprised that anyone thought it was a good idea to put his face on TV but fair do's.

I liked the idea of Sparkly Joe Fantastic, but after seeing his record prior to Amazing FC on Wikipedia, he didn't exactly set the world alight at Runofthemill Athletic did he? Plus, the less said about his private life the better. I think we should steer clear of anyone who is rumoured to be the illegitimate father of Hayden Foxe.

Failing the above two, Souness? I think he is a cunt personally but he won a cup at Blackburn which is more than any manager of ours can boast for the last half century. He plays good football, at least he should do considering the shite he said about us under Allardyce. I feel we may have burnt our bridges with him following the Megson saga though. I would expand on that but, for fear of Tim rambliing on again, I'll move on.

None of the options really stand out. I would go for Curbs but it's whether he'd want to leave London. Young managers have potential but we really need someone who can galvanise the team now so, for that reason, I would pass on Darren Ferguson, despite the possible loan deals from his Dad down the road.

Sparky Joe Fantastic has a terrific management record...it's Terry Venables singing All Of Me.

Souness? Not sure of the bloke did I say over two years ago that despite the arguments he would have (at the time with Diouf) he would still represent our best chance of immediate success...but long term he'd have packed off for sunnier vistas after disagreeing about energy drink suppliers with Duckworth and punching Gartside for being Irish.

Darren Ferguson is either going a long way in this business or he's going a short way to running an out of town pub near Marple. The jury is still out until the truth about his departure from Peterborough is known and given that Barry Fry slated him and is best mates with his dad I'm not sure I believe Fergie Jnr on this one.

I like the cut of Paul Lambert's jib which is an odd thing to say but none-the-less I've said it now. I don't buy into this Gary Johnson thing...he's a lower league manager and always will be. Good one, that's true...but he won't be stepping up anytime soon.

Wooo, I used to live in Marple, and now it gets a mention on here!!

I wonder which pub he'll be running...

I was thinking of either or those two on the Strines Road.

Strines Road? Yeah that's a good shout.

Although I've no idea where you mean, because I was at that age where I was still shitting in my hands and rubbing it in my face when we moved.

I was only 19.