Such a depressing, miserable season that was. We were on the verge of non-league football or liquidation ourselves. Thankfully we had Doncaster Rovers that season, although we managed to lose AND not score at your place. We thankfully never had to go down to non-league to recover. But we certainly deserved a stint down there at the time. Basket case of a club that was maintained by a few heroes of the time.
Well either our or Donny's season will be well and truly over tonight when one of us loses the hope of a Wembley final. I had planned on going to this, it's a cup QF at the end of the day, but after Saturday's disgraceful showing I will be going nowhere near that ground. We should be looking at well over 5,000 tonight but I can't see more than 2,000 including away fans. A complete shitshow of a club at the moment and lose tonight & Saturday it's going to be a very depressing place over the next 3 months.
WEMBLEYYYYYY. No surprise he picks the players the fans have been crying out for and we look a good team. Jake Young was excellent and Chapman's free kick the moment of quality to win us the game. Hopefully he keeps the same team, if he brings Taylor/Stubbs/Odour back in he really hasn't got a clue.
Good result with Sutton losing last night. Not bothered about the LDV Vans Trophy at this point. Molyneux, Carty and Close all off with probably season ending injuries. Close is a huge huge loss, but no doubt we won’t try and sign a replacement
The Hard Truth final could still be on with favourable draws . It's a sad state of affairs for the mighty maestro Grant McCann's fanbase are hoping that Sutton & FGR are the 2 teams worse than Donny to keep their football league status . What's gone wrong with Donny , why have things gone wrong so bad & quickly ? You can't blame money when the likes of Harrogate & Sutton in this Division , Cheltenham & for so long Accrington in League 1 , Posh & Wycombe recent years in Championship & the likes of Luton & Burnley in Premier league .
Unfortunately it’s not gone wrong quickly, this decline has been going on for 4 or 5 years now. The rot started under Moore, even though we were going really well under him we were constantly filling the squad with and depending on loans, basically signing a new squad every year. Once Moore and his contact book left, the loans and freebies started declining in quality and the wheels fell off. We went from Jacob Ramsey and Ben Sheaf to Tiago Cukur ffs. We’ve sold Marquis and Whiteman in that time and we’ve barely seen a penny of it reinvested into the squad. It’s completely to do with the ownership. We’ve constantly had ‘club doncaster’ and ‘sustainability’ trotted out but the long and short of it is those at the top have made incredibly little investment. With the news Blunt was going it gave us hope.. but turns out he’s still a ‘silent member of the board’. Terry Bramall is one of the richest owners in this division but without a John Ryan to egg him on just doesn’t seem to give two shits, or doesn’t have a clue what to do with the club. There’s just zero passion anymore from the board and we’re sleep walking back to where we came from 20 years ago. Adding to that we’ve had a serious problem for years now with constant injuries, we had 15 out and one stage this season. Doctor death previously mis-treating players meaning they ended up returning only to get injured again for lengthy spells. Since the beginning of the 20/21 season, we’ve lost 87 league games. The next after that is Colchester on 74 and works out as over 50% of league games lost!! That just shows what a systemic issue there is within the club and this downward trajectory shows no sign of stopping
Hmm , doesn't sound good , hopefully you'll have an upturn . Last Saturday was Donny Rovers day , Great Yorkshire Chase at Town Moor got abandoned I think 3 times in 7 years & 2 of those occasions we went & watched you guys getting thumped 3-0 by Reading in the Championship & beating Orient 2-0 in League 1 most probably about 2012 / 2014ish , the other time we got bladdered in city centre , Donny has ( or had ) loads of boozers
Hahaha it gets even better https://x.com/efl_comms/status/1753085800370045069?s=46&t=3ECRPqn7XfTYa4rythyOMQ Great day out in Donny. Unfortunately some a few good boozers around the train station has shut, but there’s lots of really good old pubs in the centre
