+++ FACup 3rd Round 4/1/2020 OUFC V Hartlepool Utd +++

He was our best player against both Man City and West Ham. The way he moves with the ball, controls it, twists and turns, breaks the line and moves past multiple players in a single dart... the fact that he scored that type of goal against anybody, let alone twice in one season, is something none of our other players can do. That is the point. You say “Yeah it was only Hartlepool” and my answer is “Yeah, and West Ham, and also none of our other players can do it like he can at all, and that is kind of more the point than who he does it against”. None of our other players can do what he does, full stop. I didn’t make it about the quality of the opposition at all, but if anybody DOES want to go that route, then he can back it up all by himself with the way he has played, and indeed scored, against sides from the top division. I’m merely saying that until our other players can do what he does at all, let alone regularly, let alone against top level sides as he already has done, he’s hardly looking ordinary. Or anything close to.

Ademola Lookman went from Charlton to Everton for over £7m plus add-ons taking it to £10m plus a couple of years ago, with less games under his belt than Baptiste at the same level we operate at. And he hadn’t bossed games against top level opposition the way Baptiste has, so what’s fanciful about it? Alli went from MK Dons in League One to the Spurs starting lineup over the course of a summer. So there are recent precedents, and combined with the ability he shows plus the fact he’s been our best player against two PL sides already, I don’t think there’s any grounds to call Baptiste being sold to a PL side fanciful at all. Nobody can say for sure it will happen, but to say there are strong reasons that he won’t... well, that’s the genuinely fanciful claim, imo.

If only I had any grounding in scouting at any level, and therefore ever spoke to anybody from clubs and recruitment departments full stop, maybe I’d be able to substantiate my claims more. Oh well.

Lookman had started 32 games for Charlton and scored 10 goals, a chunk of which were in the Championship (15/16 season), the rest in L1 (16/17 until his transfer). That is more, and at a higher level than Shandon. Not saying he can't or won't do it, but Lookman had more games under his belt.

The one interesting thing about any transfer might be whether any "development compensation" is due to Reading (where he was at the academy).
 
Apart from the goal, the run across the box to set up Sykes in the second half was pretty good too.
 
Just over 4,800 home sales, so about 300 sold since 3:30pm yesterday. Better sales than I expected for a game like this. Still think it will end up just short of 6,000 with the 600 Hartlepool fans expected added in.
Pretty good guess Colin (with the extra Hartlepool fans).
Rotherham and Ipswich are massive games so I assume we should be looking at 8k to 9k fir these games?
 
Pretty good guess Colin (with the extra Hartlepool fans).
Rotherham and Ipswich are massive games so I assume we should be looking at 8k to 9k fir these games?

The Ipswich crowd may be down a bit with it being midweek and quite short notice compared to other fixtures.
 
Pretty good guess Colin (with the extra Hartlepool fans).
Rotherham and Ipswich are massive games so I assume we should be looking at 8k to 9k fir these games?

I'm now away in the sun and planned it ti miss only one game (Rotherham), so bloody annoyed that it's now two!

From discussions I've had, the club would like to keep the momentum going with attendances, but I feel would have been better waiting until March time to rearrange the Ipswich game, when it would have been nailed on 10,000+. FWIW I think the Ipswich game, in particular, might still get close to (or above?) 10,000, but only if we beat Rotherham first, as there's a chance we could go top by beating Ipswich, if other results have gone our way.

I'll have a look at how the sales progress over the coming days, which is a real dot counter's holiday!!!
 
I'm now away in the sun and planned it ti miss only one game (Rotherham), so bloody annoyed that it's now two!

From discussions I've had, the club would like to keep the momentum going with attendances, but I feel would have been better waiting until March time to rearrange the Ipswich game, when it would have been nailed on 10,000+. FWIW I think the Ipswich game, in particular, might still get close to (or above?) 10,000, but only if we beat Rotherham first, as there's a chance we could go top by beating Ipswich, if other results have gone our way.

I'll have a look at how the sales progress over the coming days, which is a real dot counter's holiday!!!

Enjoy your holiday. Yeah I agree the Ipswich game being rearranged with not a lot of notice will have an impact on attracting a big crowd. I'm guessing because they have now also got to rearrange the Accrington home and afc Wimbledon home games that the club don't want an overload of fixtures further in to the season. I will try my best and attend but I guess I still count on the attendance being a season ticket holder.
 
Enjoy your holiday. Yeah I agree the Ipswich game being rearranged with not a lot of notice will have an impact on attracting a big crowd. I'm guessing because they have now also got to rearrange the Accrington home and afc Wimbledon home games that the club don't want an overload of fixtures further in to the season. I will try my best and attend but I guess I still count on the attendance being a season ticket holder.

If only we knew the answer to that conundrum..... ? ? :ROFLMAO:
 
Enjoy your holiday. Yeah I agree the Ipswich game being rearranged with not a lot of notice will have an impact on attracting a big crowd. I'm guessing because they have now also got to rearrange the Accrington home and afc Wimbledon home games that the club don't want an overload of fixtures further in to the season. I will try my best and attend but I guess I still count on the attendance being a season ticket holder.

I also wondered whether we expect Ipswich to spend big in this transfer window and so would prefer to play them before they’ve done all of their business/all of their new players had settled in. Just a thought.
 
From discussions I've had, the club would like to keep the momentum going with attendances, but I feel would have been better waiting until March time to rearrange the Ipswich game, when it would have been nailed on 10,000+.

I would think the league would intervene on that one. Is there a limit on fixture re-arrangement? Waiting until March would have meant a delay of 4 months from the original fixture.
 
I would think the league would intervene on that one. Is there a limit on fixture re-arrangement? Waiting until March would have meant a delay of 4 months from the original fixture.

That's exactly why we had to arrange it for the 14th January. Also the EFL like games to be re-arranged in the order in which they were originally due to be played wherever possible, meaning that the Ipswich game had to be re-scheduled before the Accrington game for example.

Of course if Sky want to televise a game from our league live then they can re-schedule it for pretty much whenever they want................
 
Very annoying that the fa cup highlights are not on ifollow. Makes it very hard to watch Shandons trickery again! Why on earth arent they? Why cant they be on the club website just infuriating........!
 
Very annoying that the fa cup highlights are not on ifollow. Makes it very hard to watch Shandons trickery again! Why on earth arent they? Why cant they be on the club website just infuriating........!
On BBC Sport app
 
Very annoying that the fa cup highlights are not on ifollow. Makes it very hard to watch Shandons trickery again! Why on earth arent they? Why cant they be on the club website just infuriating........!

They were on the BBC Sport website a few hours after the game!
 
I would think the league would intervene on that one. Is there a limit on fixture re-arrangement? Waiting until March would have meant a delay of 4 months from the original fixture.

There are two mid-week normal league fixtures scheduled sometime around Feb, (one of them is when we were due to play Bury, our other is Burton, away - but Ipswich will have two games), the mid week for 4th round replay needs to be kept free as does 5th Round on Wed 4th March. We then have to fit in Accy & Wombles at home, so that is 6 mid week slots already taken before end of March so can see why they had to fit it in for next week.
 
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