To be fair to Sutton they deserved the win. They hung onto the lead for so long and yet conceded a penalty on virtually the last touch of the ball. Donny did not deserve the draw (but I'll take it all the same). Donny could not outplay Sutton so don't deserve to stay up really. But I suspect we will just scrape enough points to stay above Sutton and stay in L2. My worry again will be next season, when so far we have seen that McCann cannot build a winning team no matter how good they look on paper and he signed most of them. I have no confidence Donny will do any better next season. When Doncaster were successful we had 3 wealthy owners, Terry Bramall, John Ryan and Dick Watson. John Ryan fell out with the board and left. Dick Watson passed away and we just have Terry Bramall (who sold his Keepmoat building company for about £500M). Terry Bramall has sacked the chairman and now has total control over every aspect of the club. He built Club Doncaster which has may facets of which Doncaster Rovers is just one, and not his priority. For 3 years he has brought austerity to the football club as he sought to make the club "financially self sufficient" which basically means he did not have to put any money in. So we had a succession of cheap managers and players struggling with an inadequate budget. We are now in a mess and best we can hope for is to stay up this season. I still don't see us being promotion contenders next season because he does not want to put in the money to achieve it, or he would not have let us get to where we are now.
Isn’t this season’s budget supposedly ‘top-half’ though? So even if there is a lack of funding compared to what the fans want, you’re still massively underachieving.
As Donnyrovers90 and I said we have had a policy of financial sustainability for 3 years so without seeing actual budget figures I don't believe we have a sufficient budget. Terry Bramall has 100% control over the club and will not consider a partner who may have more enthusiasm than he has. If we are underachieving that has to be the fault of Grant McCann as it is his team, but he has a reputation as a "good" manager. Personally, I am not impressed with Bramall or McCann as they have to accept responsibility for where we are now. No-one else has any control over the football club. They can't just keep on blaming injuries and bad ref decisions.
They claim so, but you only have to look at the players we’ve signed to see that the budget is shit. We need to get rid of some of the high earners like Tommy Rowe, he was dogger yesterday and unfortunately looks like he’s passed it. We were completely outplayed by Sutton yesterday and didn’t deserve a point. We had 1 shot on target all game - the penalty. Absolutely garbage
https://x.com/kanofoundation/status/1754084935688679752?s=46&t=ESQ8Exj3ZqX3H9TvqklASQ Class gesture from Wrexham.
How many of yesterday's X1 were McCann signings ? He signed Ephron Mason-Clark & Hector Kyprianou for us , EMC got sold on Thursday to Coventry for £3.5 million & we allegedly turned bids up to £2.5 million for HK so McCann knows & can source good players when need be he's just a stubborn tw*t with his system & his subs with us were bizarre but then again , so are Fergie's at times .
Bramall sounds like a very similar figure to our previous owner - can't work with anyone else and can't work without either. If that's the case, I don't think it really matters who is in the dugout because only change in the boardroom can offer real hope of brighter times.
In answer to the question by Posh about yesterday’s squad the starting line-up was:- Lo-Tutala, Rowe, McGrath, Olowu. Sterry, Senior, Wood, Bailey, Adelakun, Ironside, Waters. McCann signed 9 of them, only Rowe and Olowu were already with the club having been signed by Richie Wellens. I think you are also right about McCann. Spot on that his formations and subs are bizarre even though we have good players. I confess I was happy to have him back, and I was happy with his signings when they first came in, but he cannot make them work as a team. They all do their own thing when on the pitch and ignore everything they did in training to prepare for the game. We have a massive squad of 36 players but he can’t get them to work together. 11 random players gets us where we are. Either he needs to learn to manage them or let someone else take over who knows how to control players. I can’t see many positives about the owner, board, manager or players right now. I don’t see any easy way forward and expect more of the same next season.
Made me smile. I love your optimism when you are on the same points as Doncaster and an extra game played. I wish you luck. LOL
